Visiting Mamaw

Well, Gracelynn moved into her twin size bed on Monday. Today we hung up her quilt. I searched for a way to hang it on the wall. But, I wanted it CHEAP (or free) and not overly countryish. So, as I was bumming around the Ben Franklin store, I found large clothespins for $1 each. I bought five. I screwed them into anchors in the wall and simply clipped up the folded quilt.

Her room is by far the smallest in the house. It's like 8'x8' with a corner chopped off to fit the door, two doors for the closet and two 36" windows in the corner. So, wall space is limited!!! Now that we've squeezed in the bed, I am so happy with her room. It's so cozy. I told Mike I want to chop all the other kids' rooms into 8 foot rooms, too. Well, the boys' room in particular. It's so big (15'x16') that there is just too much space (it's bigger than our room!) They keep filling it with junk. Let's split the room in two (making our house a 5 bedroom) and separate the two brothers before they kill each other. It would make things so cozy and with no room for tons of junk. :-) Mike's not for it. Bummer. He just doesn't think like me... I think in terms of... how can I make my life easier with four kids. Splitting the room: One... less bickering and shouting ("Mom, Tommy's touching my stuff") and two... less space for big toys! Ben would be allowed to use the lock on his door again (to prevent 3 and 4 year olds from invading his space). What do you think?


Last weekend, we visited Mamaw (Mike's maternal grandmother). She's about 1.5 hours from here, so we don't see her as often as we'd like. We brought the whole gang to see her non-childproofed apartment. :-) Although Mommy and Daddy and Gran and Granddad did a lot of "don't touch that", we all enjoyed our visit with Mamaw. Unfortunately this was the best photo I had of Mamaw... I was at the wrong angle. When we entered the apartment, Gracelynn flew in the door and ran to Mamaw and gave her a BIG hug. Wow! She had only met her once before at the reunion... and even then only saw her for brief moments of time. I think Mamaw was tickled pink (as were the rest of us!) Grace asked me today when we get to go see Mamaw next. Mamaw is now 92 years old! How sweet that Gracelynn loved to be with her... does that have something to do with her exposure to seniors at her Social Welfare Institute in China? (Her SWI was for children and seniors both.)

In addition to seeing her only great-grandmother, Grace enjoyed exploring the apartment. The walker was way-cool... she thought it was a step-ladder at first. So was the flashlight... hopefully she didn't run down the batteries. But the best part of the whole place was Mamaw's remote control chair! We had to hide the remote because Grace would start moving Mamaw up and down!