Yes, it’s only mid june, and I’m already thinking about what I want to do next year.

Mostly, I wish I had planted more vegetables. Flowers are always nice, but there’s just nothing like getting to EAT the fruit of your labors. Plus, I have been loving Christa’s blog, Calendula and Concrete – she and her husband have a plot in a community garden in DC and she posts such beautiful photos of what they’re growing, and how they cook it up to eat. Makes me hungry every time. Today’s post was about chard and anticipating the garlic that will soon be harvested. I don’t have chard, but I think I will make some pasta sometime this weekend.

I WORK HARD FOR THE GREEN BEANS:

So, here are some much awaited VEGGIE PHOTOS!

itty bitty ones.

and as Jocelyn would say, “That’s a BIG ONE!”

It’s no longer there, because as SOON as I took this picture, I picked it. And ate it. It was good. I have to keep myself from eating them on the spot.

THE FRUIT OF MY LABORS:

STRAWBERRIES! Can’t wait.

The raspberries however, are still having issues.

Here’s what they looked like when I first planted them (April 15):

And now:

Not a whole lot of growth going on. I think it’s safe to say we won’t be getting any raspberries this year. At least there have been a few new leaves springing up.

OTHER VEGGIES AND HERBS:

My rosemary died. James needed fresh rosemary for a marinade for the chicken he grilled last week, so we bought some at the store. It was the “Living Herbs” type, with the roots and dirt still attached… so, I planted it. Don’t know if it will survive, but I guess we’ll see!

I also bought another tomato plant. The two I grew from seeds are cherry tomotoes, and I got to thinking that I would like to have some nice big round tomatoes too, so into the ground that went:

I still need to get a cage for it.

Pigtails:

POST-pigtails :

ust in case you’re not keeping track, I have something of a fetish with seeds. I’m very good at collecting. Even germinating! After that though, I’m only good about going about my business and forgetting to water until they are ALL DEAD except for 2 tomato plants, and 1 impatiens plant, which is displayed HERE:

Sad isn’t it. Couple normal impatiens plants next to it so you can see how pathetic it is. I’m curious to see what color the flowers will be though. So, all in all, me and seeds = kind of a love hate thing. I love them, I forget them, they hate me.

So I don’t know why I got all giddy with excitement when I realized that my columbine bushes have gone to SEED! Just for reference, here is a picture of one of the bushes (I have 2) from May:

These pretty bushes have actually bloomed a few times and I thought that the little bulbs were actually buds waiting to spring forth into beautiful color, but as I was out puttering around, noticed that some of them were drying out, and showing the seeds within. SEEDPODS! Not flower buds! A-DUH! I felt silly. But only for a minute. I just love collecting seeds.

So of course, I snipped all of the seedpods off the two bushes and carried them in to extract the precious seed booty!

Yes. I snipped them all. Why? No reason, I knew I wasn’t going to harvest all of them, but I figured why not. Honestly, I should have waited longer for most of these pods to try out completely, and it would have made getting the seeds a bit easier. But the seeds were done, and I didn’t actually want to get ALL the seeds, just some of them, so I didn’t mind the fact that most of them were still pretty green. Just makes my fingers stickier.

Basically, I could see the seeds inside each little “straw” that makes up the seedpod.

All I had to do with the pods that were sufficiently dry, was hold it over my outstretched palm and shake the seeds out.

Some of the greener “straws” I just sliced open with my thumbnail and then dumped the seeds out.

After about 8 seedpods, I had a little over a teaspoon of seeds.

I’ve now read a bit about columbine seeds, and they require a moist/cold period to bring them out of dormancy called “stratification.” Not sure what exactly I’ll do with my new seeds for next year, but … now I have some 🙂

Next project – fancy seed envelopes 🙂

With Ethan, James we decided not to know the sex of the baby, so that when he was born, it would be a surprise. This was fun and all, but when I discovered myself knocked up a second time, I let him know I couldn’t do it again. I needed to know. I NEED THE 411!

So we knew that the odds were pretty good that we would be having a little girl, which suited us both just fine. Even before the 20 week ultrasound when they tell you the sex, I really felt that the baby was a girl. At first we thought, we’ll find out but we won’t tell anyone the sex. But THAT wasn’t going to happen, so we decided we wouldn’t tell anyone the names we were thinking about. Which was good, because there were SO MANY. I don’t think we REALLY decided until pretty close to the birth, at least, *I* hadn’t, James wasn’t too fond of all the outlandish girl names I was dreaming up. We wanted one of our grandmothers’ names which is hard because we liked them all. Coupled with Jocelyn, we settled on my maternal grandmother’s name, Grace.

