New House Update

A progress report on our house. They have not yet broken ground on the construction. We suspect that they're waiting until a couple of other houses in the neighborhood close. There are four houses (including ours) in our neighborhood on the books for starting this month. Very exciting! Following are some images and pictures I've been meaning to share (in no particular order).

This is the plat of our lot. It's oriented correctly for North, and you can see the size of the lot and the location of the house on it. We had them put the house as close to the street as allowable so as to have as much backyard as possible.
An artist's rendering of the front elevation. We chose different colors for the bricks, fieldstone (the bottom of the columns), the shutters, and the shakes (the part above the garage and above the windows on the left), so ours will look a little different.



And our floorplan. It's 2500 square feet: 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. We had them put French doors on the study and another window in the master bedroom. Oh and a service door from the garage to the side yard. Otherwise ours will look just like this.

This is our lot from the street to the back - Curtis is standing on the back corner to try to give some perspective. The house is our neighbor to the back.


The view from the back of our lot to the street. That's our black car there (the one that Curtis drives most of the time.) Sure feels like a big space, doesn't it?? We have almost a 1/3 acre and we're pretty excited about all the fruits and veggies we'll be able to grow.

Yep, we're pretty excited! We find ourselves driving by almost every day to see if there's any progress. You can be sure that there will be plenty of pictures for you throughout its construction :-)

A Mobility Mystery...

Well, the long blog posts have got to go. As much as I enjoy them, I am not making the time to finish them - they sit in my drafts folder until the subject material is obsolete. So, now that I've freed myself of that burden, hopefully I'll be on here a little more often. What I can't do in quality I'll just have to make up for in quantity, right?

Today's post: an announcement! Daniel is mobile!! ...I think. The evidence:

I had left Daniel on the blanket (and on his back, if I remember correctly); when I looked again, he was not only on his tummy, facing a different direction, he was also completely off the blanket. Now, I don't know if he had help. There is evidence that Big Brother was lurking: the cowboy boots had also appeared since I last appraised the scene. (And as I was getting the camera out, Z was trying to put them on D's feet.) But I have yet to catch him in the act of actually moving from one location to another, so whether he is actually mobile remains to be seen.

Not just another Thursday

I've been playing housewife today. It's kinda fun, you know, a nice change of pace. I've been putting things away, vacuuming, washing dishes, even chopping onions and potatoes for dinner! (It's my night to do dinner b/c C is working late. Once a week. This may be only the second week out of, I don't know, 10? that I'm actually making dinner instead of leaving for him when he gets back or heating up leftovers, which never counts as making dinner.) So, yeah, the living areas of our little apartment are actually bearable to be in! I'd kinda given up on this place because it's so small feeling, there doesn't seem to be "a place for everything" (as the adage goes), and I found I'd rather spend my time with the boys. Or reading. But that's another post. Or maybe just later in this post.

But I was on a mission this week: Z has a couple friends coming over in about 20 minutes and there was no way I was going to let them play in our pig sty. I feel so very accomplished! Like maybe I can actually keep it this way! It would be nice to live in a place that's a little bit welcoming to come home to. Recently I've been avoiding coming home from errands or an activity with the boys because the clutter was getting to me. I knew it was bothering me, but I couldn't seem to find the motivation to do anything about it. Like I said, there isn't a place for everything, which made it seem like a losing battle, and knowing the battle is lost before it's begun is really disheartening. Now that things are picked up though, maybe it won't be so hard to keep it this way. I have two techniques to use: 1) always do something to make the room a little bit better than it was, even just taking something out that doesn't belong. 2) If something catches my attention, take care of just that item w/o trying to clean every lampshade in the house, for example.

The other motivating factor this week was a book. I have fallen in love with the Twilight Saga. We watched the movies about 2 weeks ago, and then I took the boys to the library and couldn't resist checking out the first book. And then I was hooked. I spent an entire Friday reading Twilight and Midnight Sun. When I finished I was rather conflicted. I loved reading, but I felt really icky with myself for neglecting everything all day long. All I did was read. Then I checked out the 2nd book (New Moon) and spent Saturday afternoon, evening, until 2am reading. My theory was to finish it and then I'd be free to focus on other things. That worked for Sunday, but then Sunday night BOTH boys were up several times and I didn't get much sleep. I was so nauseous from lack of sleep by Monday morning I couldn't even drink my coffee. That's REALLY nauseous. Not much got done on Monday. I was kindof a zombie. Then Tuesday I was catching up on emails etc. from Monday (why is it that the day I'm out of it, everyone emails me??). Which left me with Wednesday and today to get things straightened up. And because I had this deadline today of friends coming over to get my house clean, I couldn't afford to check out the 3rd book (Eclipse). C promised to bring it home for me after work tomorrow. I cleared my calendar for the weekend so I can read it without guilt. And let me tell you, knowing that I have that book to look forward to made the house cleaning so much easier!! All I need now is a constant stream of books to look forward to and I bet I'll never suffer from lack of get-up-and-go again.

