October!

Well as you can see from the previous posts, we're keeping ourselves busy! But busy in a good way of course, and we are loving the re-vamping we are doing around the house:) Avery of course is growing and changing daily, she says full sentences now which is quite incredible. As of yesterday her little voice is hoarse and she says her throat hurts, who knew she would be able to communicate this at such a young age? Despite the fact that I get a little antsy, I'm trying really hard to take full advantage of all this time with my girl which has been great. We are two peas in a pod. Avery often grabs my face or gives me a hug and says, "I so happy!" (she actually just did it as I was writing this:) She loves the fact that I'm no longer going to work and tells me almost daily. Oh and also, two days ago we decided to take the Nuk (aka pacifier) away, we never thought we would let her have it this long so it's been a long time coming, we were just too nervous to attempt it. BUT...because she's Avery, she's been pretty much un-phased (she's truly an amazing child); whenever she asks for it I want to cave but thankfully Andy stays strong. We told her that we had to send all of her nuks to all the babies around the world that needed them. She asks about them when we put her down and get her up from bed/naps but she gets over it and sleeps just fine, wow! Another seamless transition for this little one!

Speaking of not-so-seamless transitions, as many of you know we've been potty training for quite some time. She has phases of doing so well and phases of not doing so well. Right now, I'm glad to report it has been multiple days of no accidents! (against what we always thought as parents, bribery is involved...:) but it's working and all the Konings are happier people!

Here are some random pictures/a video of life around the Konings!

This is Avery's new backpack, she absolutely loves it! I got it so we could have 5 weeks without a diaper bag:) Avery totes it around everywhere we go and it's so cute, but it sure makes her look grown up!

This is how excited she is about the backpack, and let's not forget that the purse goes everywhere too! Some days it's a backpack, purse, and baby! Oh dear she's so girly!

We recently visited Babies R Us to register for a few things for baby Mary Lou and play with the double strollers, Avery found this snowman hat and would not take it off (and Andy and I being softies of course got it for her:) This is us at the next store, Target, where she is still wearing it, tag and all because she loved it that much! (and you know how I mentioned up above that we took the nuk away for all the babies around the world? This worked so well until we were at Babies R Us and Avery saw them lining the wall, she was very confused...sad)

Avery is such a dancer (here she's dancing while sick without music), in fact I found some dance classes at a local studio in downtown Danville that I am seriously considering enrolling her in because she has dance parties with herself and/or others multiple times a day (they're just so darn expensive, Mom how did you do it all those years?:). It's amazing to watch the joy she gets out of dancing though...

And there she is! Baby Mary Lou! Depending on her position I say I have "popped" because my belly button insides stick out further than my belly (you can't tell in this picture) which never happened with Avery. This one just keeps growing! I'm still exhausted but very thankful to be off work because I know that it helps. She still moves all the time, usually visible from the outside of my clothes which is crazy to watch. Only 5 more weeks to go until this little one enters the world...can't wait!

Re-vamping an Armoire

So in our continuing quest of nesting, Haley was inspired by what someone did with an old armoire. The idea was to repaint, and turn it into an office storage/filing cabinet. Here's some pictures of the process!

First off we stripped the finish, and added some primer. Then came the first coat of light green.

A darker green (almost olive) came on after that. Lots of sanding later, we added some poly lacquer

And the final product! If you've seen this corner of our room before, this is a vast improvement!

Hey everybody!

We just undertook some projects to update our place, one of which is a new headboard! Andy wrote about what we did in his blog, so enjoy!

Getting Crafty

So as Haley and I are getting ready for the new baby to come, we've been updating our place. Giving everything just a little different flavor. Avery got some bunk-beds, some new wall art, and we've been organizing like crazy. Having only two bedrooms for two adults and two kids is very daunting!! Good thing my wife craves organization.

But while in our "nesting" phase we've also wanted to update our own room, make it a place we want to be in. Enter Haley's desire for a headboard, and Pinterest - that never ending time vacuum, where you lose hours imagining what your house COULD look like if you have tons of time and no job/responsibilities. We got some inspirations and set out into the world

Note: you can click on the pictures for a larger size

We visited Haley's brother's house, and picked up some wood he had stored up (thanks Chas!). Turns out some of it was this beautiful knotty pine that was inside the house (when Haley's greandparents lived there) before the remodel. After hammering a few nails out, and cutting the pieces to size we threw them in the van and set off.

Avery also discovered a "little" something to entertain herself in Uncle's backyard...

Then came the sanding... oh how much fun that was! No sarcasm intended, it really was relaxing to a certain degree. There was some old golden lacquer/varnish on the pine that needed to be removed. We were looking into what color we wanted but knew that no matter what, the golden hue had to go.