Early on, I had misgivings about the birth. It is not that Ethan’s birth was a fiasco or anything, but it really wasn’t what I wanted. He was large, and he was breech, so the doctor scheduled a c-section. We woke up one morning, went in, and had a baby. The operation was fine, the anesthesia was NOT. I didn’t really feel mopey or depressed about it afterward – I think that can happen to some mothers who have c-sections, because they have the idea in their head of how the birth will go and then when it doesn’t come out the way they want, they mourn for that lost experience. I totally knew what was going to happen BEFORE it happened, so you could say that I was able to mourn before the birth, so that afterward I was resigned and able to move on.

Still, it was a disappointment, I mean, I never had my water break, never even felt any contractions, it was so clinical. I was determined, DETERMINED, to have a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Caesarian) with Jocelyn.

My doctors were fine with having that goal, but pretty much told me that the chances were slim. Ethan was born just above 9 lbs, and second babies are generally even bigger. They told me that if I really wanted a VBAC, I could not gain any weight. So throughout the pregnancy, I was very careful and only gained a total of about 5 pounds (I was pretty overweight, so it’s not that dramatic, really).

So much anticipation as the due date drew closer. My mom arrived, as she was going to be the Ethan care-giver when the Big Day arrived. She came a week before the due date and was planning on staying until a week after. Of course, due date came and went with no sign of Jocelyn making an appearance. I began to really despair. Plus, I had to have the baby before my mom left!

I remember going in for my appointment the day after my due date, and not being at all dilated or effaced and the doctor telling me that it was time to schedule a c-section. I started to cry (hey I was pregnant, I was allowed!) and I think that softened him up a bit, and he stopped talking about the c-section. However, when I got HOME from the appointment, there was a message from the nurse telling me they had scheduled me for a c-section in a few days, and if I hadn’t gone into labor by then, then I would come in for the c-section.

I was really devastated, but I must say, that kicked my ass into high gear. I walked. I walked. I walked. I walked. I think I may have even JOGGED. I wanted to go into labor SO BADLY, that I went to the drug store and purchased.. the dreaded castor oil.

Let me tell you, that stuff is VILE. It was pretty difficult to just get that stuff down (and I mixed it up in some juice) but that is how determined I was.

In case you don’t know, the way castor oil works, is it sends an alarm to the entire digestive tract, “EVACUATE! EVACUATE! EVACUATE! CODE RED! EVACUATE!” — that’s the gist of the message. So, while your intestines and bowels are busy evacuating everything, they’re contracting and spasming a lot. So this is where your uterus notices all the hubbub and decides, “Hey, I can do better than THAT!” and begins to contract.

I took it in the evening, and only got a few hours of sleep, as most of the time was spent lugging my huge ass and stomach out of bed and going to spend some quality time on the toilet. And it was on the toilet at about 4am, March 9th, 2004 that my water broke.

At first I was a little unsure whether I was diagnosing myself correctly, after all, there had been a lot of evacuation that night, so who knows what had decided to evacuate, could I be peeing and not even realize it? But as I stood up and walked around, felt the water gush out of my Princess, I knew that this Was It.

I was excited, but still, I knew we had a ways to go. Mostly, I was just SO excited to have HAD MY WATER BREAK and be going into labor with the help of castor oil ON MY OWN and hopefully have NO C-SECTION.

I went in and woke up James, and my only regret is that I didn’t hop in the shower before we left for the hospital. Remember.. no sleep.. night spent on the toilet.. I was NOT feeling exactly daisy fresh, but off to the hospital we went, letting my mother know of course what was going on.

I remember being excited and pleased as a couple of contractions hit in the car on the way to the hospital, but I knew they were nothing too major. Still, I had to concentrate on them because they could sure pack a whollop.

We got to the hospital, hoo-hawed around in triage while they made sure my water had actually broken (“Here let me just stand up for you. Got any rain boots?”) and then was admitted. We spent a little while waiting for my doctor who was finishing up a c-section (this one was a different one that the one who had examined me earlier in the week).