....

Our friends aren't here yet, so I wanted to tell you about potty training. It's still incredible to me and I'm not sure it's sunk in yet, but Z is potty trained! Nighttime, daytime, wet, messy - all trained! All it took was 6 months of indulging him when he was interested but refusing to put my heart in it because I was too exhausted and then 1 week cold-turkey from diapers to underpants, and it's done! We only had 2 nighttime accidents (both only wet), a handful of wet accidents, and a smaller handful of messy accidents. I feel like I got off really easy and it blows my mind. I still pack a change of clothes for him when we go somewhere, but he's so aware, I don't think he'll have any more accidents if they can be at all helped. The funny thing is that I wasn't planning on starting the training until after all our activities had ended (as they will next month) so we'd be home and could focus on the training. But one Friday morning he decided he didn't want diapers back on. Since we were going to be home all weekend, I figured we could give it a go. And we haven't looked back. At one point he was having trouble with going BM and I offered that he could use a diaper. He took it as a threat and became even more determined to use the potty!! Not the reaction I was expecting! So waiting until he insisted on underpants was definitely a good thing, even though I wasn't sure about the timing.

My little alarm clock is going off (why doesn't that child just NAP ALREADY???) and our friends will be here soon, so I'll talk to you again later when I get another chance :-)

Cheese Curls

"Cheese curls Mommy!" This has been a constant refrain around here for the last couple days. However, he's not talking about the snack food. He's talking about these little guys:

If you don't immediately recognize them, it's probably because you don't have little kids who love VeggieTales. These are persistent little creatures who impersonate a snack food in the VeggieTales movie The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything.

But why was Zachary saying it over and over? It wasn't because he wanted to watch the movie - he wasn't pointing at the DVD cabinet and saying it (like he does with How The Grinch Stole Christmas "Grinch Daddy!"). No, he mostly said it when he was near the kitchen, and I realized he was saying it while pointing at our Easter Lily.

(No, that's not our lily. That's a picture I plucked from the internet because a picture of our lily plant would include a picture of the state of our apartment and I want you to look at the flower, not the pig sty we live in. I say it's because there's not enough space to put everything. C says it's because I put priority on playing and going on outings. ...even if he might be right, it still doesn't change the fact that there simply isn't enough closet space here)

Then, one day I was on the other side of the counter and I looked at the lily from Z's point of view. And you won't believe what I saw:

Cheese Curls!!

If I stall, maybe the baby will go back to sleep...

I've been writing blog posts in my head, but can't seem to make the time to type them up blah blah blah. You don't really want to hear about that; I say it because it makes ME feel better.
--

Right after I wrote those words I was interrupted by this:

This is a 2.5 year old who's walking funny, pointing 'down there', and saying, "Yuck!" It was so yucky, in fact, that he is now in the tub while I'm sitting on his bed where I have an oblique view of the tub (his room is technically the "master", but it opens right into the living room, so we took the room down the hall), trying to write this post that's apparently going nowhere, taking breaks every 10 minutes to check on The Infant Who Will Not Nap Unless Someone Is Holding Him.

It's okay though. I don't mind. I just wish I could blog a little more often.

The most exciting thing going on in our lives at the moment is that we're THIS close to making a decision on buying a house! We've gone round and round, back and forth about whether we should rent or buy? Rent a house or apt? Buy used or new? Which community? What school district? etc. ad infinitum. (quick break....nope, baby's not asleep yet)

This is the floorplan we really like:Hopefully I'll have some blog posts in the future centered around the construction progress.

Other things going on...

My sister (in law) is getting married! The wedding is set for the end of August and C and I are both in the wedding party! I have a date with a friend this evening to try on bridesmaid dresses.

Since we'll be in PA for the wedding in August, we decided not to go there for July 4th like we did last year. And since a planned vacation is a terrible thing to waste, we're headed to CA for the Fourth instead :-) There are several family members who've never met D, and we really can't let that go on too much longer. (Speaking of D, I think he's actually asleep! I now start the stopwatch and hope it lasts longer than 30min!). It will be a whirlwind tour of CA, as usual: fly into So.Cal, spend a few days; drive through Bakersfield to Nor.Cal, spend a few days (C will fly home at that point); drive back to Bakersfield, spend a few days; finally the boys and I will fly out of LA. Yay!