Along with the headboard, we were also refinishing an Amoire into a desk/filing cabinet. More on that in another post.

A not very good picture of the almost finished board. Once sanded, I just lined them up accordingly and bolted them together from the back. Next came the finishing decision. We had wanted a weathered look because that would fit our new amoire, and the overall feel of our room. But figuring out how to do that by ourselves (without a farm in Pennsylvania to help us, since that seemed to be pervading theme on Pinterest) proved a little difficult. With some help from my ever faithful friend Google, I saw that I could combine steel wool, and vinegar to create a gray stain. Who knew normal, standard, straight up steel wool was so hard to find!! Every one I found seemed to have soap, or was scented like a fruit. So we used an SOS pad, rinsed thoroughly, and dropped it in a pint of vinegar for a day. And crossed our fingers... Here's a shot of my first test coat:

You can see on the 2nd board from the left the difference between my gray stain, and the original pine color.

A "sort of" success! Here's a picture of the final product hanging on our wall

So there you have it, our new headboard! Now I have no idea why I felt the need to share this with the world. I don't even think the 2 people who read this blog (my wife and mom) would really care, namely because one of them was with me the whole time! And by no means should anyone replicate what I did, because I have no idea what I'm doing. But there you have it. I did something with my hands. The end.

We'll have more photos of our other projects soon!

Baby Mary Lou Update and Change...

So it's official...I am on maternity leave! There are just too many things going on with my health and it seemed better to stay at home. I'm 33 weeks, due Nov. 28th (for those that forgot) and still experiencing the dizziness, lightheadedness, heart stuff (mainly fast heart rate), and contractions. On top of the anemia that my MD discovered, she also recently discovered a vitamin B12 deficiency. She is not comfortable doing more tests and/or treating it because she feels that it is out of her scope of practice so she has referred me to a different doctor. I just heard back from him in the last hour and he has ordered more tests to be done and we'll go from there:) I'm not feeling any worse than normal, just status quo so I'm hanging in there and baby Mary Lou is as active as ever! Avery is very excited that I don't have to go to work anymore and we've been spending a lot of quality time together.

After church on Sunday we headed out to the pumpkin patch with Dawson (avery's friend), and his parents Jill and Matt. Here are some photos from the adventure:

Getting the kids in the wagon so we had some control over them:)

The pumpkin that Avery picked out.

They went through a hay-maze for kiddos (notice Dawson's arm around Avery:)

Avery's first pony ride! She absolutely loved it.

Petting a pig (she had no fear of the animals)

My kid is the one in the middle throwing corn everywhere;) this was a giant pit of corn to play in, made me feel bad for starving people around the world cause here we were just playing in corn, but as you can see, the Avester loved it!

It was difficult to get her out of the corn pit...

Dawson, Avery and Andy being silly

Lastly they went on a train ride in these cute little cows, Avery is still talking about this part.

One more shot of them with their pumpkins!

And heaven forbid they walk anywhere without holding hands...oh dear!

We'll keep you up to date as best we can as these health updates come, for now it's just a waiting game:)

A few firsts...

This past week has been really great because I've had a lot of time off (five days in a row, wow! we'll get to the reasons why...) Because of this, we had the opportunity to hang out a lot as a family and take Avery on a few of her "first" of different adventures:) The first first was going to the movies! I took Avery to see The Lion King at Hacienda with her norcal best friend Dawson and and his Mom Jill, she absolutely loved it. The second we walked into the theater she was mezmorized by the big screen and couldn't stop staring at it. Her and Dawson are so funny together, they ate snacks, watched the movie, held hands, and kissed during the show (I know, she's starting young!) Afterwards they ran around the theater and cried when we had to separate them, too cute!

This was at the beginning of the movie...

Not the cutest picture of Avery but you get the point that they were holding hands:)

The second "first" was Avery's first haircut! This happened Monday...both Andy and I had the day off so we got to go with her to her first due. We took her to my hair lady that I have been going to since junior high, Linda, in Blackhawk. She wasn't so sure about it in the beginning and only wanted Daddy but eventually warmed up to the idea and enjoyed the experience. Afterwards, we took her out to lunch for a job well done, it was a really great day of being a family!

This is her, "I'm not so sure face:("

Starting the haircut process...

She liked to direct all of us in what we should be doing.

Getting the bangs cut was the toughest part.

Distracted doing Mommy's hair

The final product, the cutest girl ever!

She was very happy about her new haircut:)

In case you haven't heard in the news, we went on strike (again) last Thursday the 22nd, because of this, the hospital locked us out for 4 days after the strike (hence the 5 days off). There seems to be a lot more drama surrounding this strike between the hospital and the union but hopefully we'll all come to an agreement soon. On Thursday, Avery and I went to check out he picket line, it wasn't too exciting but after being there about 20 minutes we went out with co-workers to a local happy hour. All of my co-workers love Avery and she loves them, I'm including a picture of Stefani (a co-worker) holding her at the bar while we waited for our seats, keeping it classy:)

Stefani and Avery at the bar...