I was given an IV practically before I was even inside the hospital itself and quickly got a baby/ contraction monitor in the belt-thing-around-my-stomach. The contractions were there, but not very significant and were starting to peter out. So my doctor wanted to get me outfitted with an epidural, baby monitor (the kind that goes up my hoo-ha and attaches to the baby’s head) and drip some petocin in me to keep the contractions moving along.

Now, I’ve seen plenty of “Birth Story” on TLC, and I know that petocin can really bang out some contractions, and I was pretty excited about just being there, “Hi, this is me, LOOK, I’M IN REAL LIVE LABOR and OH is that a CONTRACTION I feel? I THINK I MAY BE IN HEAVEN!” – that was me.

Plus… don’t tell anyone, but I was fucking scared of getting the epidural. Don’t get me wrong, I had no illusions of going au naturel or anything, but the last time was so horrific, I really was in no hurry. Once again. Just happy to be here. Please hold your applause until the end.

So I begged and pleaded with my doctor to hold off on all that and let me walk around and try to keep the contractions going, and she agreed to let us do that for an hour. James and I walked around the floor as I felt the contractions start to fade into hardly nothing. 45 minutes later, we were back in my room and had the nurse tell the doctor that we were ready. BRING ON THE DRUGS!

So next came my biggest fear. Epidural-Man. I laughed and joked with him as I always do when I’m so totally flippin nervous and scared, and it was soooo not a big deal. I mean, it was awful, YOU try getting a needle that big, but the local anesthetic he gave me before the big huge needle apparently worked MUCH better than when I got the epidural with Ethan, because I have hazy memories of promising him my newly born child, as soon as I got her vacated – that is how great a job he did.

So I got the epidural which promptly made me lose all feeling in my legs, which made getting comfortable pretty impossible (you try rolling over with dead legs). Things started off pretty good, the petocin was doing it’s trick with the contractions, and I was progressing along fairly well. The morning I remember watching a lot of VH1 with James and wishing I had showered. I was fine with James going off to find food, and pestered the nurses to bring me more popsicles, which was the only thing they’d let me eat: “KEEP EM COMING!” was my motto.

The Epidural-Man was my good friend that I would praise and try to entertain whenever he came to give me more of whatever they had dripping into my epidural. It’s funny to think of how I seemed to want him to like me, and I didn’t want to put him out, whereas later, I believe I may have expressed threats to strangle him with my IV tube if he didn’t give me MORE DRUGS NOW.

So, yes, when afternoon came along, I grew more and more conscious of the contractions. I can’t really offer a lot of specifics, because in that blessed way Mother Nature has of making sure we will do it all AGAIN someday, it’s all kind of hazy. I remember how I tried to work through the contractions in the beginning, which was The Wrong Way. James held my hand, and I told him to tell me to relax, which he did, and I tensed up every muscle in my body as I tried to breathe like they do in the movies, (gasping hee-hee-hee). It took so much energy and yet I could not help the impulse to just…. tense up. I realized that if I kept this on, I WOULD NOT be able to do this, I would collapse in a tired puddle and die, and that’d be it, no Amy, no baby, nothing.

I remember begging the doctor for drugs, and she would consult her chart and nod and agree and then I’d have to wait an agonizing billion hours 10 minutes for the Epidural-Man to come and put more Elixir of Life into my epidural. It would seem to work for a while, if I held very still, and didn’t think about it too much, but it never lasted very long, and I would be back to holding James hand and tensing every muscle.

I remember James getting that funny look on his face.. not like, he didn’t WANT to stand there and say things over and over to me, but I could tell he felt silly, and that he wasn’t sure if he was helping very much. I realized that I really needed help, really needed to change the way I was handling the contractions. I realized this tightening every muscle thing had to go, what I really had to do was figure out how to relax relax relax, and so that is what I told him to do. I asked him to just keep talking, never stop, telling me to relax, and even pinpoint specific areas of my body, like my shoulders, my neck (remember, I couldn’t feel anything downstairs, so those were already relaxed) and he got over feeling silly pretty quickly and I would look into his big brown eyes and listen to every word and try to keep all my muscles relaxed.

