graham's nursery inspiration board.

Can I get real with you for just a moment? We have grand plans for the nursery. Peaceful. Serene. Calm. Lots of contrasting for our sweet Graham. But honestly? This is currently what we're dealing with:

Can someone pretty please come clean this mess out? We rearranged the boys' room about a month ago and STILL haven't moved all of their toys back in. They're currently sitting in those orange bins. There is good reason for this: We want to reorganize how we store their toys and are thinking we need a small toy box for their room, while moving a vast majority of their toys to our family room since that's where we spend most of our time. Speaking of time, we just haven't taken the time to make this happen. If we want to even think about getting the nursery done, this is one of those things that needs to happen first.

A lot of the mess in the room is still where we redid the boys' bathroom. And now I'm realizing I never shared that project either. (Notes to self: Write up a post on the bathroom while we clean the mess that is the nursery.)

Anyway, so it's a mess. But, BUT, we do have plans. Big ones. And they're going to look a little something like this:

A rundown of what we're planning:
1. Crib: We thought giving the third baby something new of his own would be nice
2. Ceiling light: We have a fan in there, but I hate it with a passion. This would streamline that look.
3. Wall/ceiling color: White walls, people. With a light blue ceiling for interest.
4. Rocker: We still love this rocker that we got for Sawyer's nursery, so we'll be using it here too.
5. Dresser/changing table: Lots of storage space. Because babies have ALL THE THINGS.
6. Basket: For small toy storage. Or something like that.
7. Fabrics: The blue for curtains. I think. The other two are fabrics I ordered for crib sheets!
8. Lovey: Where we will order at least two, if not three of these.
9. Ugly Doll: Because Cayden & Sawyer have one. And Graham will need one too. Duh.

There are other plans like a driftwood mobile above the crib. And I'd love to ad crown molding to the room (surprise, Jeremy!). And obviously a lot of painting still needs to be done. But we'll get there, right? Hold me.

two little monkeys.

Since we're are very close to having three little monkeys, our queen-sized bed was starting to feel a little, um, tight. We decided that taking some of our tax return and investing in a king-sized bed would be a brilliant idea. And since every store in the world likes to have Presidents Day sales on mattresses, we took full advantage that weekend and purchased one. We got a little ahead of ourselves by not purchasing a frame yet, but no worries, that's taken care of now and will come sometime within the next month. Hopefully.

In the meantime, our mattress was delivered this past Saturday. And since we're college-bumming it, it currently resides on the floor. And also since we hadn't purchased any sheets yet, and the longing look in the boys' eyes was too much, we said go for it! We let them jump their little hearts out on Saturday morning. And that would be when Jeremy captured this fun little video.

Oh, and p.s., we also bought a new camera that we've had our eyes on for a while. Yay for HD video and a full frame sensor. I think we're gonna have a lot of fun with that new toy. You might be getting a lot more blog entries since we can't seem to keep our hands off it. Maybe. Don't hold me to it, ok?

8/52

a photo of our kiddos once a week for a year

Cayden: He starts soccer practice again this week. We got in a little refresher practice last night.
Sawyer: He loves getting himself dressed. Even if his shoes are on the wrong feet.

build a bear.

This was our second trip to Build-A-Bear, and we've loved the experience both times. The boys' Granna and Poppa love to gift them with gift cards to the store, and we love getting to take the boys and watch them pick out their very own animals, and sometimes clothes. This last time, we noticed that a birthday party was starting. Having no idea how those work, we just squeezed our way past them, urged the boys to pick out their animals quickly and hopped in line super fast.

We ended up with "Spider Bear" the um, spider bear and "Egg" the dinosaur. Creative kids, I tell ya.

(Also, their trip to the mall ended on a fun note getting to check out the Lego Store. And I'll admit, I got a little dreamy-eyed over some of the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings sets. Dork for-ev-ah.)

on choosing your child's name.

Picking a name for your child has to be one of the most exciting, yet anxiety-ridden choices parents get to make for their children. Will the name be dumb when they get older? Can it easily be made fun of? What does it mean to you?

For Cayden, I think I read the name somewhere and really liked it. I believe it was spelled Caden the first time I saw it. We added the "y" because we're dorks and we really liked how the descender of the "y" looked. His middle name is Samuel; chosen after my paternal grandfather who holds a very dear and special place in my heart.

For Sawyer, well, if any of you are LOST fans out there, you can take a wild guess as to where that one came from. It's also a pretty cool name. He does get called "nugget" about the same amount as he gets called by his proper name and has recently taken to telling me, "I not nugget! I Sawyer!" So we'll see how much longer that nickname lasts for him. Sawyer's middle name is Wray; chosen after my great uncle who officiated our marriage and who sometimes feels quite grandfatherly to me as well.

With baby boy number three, we knew the middle name would be a family name as that just seems to be the way we're rolling. The first name took us a little while to settle on as there were several options that we really liked. And to add extra pressure to ourselves, we decided that the name had to be six letters long – just like Cayden and Sawyer's. So, without further ado, our third son's name will be:

Yep, Graham. Sigh. Isn't it such a lovely name? So perfect for a little boy, but also so perfect for a grown man. We dug back into the family tree just a bit to get his middle name. It will be Isaac, named after Jeremy's great-great-great-grandfather Izik. We wanted to use the more traditional spelling though. And Isaac also just happens to mean laughter/to laugh. And after our miscarriage last year, we thought that was oh-so-appropriate and joyful to our hearts.

So we'll have Cayden, Sawyer and Graham. All similar, but different. And we can't wait to meet our sweet Graham. But in like 11 weeks, please and thank you.