This week is going to be a busy but really great one! Other than the normal work schedules, Cori is coming up to visit tomorrow night (I'll pick her up on my way home from work Wednesday night, then drop her off on my way to work Friday). Then Grammy and Grandpa Rog are coming to visit! The 3 of us will be going to Andy's 10 year high school reunion Saturday afternoon and then Andy and I will be driving down to southern CA for some much needed relaxation/alone time:) The point of us going down is for Amy Buskirk's wedding (one of my nursing friends/bluefield roommates). We'll be there all day Sunday (the day of the wedding) and head back Monday, a quick trip but we're both really looking forward to getting away and Avery is very excited to have her Grammy come stay with her:) Hope you all are doing well, happy Tuesday!

p.s....

As you can imagine we frequently have dance parties in our home, this is not necessarily the best video but still has some good moves on it, enjoy:)

Mid-September update:)

It's finally cooling off here and Danville (well there has been one day of cool weather) and we continue to be so happy and feel so blessed for our move up north. My belly is growing like a weed (due to the fact that I eat everything in site:), my iron infusions are complete, and we found a great car! I finished my third iron infusion last week, labs showed a bump in my hemoglobin from 9.4 to 9.6 which to my Dr. means it's working (keep in mind normal is 12.4-14). I'm not convinced it's working but I'm waiting it out...she wants me to come in for more labs and get my thyroid tested so we'll see. My Doctor is pretty convinced that my dizziness/lightheadedness is simply due to the fact that it's my second pregnancy, as I said I am not quite convinced but we'll see:) More good news in healthcare, Andy had a PET/CT scan last week and met with his new oncologist today, the scan was clear! We weren't expecting anything different BUT a clear scan is always exciting news.

On more exciting news, we found a van and purchased it on Monday! It's a pre-owned 2011 Toyota Sienna and we love it! Today was the first day that we actually drove it since driving it home from the lot because we've been using the CRV as our work/commuter car but having the van is so great. It's so roomy and comfy and we love it!

For updates and stories about Avery I'm using pictures:

This is the new story of our life...watching "A Bug's Life". Avery wakes up asking for it and talks about it daily, she also gets to watch it almost daily. She is even starting to know some of the lines...

Avery continues to be quite the social one, this is her surrounded by a Livermore soccer team of girls that met her at Pete's in downtown Danville, she loved it and they loved being entertained by her:)

A new tradition? These are ice cream cupcakes that I made for my Dad's 60th birthday, it was my first time and they turned out to be AMAZING! I think it will become a birthday tradition...

This is how Aves felt about car shopping...she wasn't a big fan:)

Here we are with our new van, love it!

I figured out how to make homemade paint (from my favorite website "pinterest") and Avery loved it, it's amazing to see how fast she's growing up!

I haven't figured out how to embed 2 videos so I'm putting one in as a link and then a second one as an actual video, I'll figure it out someday. If you copy and paste the links into your web browser you should be able to enjoy the first one and hopefully the 2nd one works:) The first one is one of her new favorite habits of putting sunscreen on (although in this video she is using her fake lipstick as her sunscreen). The second video is Avery on her phone, this occurs multiple times a day we just happen to be in the car when this video was shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtIU4WuHG98

As far as Avery updates go she continues to be quite the busy little bee! She's on the go non-stop and loves to be active, even if that includes throwing fits:) There is at least one fit a day which is quite exhausting for Mommy and Daddy but we'll survive. We thought we didn't have to worry about certain fits until she was 16 years old BUT almost everytime we get into the car she throws a fit because we don't let her drive...oh dear! She loves making phone calls (particularly to her new best friend Dawson, but no Kaylie, she hasn't forgotten about you:) which usually include saying, "hi", "I'm sorry", and "bye" (as evidenced by the video above). She also loves loves loves to count and sing all the time.

I'm officially into my 3rd trimester and baby #2 is quite the active one. As I said before she just keeps growing:) This week we started unpacking baby stuff...wow is that overwhelming! It's very difficult to decide what to unpack and what to leave in boxes related to the fact that everything we have in newborn is summer and so forth:) It's also hard cause I have a little 2 year old helper that while she means well often makes the process take double if not triple the amount of time it would without her:) It's a slow process and both Andy and I have a difficult time having our home filled with half empty boxes but we're slowly but surely getting there.

That's it for now, stay tuned for more videos/pictures of this little girl...she just keeps growing!