It was like, giving in to a fight. As a contraction would hit, my instincts were to fight it, and the only way I could do that was to tense up. My uterus was in control, and I didn’t want it to be in control *I* wanted to be in control dammit, and in a way, when I finally figured out the right way to handle the contractions, it was like giving up, giving control over, letting go of that control. It was hard. I’m a very controlling person, and I wanted to fight that pain so badly, and I would have, if it hadn’t been for James staying with me every minute of it, telling me to relax, let go, breath, you’re doing wonderful, relax, loosen your shoulders, relax your neck, i love you honey, relax, breath deeply, relax your arms…. over and over, throughout every contraction.

I remember our friends Kurt and Ann came over during this period in the afternoon. The contractions had been going on for a while at this point, and when they first came in, I remember chatting with them for a minute, but as soon as a contraction came, it was as if they disappeared, and the world was only filled with James and me and the pain and the fight and the need to control. Then it would be over and everything would snap back into focus and I could ask Ann how work was going, etc. Eventually though, I forgot about them and just tried to rest in between each contraction.

So. Contractions. Tough tough things, eh? I didn’t really think about the epidural. I guess I just figured that the contractions were getting so much stronger.

Evening came, and I could feel the baby descending. It was a really weird feeling, and it gave me a strong sense of urgency. It hurt, and it felt so strange, and I didn’t know what to do, and I remember calling out, “SHE’S COMING, SHE’S COMING!” only to be checked, and told placidly,* “Yes, it looks like she is descending now, I think you might be ready to push in another hour or so.”

ANOTHER HOUR OR SO? I DON’T THINK SO! Not with this pain! Not with this basketball trying to squeeze downward! I begged her for more drugs, but she said no, that the last dose I had should be fine for now.

(My classic TV/Movie moment of the wife yelling obscenities at the husband is coming up. Just so you know.)

Well, I was NOT FINE, and I could NOT HANDLE this feeling, this pain, it was too much, there was no urge to fight THIS pain, all I could do was lay back and try not to move, lest the basketball do.. something.. anything.. please don’t do anything, basketball, just DON’T DO ANYTHING because it HURTS SO BAD.. This is when I begged James to call the doctor.

“Call her! I need drugs! I can’t take this! I can’t!”

He was sweet, and in his simple minded imbecile husband way, knew through the simple logic that the doctor was not likely to agree to drugs now, when she had refused then just 2 minutes ago, and didn’t want to “bother” her. He tried to tell me no, that the doctor had already said no.

“JAMES! I DON’T CARE! IT IS NOT GOING TO HURT ANYONE TO CALL HER! CALL HER! I NEED DRUGS! SO SHE MIGHT SAY NO AGAIN, I DON’T CARE JUST FUCKING CALL HER!”

James called her. (smart man!) She came and looked at me and pretty much immediately gave the OK for more drugs. It’s funny, because she was right, I HAD gotten a dose not long before, and I should have been good for a while longer. But that didn’t occur to me then. I just wanted the damn drugs.

Very shortly after the Epidural-Man came and gave me more drugs (no effusive efforts to be funny and charming this time. I don’t think I saw him, just the blessed syringe of The Nectar Of The Gods in his hands) chaos broke loose.

I was finally feeling comfortable, after a long time of feeling every contraction, and I had gotten in a position where I was comfortable, when a slew of people came in, and demanded that I turn over onto my side. I tried to tell them that I had JUST gotten comfortable, when they just started pulling and moving me, turning me over on my side and I realized that gee, there were a lot of people in the room. The doctor came in after a few seconds and informed us that the baby’s heart rate had dropped, and they wanted me on my left side to see if that helped her. They watched for a few seconds, and when it didn’t, they put an anti-contraction medicine in the IV and began frantically prepping me for surgery. Relief flooded over James and I when after about 20 seconds (when the anti-contraction meds kicked in) the heartbeat returned to normal.

Still, as she descended, something was cutting off her blood supply, and so into the ER I went.

What did I feel at this poing? Totally fine. My baby’s heartbeat dropped. I wanted to get her out of there, VBAC be damned. Plus, I had what I wanted. My water broke. I spent the entire day in the hospital, breathing through contractions for pete’s sake. It wasn’t the perfect birth scenario, but I no longer felt “cheated” out of those birth experiences, and what mattered was the health of our baby girl.

