Austin in the Mornings

I love the way Austin wakes up in the morning. He will sit or lay there and make noises in different pitches or try to talk. And then when I walk in, he’ll sit up with a huge smile on his face and then crash into his mattress and lay down with his blanket or get into his stink bug position. He won’t let me take him out for a few minutes. Or like today, I can leave and he just likes to lay there for a long time, which is why I'm able to do this right now. Sometimes he’ll even stand up as if he wants me to get him and then he’ll run to the back of the crib or lay down so I can’t. When he's finally ready to get out, we like to just snuggle on the couch for another few minutes and make noises together, sing, or just look around. And then he’s ready for the day. And I am much more ready too because it’s such a great start to my mornings. Love it!

Little Lessons Learned

Lesson #1: So the other day I dumped our entire load of whites into the washer because it was much easier than bending over and pulling them out from the hamper to the washer. I even thought to myself that there were no pants so I didn’t need to check pockets for objects. However, I failed to check the hamper, forgetting how much Austin loves to put things in there. (And this load just happened to be the one with some recently purchased white clothing that we’ve been putting off buying like since we got married!) As I was about to unload the dryer I remembered that Landon had his white Sunday shirts in there and it had been sitting for a while, so I turned it on again to get it nice and hot so I could take them out and hang them up immediately afterwards. I forgot about it so it went through the entire dry cycle again…and when I opened the dryer I was surprised to see dried ink splattered all across the dryer door and on every piece of clothing I could see. Oh boy. As I pulled the clothes out, a pen and an orange wooden block fell to the floor. I tried to find a piece that didn’t have ink on it but almost every piece did, even down to Austin’s tiny little socks. Sad day. I discovered that hairspray really did work better than bleach to get the ink to start to bleed or run off…however, I wasn’t able to get the ink out completely or any of the shirts completely white again. (Maybe had I done it sooner rather than a week later that would have helped!)


Lesson learned—check the hamper/clothes as you do the laundry no matter what if they are child accessible, especially if it sits right next to your food pantry. I’ve since found a box of cornstarch, muffin mix, cars, taco seasoning packets, and many other things in our hamper. :)

Lesson #2: A while ago, a friend of Austin’s who had been here coloring decided to draw yellow waves horizontally across the wall upon her exit (with crayon).

Lesson Learned—I didn’t try many things but, after some research and experimentation, toothpaste followed by some soapy water worked the best to get crayon off the wall.