Rooming In

The boys have made a big step.

They are now sharing a room. Before Alex came along, Ajay had his bedroom, and he had his playroom. Then we converted the playroom into Alex's bedroom. The boys have been collecting so many toys, and a lot of them are shared toys, that Biju and I decided to load all of them into one room. Lemme tellya....I had to wade through a LOT of toys to get this job accomplished! I threw a few out that were broken and had planned on sending some to other children. I ended up keeping every just about every working toy because I kept thinking "well surely the boys play with that!" I did take out the more baby-ish toys and boxed them up to be passed along to some other little one. I brought in our old (my parent's old) microwave stand from the garage to help store some more of the bigger toys that didn't fit in the storage bin or toy box. It is all organized, for now. I do hope the boys can keep their playthings in the playroom, and in somewhat decent order.

Here is Ajay's room with the toys all emptied from the toy box and the storage bins. I thought dumping everything out would help me sort. It did, but as a warning to any parent wanting to undertake this sort of task - do it while the children are not around!! (yes, that is both boys hiding out inside the chest) What you can't see are the toys that completely covered Ajay's bed, too, and the rest of the room that wouldn't fit inside this shot.

The boys thought "it's bedtime" meant "it's bouncetime" and did their best to wear out the mattress. Alex eventually tumbled off the bed and broke his happy button.

Alex learned that bouncing in his own crib was much safer than bouncing on Buh-buh's bed!

I didn't get a pic of Alex's bedroom before the switch, but here it is after it was converted into the disaster area, I mean playroom.

And because I'm a goof and went off to my parents for Christmas leaving my camera behind, I only got a couple of snaps of Alex opening presents. He had slept through Sunday's belated Christmas celebration at my grandpa's house, so he got to open once we got back to town. When he finished tearing through his own, he thought it best to start ripping into my sister's family's gifts!

Mom sent me some photos last night, so I'll share those with you, too! Here was the view out my brother's back door on Christmas Day. You can see the ground poking through in some places, and other areas have snow drifts that could completely conceal a small child!

Ajay thought he'd give Papa a hand at clearing some of the snow. Mom had to work quick to get this shot, as his helpful mood didn't last too long (the snow drifts were screaming his name!).

And just cuz I thought it was a sweet moment, I'm throwing in, at no additional cost to you, a pic of the boys from this morning. Ajay was helping Alex put his socks on.