SO!!! There we are (ok me, but James was right next to me) on the operating table, and there was this light right above my stomach. The curtain is up of course, and I can’t see what’s going on, but I can totally see murky reflections in the cover of the operating room overhead light. I’m kind of jazzed about this, because when I went through this with Ethan, they offered to let me watch in a mirror, but I was too caught up in the awful feelings of the epidural to take them up on it. So I didn’t want a mirror, but I was totally watching what they were doing in that reflective light. I saw them reach down with the scalpel, and so was a little shocked when I FELT THEM CUT INTO MY STOMACH.

“OW OW OW OW PAIN OW PAIN OW PAIN!”- these were the only words my brain could force my mouth to sputter out, and I applaud the brain on such concise coherence!

The Epidural-Man was no dummy, and he saw that I was watching in the lamp, and quickly turned it so that I couldn’t see in it. I think they all assumed I was just watching them and freaking out, but no. I was not. I FELT THEM CUTTING.

“OW OW PAIN OW OW OW PAIN!” – again, yay! go brain!

Every so slowly and calmly, the doctor asked, “Now, do you feel pressure or tugging, or actual pain-” just as she did something with her scalpel.

And I cut her off as I hollered, “PAIN! PAIN!” They believed me this time, because I couldn’t see what they were doing, but hollered just as they started to carve me up again. So, after they finally got it, that my epidural was NOT working (OH MY GOD! THIS EXPLAINS SO MUCH! I WASN’T JUST HAVING SUPER STRONG CONTRACTIONS, I WAS TOTALLY FEELING EVERYTHING WHILE ALL THE DRUG HAPPY JUICE EVIDENTLY WAS FOCUSING ON NUMBING MY TOES INSTEAD OF MY UTERUS!) to their credit, they did spring into action.

The Epidural-Man informed me that there was no time to check/adjust/reinsert my epidural, that instead, I would have to be put out with a general anesthetic. This means that I get to go to sleep during the entire operation. Nothing sounded better to me! With Ethan, I was pretty bored during the whole post-baby-removal, the 40 minutes where they have to carefully stitch everything that they sliced through on the way to get baby. So having a little nap was fine with me, plus, scary epidural needle? Not my idea of fun. 2 babies = 2 epidural needles, NOT THREE.

So out I went, and when I woke up, I was covered up in a blanket for the inevitable weird post-anesthetic shivering, but sitting in a rocking chair right next to me was James with our new daughter, Jocelyn Grace.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

10 lbs, 23 1/2 inches. She came out fine, despite the fact that the cord was looped around her neck TWICE. She was a beautiful pink baby with newborn gray eyes and loads of dark brown hair.

I have not been feeling the flickr love lately.

I know every loves flickr and flickr this and flickr that, but I’m starting to kind of adamantly dislike it.

First, I guess we went pro for gallery and archival purposes all in one.

So, archiving: Well, the new photos we take are in CR2 format (camera raw, which holds a lot more information than jpgs). So in order to upload them to flickr, I have to convert them, or I just pull out the embedded jpg. So already, it doesn’t really work for archiving, because it’s not the full raw file. We’d want THAT file, not the lesser quality jpg.

Second, maybe if I had a couple hundred photos, and tagged each one carefully and knowingly as I uploaded them I wouldn’t feel this frustration, but I took all the photos from our old (now non-functional) gallery and uploaded them in many various sessions, with minimal or no tagging as I went. The photostream is in the order of uploading, not ordered by when the photo was actually taken. So the trip to Oregon we took when Ethan was 4 months old is kind of in the wrong “place” in the photostream because I uploaded it a few months ago. Again, not a big deal if we didn’t have a ton of photos, but we have over 4,000. When I went looking for Ethan pictures to use on his birthday post, it took way too long to find ones that I wanted to use.

I do like the sets, and how a photo can be a member of more than one set at a time. Maybe I need to load up the photos by date taken and make a set for each 3-6 month period or something similar. I should probably go ahead and use their “resize me!” before uploading option to save on bandwidth. Since it doesn’t really do too much good to have the original jpg there since we have the original CR2 file on our machines. I guess it is handy for backup though.

I am just wondering if I should keep uploading photos there or perhaps I should just put up the ones I particularly like and keep the majority of them on our server. You know the ones I mean, we have pages and pages of baby Ethan and baby Jocelyn pics where they are in the same place with a slightly different expression on their face. Maybe overkill for the flickr account. If I don’t upload them all though, then if I’m looking for something and not at home, I won’t see them.

Oh, what a quandary. There you go, there’s my flickr dilemma. To their credit, I LOVE the whole community thing they got going. That part rocks. It’s just finding the photo I’m looking for in a timely manner, that is what is kicking my ass.

