The Mutha of All Updates

I've been DYING to post all day...so many updates. If I could put in a really long title for the post it would be "Bed Dilemma: SOLVED + Malignant Murmur + Potty Training #2 Kid: COMPLETE". Do you see where I am going with this post?

First off, Josh and I took Bea to the specialist this morning. Absolutely fantastic doctor who spent nearly an hour with us. They ran an EKG and also did a very thorough ultrasound on Bea. She was pretty cooperative throughout the whole thing. He asked us a lot of questions to get some history, etc., and also put my mind at ease about the whole heart murmur thing. It's more common than I realized, and the whole association of doctors somewhere are trying to make people see that this isn't an issue as so many people have it. The same thing goes with mitral valve prolapse. So common, indeed. Not to worry. Yada yada yada. In fact, did you know that doctors everywhere are trying to downgrade it to not make it seem so serious and be a cause for concern? You now don't need to take medication before seeing the dentist or have that extra antibiotic IV. They've somehow proved it is not needed. In any case, there is no need to worry about Bea unless we see a drop in her activity level. A generally happy child who has so much activity and is always running around is of no concern. Her murmur is possibly a result of her being sick, it could come and go, and if we take her to urgent care they might point it out. But again, there is really nothing to be concerned about. I'm relieved. So RELIEVED. Whew. Here's my happy kid:


The bed. What is going on with the bed situation, you ask? Well, I went back to the store last weekend and tried to do some more negotiations. They wouldn't budge. The set was already 20% off, so they couldn't come down anymore, nor sell the floor model. You had to order it, and it takes approximately eight weeks. Ugh. But, they did say you could pay half up front and pay the other half when it came in, which wouldn't be too bad. We just couldn't justify it. And, Josh also went in one more time to look at it and said the quality just wasn't there for that price. At that point, Josh said he would probably build something like it. But, in the end, projects around here end up taking a long time and with the girls around it would take double time (more likely more than eight weeks). So, we were really out of options. Then, taking some of the comment advice, I decided to look at the IKEA website. It looked like we could do something nice for them and quickly. I had decided to just do two beds side by side, but then we found something else.

We took a trip to IKEA on Sunday. I heart IKEA now. We spent two hours there - with the girls! I didn't realize how kid-friendly a store it is, and the children's section is pretty lavish. And things are relatively cheap. The only thing that stinks is that you put it together yourself. So, on Sunday from about four to eight we put together two beds, and you will see from the photos that we actually do have a very similar setup to the bed set that I wanted. All in all, we spent half of what we would have if we got that other set, but we also got mattresses and bedding, too. I let the girls pick out their new bed sheets which are not in these photos because they were still being washed. Olivia of course picked a sea creature theme because it was so Nemo-ish, and Bea picked the bubble setup (You can see that in her photo above). The result is that we have at least a blue theme for the room now. Oh, and take a look at those $5 fish rugs I got at IKEA also. LOVE THEM.

Here is a before photo of the room:


And after:


It finally looks like a real kids room!!! This picture doesn't do the room justice at all. I will definitely take more pictures with their bed sheets and post them. Also, those walls look so white now, so a paint job is in order as well as few additional items to make it perfect in my eyes. Once I get it done, I will of course post more photos. Also, the small ladder is not posing a problem for Bea at all. Thank goodness.

Ok, last update: Olivia is now potty trained except for when she's sleeping at night. She only had one accident over the entire weekend. Also, when we were at IKEA, she went in the little potty there twice. I am SO PROUD of her. We were going to try to get her to this point by the end of summer, but we are well ahead of schedule. No diapers are in our near future. Here she is...not so much a baby anymore: