Monroe's Room
Jessica Glaze • Jan 08, 2015
We moved into our last condo in September, 2013 but we knew by October that we would soon be moving to Toronto, so we didn’t ever really move in or make it our home. I felt sad that we brought Monroe home to an empty unfinished nursery but we didn’t know exactly when we would be moving and it just wasn’t worth the time and effort to decorate and then pack it up a few months later. Now that we are in a home that we love and won’t be moving out of any time soon, it is time to give Monroe a proper nursery!
We went with an “outdoor” theme for his new room. The moon was a christmas gift last year. The kids really love it! The wooden US map is from my favorite store Hobby Lobby!
Our rocker was a gift from a family I nannied for after college. It is very special to me because I rocked their babies, who I love, in it for many years and then I was able to use it to rock my own babies. They had it reupholstered as part of the gift and I am obsessed with the wild fabric. The owl pillow is from HomeGoods.
We started calling our little man “Roe-bot” and it just stuck so of course I am always on the hunt for cute little robots. The red one was a gift from my sister and she got it from a small toy store in San Diego. The tin robot can be found here. The vintage picture is a picture of Rusty taken by his mom. The whale chalk board and the buck snow globe were also gifts. The Boy’s Book; How to be the Best at Everything, is part of a really cute series of books for boys and you can check it out here.
Everything on this wall is from Hobby Lobby or Michaels, except for the San Diego print. That print was a gift from my sister and it definitely made me cry when I opened it on Christmas morning.
I made the bible verse print on Photoshop. The frame, the clock, and the bookshelves are from IKEA. The other print and the framed buck are again from Hobby Lobby. I am not sure, actually, if I love Hobby Lobby or IKEA more.
We love books! Every night before bed, the kids get a reading from their devotional. They each have their own and Monroe’s is The One Year: Devotions for Preschoolers. I highly recommend adding it to your bedtime routine. We read through it twice with Carter and then she finally passed it on to Roe.
Other books we love are from the Good Night series. Good Night San Diego, Good Night California , Good Night Chicago, Good Night Beach. We love the BabyLit book series. The Jungle Book, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein I also recommend the Hello series to help vocabulary growth. Hello, Bugs, Hello, Animals
One of the easiest and most inexpensive ways to spruce up a rental is to change the light fixtures. Everything in our place is builder grade so in other words…ugly. I am obsessed with these hardwire kits from World Market. These kits are cheap and you can add any lamp shade or pendant light from them. Our lamp shade is from IKEA, of course. The “Monroe” banner was a birthday party decoration but it was too cute to store until next year.
Finally, his bedding is from Pottery Barn Kids, his pillows are from HomeGoods and IKEA, his rug is from IKEA and his little buddy is an UglyDoll we named Eddy, you can find one here. Thanks for joining me on a tour of Monroe’s new nursery!
Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.
Four kids, I have four kids! Sometimes (well, every day if I’m being honest) I have to remind myself that I have FOUR kids to be responsible for. If I’m not forgetting to keep an eye on my mischievous 2-year-old, then I’m walking out the door for dinner without dropping a jar of baby food into my bag. (Fries for dinner never hurt anyone, right? That’s what Mr. August survives on once a week at least.) Life as a parent can be chaotic sometimes. #thisisparenthood Thank God my two older kiddos are basically self-sufficient otherwise we would never be able to leave the house. Being responsible for four other human beings (Sometimes five if my husband is in town, am I right ladies?) is so hard!
It’s no secret that I am no fan of winter. If you live up north like we do now, you know just how cold, cold is and I can barely survive the frozen temperatures. Even though I would happily leave behind the cold, but there is nothing I love more than Thanksgiving and Christmas! Best holidays of the year, hands down!
It has been three years since we left behind our life in California. Three years since we made the announcement that we were moving to Canada. Three years since we started a new adventures as immigrants in a country that is so close to home, yet so very different. And now, after three life changing years, we are on to our next adventure.
Eli is 5.5 months old, rolling left to right and every other which way, so that means it’s time to ditch the swaddle. *Que the ugly cry.* If you didn’t know, we love swaddling in our home. Rusty and I can count the number of times we have ever had to wake up more than twice a night with one of the three kiddos on our fingers and we thank swaddling for that luck. We start swaddling from day one and we use that as a basis to establish great sleep habits from the beginning that last forever. Sadly, once the skill of rolling is learned, it is no longer safe to swaddling and the transition from swaddled to un-swaddled can be rough. Thankfully, we found the Nested Bean sleep sack this time around and the swaddled/un-swaddled transition has gone perfectly smooth.
The Glaze Brigade spent the second to last official weekend of summer (which is kind of a joke because summer never actually arrived here in the GTA) at Center Island and we loved it! I’m actually a little bummed that we have lived here for 3 years and only just decided to make the trip on the ferry over to the island.
We are just three weeks away from the start of the next school year and I am so not ready! There is nothing I love more than the freedom of summer. No school schedules to follow, flexible bedtimes, endless weekend adventures, and daily trips to wherever we can get some sunshine. Sadly, all of that is about to end and I am already planning our next summer.
Since moving to Toronto, the best part of summer is getting outside. Our days are usually filled with trips to the playground, our near by amusement park, riding our scooters around the neighborhood, or taking a fun road trip, but even in the summer, there are days we are stuck inside. Sometimes we spend those rainy days cuddled on the couch, watching a movie and eating junk food, but another fun rainy day activity we enjoy is visiting our local mall.
I was just a little surprised to learn that Carter would be starting kindergarten, at the ripe old age of 3, just a few months after moving to Canada. I considered putting her in a preschool a few days a week, but never did I think I would be sending her to an all day, every day, kindergarten class in a school that holds kids up to the 8th grade. Cue the mommy freak out. Of course, Carter loved it and I had nothing to do worry about.
My middle child, Monroe, was born with a severe tongue tie, it was actually so severe that he couldn’t swallow. For the first week of his life, we had no idea that his entire tongue was attached to the bottom of his mouth (behind his bottom gums), but over and over again he would choke and sometimes even turn blue. Rusty or I or a nurse would have to suction his airway to get things cleared out. It was the scariest time for me as a parent.
Facebook is filled with groups of moms complaining about the lack of help they get from their husbands. Either dad has never changed a diaper, he doesn’t help pick up toys, dad doesn’t help discipline, or he flat out cannot keep the kids alive if he is left alone. I understand that it can be completely frustrating to get no help from the one person that should be helping you the most, so I am going to share with you a few tips that I’ve used to encourage my husband to be a hands on dad.