piano room to play room

 With the impending arrival of baby #3, I have decided to be mostly done with piano teaching (for this season of my life!) and focus on my three kiddos. Piano teaching will probably always be a part of my life in some way or another (I am still doing my preschool music classes, which is fun because my kids can be involved!) but for now my kids come first.

So with that, we decided to change up our house a bit, and make some more room for our kiddos. We moved our piano into the living room, and changed our downstairs third bedroom from this (wow it's so clean, this picture was taken awhile ago....just picture another book shelf with tons of books on it, and framed things on the walls and such!)...

...to this super fun play room! Jonathan and I had fun re-decorating it on Christmas Eve to surprise the kids on Christmas morning. 

I sewed this cute flag banner thingy...

new bins for stuffed animals

fun, colorful wall art

framed pictures of the kids

my parents bought this awesome "bicycle boy" (as we call it) for James in Prague. When you pull the string on the bottom it flies!

Hanging out

I love this picture of the kids and their friend Abi watching a little Caillou. We love playing games with the Blairs! Sometimes we put the kids down first but they were just having so much fun!

The kids got a cute little table with their Christmas money from Jukie and Bapa. They love sitting and eating there!

dinner crazies

oh you know, just some random pictures of our family being silly. 

don't mind the stringy pajama bottoms...I was in a hurry on Christmas Eve, ok?

Ella is trying to mimic Daddy's and Brother's silly faces...

her first Oreo

Time for bed!

ear surgery, and Annie came!

Last week Jonathan got to have ear surgery again. Woohoo! 

We rearranged our furniture a bit to make him a nice place to hang out while recovering. The kids loved helping him try out the new set-up (and unfortunately now Ella loves watching shows with Daddy - she loves handing him the remote, then climbs up on the couch and points to the tv...pretty funny!).

We were so blessed to have Aunt Annie fly in to stay with us and help with the kids during the surgery and for the weekend! James looked forward to it for weeks and counted down the days until Aunt Annie arrived. The kids had such a fun time playing with Annie. And we had so much fun hanging out with her too! We watched lots of good movies.

Home from surgery - poor Daddy!

The aftermath. Just scroll quick past that first one if you get squeamish. We've done this thing three times now so we're used to it :)

We spent a good 2 hours trying to dismantle his glasses so he could actually wear them.

Looking ever so slightly loopy in these....

Thanks for coming, Annie!! We love you!

Our Ella

This girl just cracks us up. She's not talking much but is oh so expressive. And it's super easy to find out what she wants.

All you have to do is ask her yes or no questions: 

if the answer is no, she shakes her head emphatically;

if the answer is yes she grunts like a little goat.

Simple!

Clothes

Lately Ella has a cute little fascination with clothes. I bought her these pants (on clearance for 2 bucks!) and just look how pleased she is. She loves to drape new clothes around her neck or under her chin and feel how comfy they are.

These silky Valentines pajama pants were also a big hit (although they are totally huge on her, and she got a bit frustrated when trying to walk around...they looked like clown pants...plus they totally fell off in her crib and she was very upset!). 

Playing a little board game (which James doctored up with his own board pieces made out of paper - this kid is creative!) with Daddy and Brother before bedtime.

Little Pianist

At our house, we start them young...

One of Ella's favorite things is to sit with Daddy or Mommy and play the piano. 

She loves experimenting with the notes and playing her own song. (She usually will actually remove my hands from the piano so she can have a turn all by herself. Or sometimes she likes to grab my fingers and make me play the notes of her choosing.)

For some reason she is more lenient with Daddy, and tends to let him play whatever he wants while she plays. (Note her Daddy's awesome ear bandage - he just had ear surgery numero 3, and hopefully his brand new prosthetic hearing bones will help him hear better!)

This girl sure loves music!

I turned on the classical station in the car the other day, and Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" suite was on and she absolutely LOVED it. She just grinned and bounced in her car seat the whole time, and clapped after every movement.

I love my girl :)