All our DIY projects

We've been busy at the house making improvements, some out of necessity, but mostly just to improve the function of things around the house.

This is our project out of necessity. We had a towel bar, but Lincoln tried to hang from it. So it was pulled from the wall not once...not twice....but three separate times, even though I just about BOLTED it to the wall stud. So we had to switch out to hooks. Hopefully it will keep him from pulling this off the wall.
I used an old shelf we white washed, added vinyl letters, painted over the lettering, removed the letters, then sanded. I also taped off the center rectangle before painting it brown.
**Here's my DIY hint: Hide the stud screws behind the hooks. That way the board is secured to the wall but there's no ugly screw heads showing.**

(Hidden Screws)

Here's Lincoln's DIY. While eating his "icy pop", his fingers got too cold. So he ran into the kitchen and came back with my oven mit. Now THAT'S my brilliant boy!!! Who needs cold fingers!!

In the back of the house, we have a giant mound where our septic tank is buried. I am tired of walking up and down the mound to the back porch, so we used some left over slate and concrete to build a stairway to the back porch. We built frames, secured them with rebar, poured and smoothed the concrete in the frames, and adhered the slate to top and rise of the concrete slabs. The only thing we have left to do is grout in between the stones.

Here's the unfinished steps. All the steps are now covered with slate.

Handyman Josh mixing the quickcrete for the last step.

Last but not least, I had to organize under my kitchen sink. It was out of control and I couldn't find anything I needed. We just had a box of mess under the sink so I wanted a pull out drawer, but the pull out drawers at lowe's were $60. I just happened to be at IKEA and found a closet pull out drawer in the AS IS section for $9.99. It was meant to fit a wall closet section.

It was meant to attach to the side walls of the closet section, so I had to drill holes in the bottom of the brackets to fit to the bottom of my cabinet. Then I just attached it.

BEFORE

AFTER

Hoppy Easter!

Happy Easter! Our local library brings in little bunnies for the kids to hold and pet before Easter. We went and Lincoln loved seeing the bunnies. He had to be reminded to "Be soft" about 100 times, and he grabbed a couple of them a little too hard, but once I put a towel on his lap, he let them sit on his legs with no problems. Sensory kid. You never know what he will like or not like, but he did great.

We just came back from a friend's house for dinner and an egg hunt. He's got so much candy! I'm going to have to send it to Josh's work or something. Ha ha.

Sleep Depreviation

For the past several months we have been having problems with Lincoln waking up in the middle of the night WIDE awake and ready to play, eat, read, and do just about anything other than sleep. Waking up at 1 am, falling asleep again at 4 am, then trying to wake up at 7 am for school is REALLY tough.

So this week I was able to schedule an appointment with a Sleep Institute in Temple, TX (about 2 hrs away) for a sleep study. We went in on Wednesday and met with the Neurologist for a consult then reported to the Institute at 7 pm. He was exhausted to begin with but then having all the wires and monitors attached to his head and body just set him off. He ended up screaming and crying himself to sleep then the Nurse finished attaching the wires. The night was tough for me because I woke up every time the nurse came in to fix one of his wires, but Lincoln basically slept through the night.

(Lincoln just after the last wire and head wrap)

I thought it may have been a waste of time since he slept all night, but the doctor actually had some red flags to discuss the next morning.

The first was the fact that he paused breathing 29 times during the night which is way more than normal, but the most troubling issue was the decrease in his oxygen levels while he paused. It dropped more than 4%, which is more than they prefer.

While reading his monitors, they determined it took him 175.5 minutes to reach his first REM cycle, which is too long. Normal sleep cycles go from beginning to end within 2 hours and then continues. He woke up twice before getting to his REM cycle and then woke up several more times.

So the first step was to check his Iron levels, which when functioning properly produce dopamine to help you sleep. If not the iron levels, we would then have to check his heart and possibly his upper pallette.

We got the blood work results back found that his ferritin levels were almost off the charts too LOW. They suggest an iron supplement for anyone whose levels are below 50...Lincoln's levels were at 13!!! So we are hoping to get his iron levels up as soon as we can get into the pediatrican's office on Monday. Hopefully fixing this will fix the problem.

After all our appointments, we went to the park and played for a little bit and saw a really cool steam engine to play on. I'm glad to be home though.

(Bluebonnet field outside the Sleep Institute)