Do you use flickr? What do you think? Do you like it? How do you use it? Do you upload EVERYTHING or just some stuff? Are you a diligent tagger? Do you ever get annoyed at your photostream? I can’t think of any of my friends that use flickr, so I may be reaching out into the unknown readers, which I *beleive* there are some (maybe even FIVE!!), but have never actually said anything to me. I know you’re there. I SEE YOU IN MY STATS! So step out of the shadows and spill it, yo, I need the info!

OK. I’m done.

And I have a batch of photos that I’ll probably be uploading to flickr this evening 🙂

– amy loves loves loves the Canon 30D

Betcha thought I’d spew about 2,000 words at you. It’s Monday, right? That’s the day that Amy tries to kill everyone with words, right?

Wrong!

Here are some flowers instead.

These are lilies that I bought in pots from Costco a few years ago, and after they died, I planted them by our front tree.

March 11 2006: This picture is showing my spring bulbs coming up (tulips and paperwhites) but look down there at the end? See the marker with a lily on it? See how there’s nothing down there? We’ll call this the “before” picture.

March 18, 2006: Another “before” picture of nothing where the lilies will one day be.

April 15, 2006: Look! Now there’s something growing! Right there, above the “Happy Father’s Day” stone, behold my glorious lilies!

May 4, 2006: They are really going now.

This past weekend: Finally, they explode into a burst of gorgeous orange color. I had forgotten what color they were. For some reason, I don’t really fancy yellow flowers, so I was very happy to see this sunburst of orange instead of the yellow I feared.

My clematis vines also decided they were done primping, and exposed themselves for the world to see:

It’s almost obscene, isn’t it? Aren’t they GORGEOUS?? I really need to get some proper trellises for them so they can really take off.
I am a happy gardener this week. I was feeling those mopey mopes when all the spring bulbs are done and are in that “Hi, I’ve bloomed and now I’m just waiting for the foliage to die down so I can disappear until next year, but until then I’m going to be all not really green but almost brown and dead but DONT TOUCH ME because then maybe I won’t bloom next year, haha!” phase, and my summer annuals are all in, but really need a month or two for their roots to develop before they will really get huge and take off late june/july but are now kind of puny and ho-hum..

So I was happy seeing these new developments 🙂

– amy has plans. Big plans.

After the bed was put together Saturday morning:

My mother made this quilt for Jocelyn, and brought it when she visited in April. It really is beautiful.

Sunday afternoon, naptime:

Beautiful Virginia wildflowers.

I see these everywhere, especially when I’m going on and off I-66. I love how the bright red looks against the green grass. I keep itching to pull over and dig one or two up to take home and plant but a) it’s probably illegal and b) they just wouldn’t be the same planted in a bed as it does nodding merrily with a zillion of neighbors to the passing cars on a field of green. They look much better exactly where they are.

I still wonder what they are though. I haven’t gotten a very close look.

Anyway, it’s a little early for June, but there you go 🙂 If you don’t see it, refresh.

edit: I’ve since found out they are POPPIES!

I’ve been looking for a bed for Jocelyn for a while. I’ve entertained the notion of a toddler bed, but it seems like a waste when tehy will outgrow it in 6-10 months, or in Jolly Green Giant Jocelyn’s case, probably 2 weeks. If it was cheap, I’d consider it, but mostly, I wanted a twin bed, one she can use for a long long time. We went with an Ikea bed for Ethan. It was pretty cheap, and while I don’t hate it now, I am not enamored with it. I wanted a bed I would still love a few years down the line for Jocelyn.

I came across this bed on craigslist, and my blood pressure was elevated all day when I didn’t get ANY response to my email about it. Until evening, when I popped open my laptop to check, and she had emailed me back with a number to call. I called, arrangements were made, i drove out to Leesburg (but too late to hit the Pottery Barn and William Sonoma outlets, DAMMIT!) and acquired this beautiful antique maple bed with mattress for $200.

Closer look at the headboard detail:

It needs a screw in the railing that holds up the mattress platform, but other than that it is good to go. I am just so tickled with it. Unless poop gets smeared into those little leaf grooves and won’t come out, I feel I’ve found a bed that I will still love when she is 4. Hopefully she will too.

This weekend = Project Big Girl Bed!