Charlotte: Month 9

+ Crawls everywhere! Starting crawling on Memorial day.. shortly after her 8 month update!

+ Can sign milk: she doesn't know how to use it in context yet but we are working on it!

+ Pulls herself up on anything within reach.

+ Loves the puppies... they never cease to make her laugh. Unfortunately, we had to put down our youngest pup this month who interacted the most with Charlotte. Our hearts are still heavy :(

+ Only wants to feed herself... wants nothing to do with the spoon. Her favorite food at the moment is  avocado.

+ We call her a " puff addict"... she gets SO excited when she sees the container.

+ Has the best giggles.

+ Has officially been out as long as she was in!

Let there NOT be light

Around 11 months ago, when I was still pregnant and working on the nursery, I had a harm time justifying the cost of Blackout curtains. As I mentioned then, I opted for the regular panels. I don't want to say that I regret that decision but Charlotte's room was TOO bright.. even with blinds and curtain panels.

The reason I say I don't regret the blackout panels is that I am not 100% sure they would have made a difference in our case. Because Charlotte's room has 2 windows and 2 closets, we had no choice but to place both the crib and the dresser in front of the windows. So while she does have curtains, opening and closing panels behind the furniture would be super difficult (and noisy) to do each time the baby was sleeping.

So back in December, we decided to try our hand at tinting her windows. The only product our local Lowe's had in stock at that time was the Gila Glare Control Bronze. Honestly, we didn't really research anything in advance and just picked up one roll to try it out on one of the windows in the nursery. We lived with it for a couple of weeks and it did made a difference in the amount of light coming through. So, we decided to go back to Lowe's to purchase a second roll to tint the window behind the crib. This time they were fully stocked and we found Gila Privacy Control Black. It also is room darkening which is EXACTLY what we were looking for. So we tried that on the other window. It was perfect: the room was significantly darker and you can't see anything if you peer in from the outside. Oh and her room stays cooler!

We left one window bronze and the other with the privacy control film for a few days before deciding to replace the original bronze window with the privacy control. I thought this would be a nightmare but it was relatively easy to remove and didn't leave any residue on the windows.

As far as application goes, we laid the film out on the tile floors, measured the windows and cut each panel to size. You can really only get one average/large sized window per roll of the product.

We cut the product into two rectangles and applied one at a time rubbing out the bubbles as we went.

Overall the application went well: we don't have any bubbles and the product looks great. Our corners aren't perfect but there are blinds over the window anyway so you don't really see it unless you are looking for it.

We have lived with the product for about 6 months now and have been extremely happy with it so far! 

Front Yard Makeover Part 2

After my original battle with the City I mentioned in this post, I had a REALLY hard time finding a Palm on their "approved tree list" that was less than $2k just for the tree. I called the City several times and no one ever got back to me. So honestly, I left things looking like this a little longer than we had intended too.

Finally, I decided to plant a tree on their list but it did not meet the size requirements. I went to a local nursery and purchased a Large Triple Robellini Palm and picked out several other plants to compliment it. Due to the size of the Palm, I decided to go ahead and hire the nursery staff to go ahead and install everything.

 Lucky for us, we had a HUGE rain storm after they got done planting that day. We were able to center the new plants and transplant the sod to the circle area where the tree use to be. Everything filled in really well and we had quite the weekend transformation on the front yard!

Part of me loved having the tree in the front.  I always thought we would hang a swing there for Charlotte. But this makes things so much easier! Tim was spending so much time each weekend raking and cleaning the front patio. We couldn't let the dogs out front because of the all the acorns (they try to eat them)! Overall, we are really happy with the way things look now. The best part was all the plants and the install cost me just under $900!! Way better then my original $1700 estimate.

Oh and the best news... I requested an inspection from the City and passed:)