I've now been the Area Director here for AuPairCare for five months. I only have three Au Pairs, but there's one on the horizon and I have a couple marketing possibilities in the next couple months that will hopefully yield a few more. I really enjoy the customer service aspect: talking with the families, spending time with the Au Pairs, answering questions, etc., but the marketing is a little harder for me. It's not as difficult as making phone calls for Cutco (another position where I enjoyed the people part), and my manager is very supportive and caring (unlike Cutco where they get so many people come and go that they just don't spend too much time with any single person)(don't get me wrong, I LOVE LOVE LOVE my Cutco cutlery and cookware, I just wasn't as good at the job). I lost my train of thought...moving on!

I should probably get Z out of the tub soon, but I remembered one more thing I've been meaning to post. I took this picture before packaging it up to send for my nephew (!!) before he was born:
(There's a whole backstory, but you know what? I just tried to tell you about it, but I can't remember exactly what happened! (Let's talk about sleep deprivation and its effects on short-term memory...) Anyway, I have a drawer full of almost another blanket worth of yellow and green squares, because at some point in the construction of the blanket I forgot what hook size I was using. )

I couldn't (obviously) post the picture before the gift was received and opened, and then, you know, life got in the way, and I still hadn't posted it 3 months later. BUT it turns out that I knew what I was doing because I received this picture earlier this week:
Yep, that's my nephew (how many times can I work that into a single post?) wearing the little jacket I made for him! It was really sweet of my sister-in-law to email it to me.

I hear awake (and not particularly happy) noises coming from the direction of not-where-I-am, and so I check my stopwatch, and sure enough! 30 minutes. Almost on the dot. I guess I'm done!

This kid blows me away

I'm supposed to be making lunch so it'll be ready when C gets here, so I really shouldn't be blogging, but I HAVE to share this. And I have to share it NOW.

Z likes caring for his toys the way we care for him and for D (role playing, it's pretty cool), so he wanted my help putting Dinosaur down for nap:


He tucked Dinosaur in, kissed him, and then, AND THEN: he prayed with him. Because we pray with Z before turning out the lights and closing the door (and locking it, and yes, Z locked Dinosaur in too). At least we're doing one thing right :-)

Cloth Diapers ARE NOT complicated! Really!

I don't really have time to write a blog post (okay, I DO, but I should be spending the time in other ways), but I need to sit down for just a moment before attacking the next item on my list and I just HAVE to share this. It slays me! Okay, so we use cloth diapers. We chose a system that involves prefolds and covers. They're called "prefolds" because each diaper has multiple layers, unlike a flat diaper that needs to be folded into layers before using. We chose prefolds because, let's face it, it was the least expensive CD system (CD=cloth diapers). They are not the simplest system. Even though they're called prefolds, you have to fold the diaper before putting it on the child, and then you have to use something to secure it, either pins or a snappi, and then you need a waterproof (or water-resistant) cover to keep clothes dry. (Please tell me you understand the concept of "wicking"). (I'd link each of those italicized words, but I don't want to spend the time. If you'd like more definition than I gave, try http://www.diaperpin.com/dictionary.asp. For "snappi", check out http://www.snappibaby.com/products/snappidiaperfastener.html)

Here's the problem: care-givers are often confused by cloth diapers. I can even walk someone through a diaper change, step-by-step, when I drop Z off, but when I pick him up, I can expect to see some strange, less-than-effective, attempt. I usually find it humorous. I can't blame them for having trouble. So, with our new little D, I was ecstatic that our increased salary allowed for a little bit in the budget to pick up some pocket diapers. These combine a waterproof cover with a fabric layer, leaving an opening. You stuff something absorbent (like microfiber, or even a prefold diaper) in the "pocket" and the diaper is just like a disposable: pull it out of the bag, put it on the child, secure the velcro or snaps, and you're done! No folding, no pins/snappi - Easy!

THE POINT OF MY POST:
So today I went to bible study. I explained that Z is in cloth diapers, but that they're very easy, just like a disposable. And then I left, completely confident that all was well as far as Z's heiny was concerned (he barely said goodbye to me, he was so busy already, so I was also confident that he was going to enjoy himself). Fast forward a couple hours: we're back at home, I'm trying to get D out of his seat before he COMPLETELY loses it, Z is hanging on me and whining for something (you know, the usual scene) and something about the back of Z's pant waist catches my attention. I was so startled, I stopped unbuckling the car seat and pulled Z's pants down. You will not believe what I saw: THE DEAR LADIES AT CHURCH THIS MORNING HAD PUT Z'S DIAPER ON INSIDE OUT. INSIDE OUT!! How can one possibly confuse the inside of a pocket diaper with its outside?? One side is soft and comfy and the other is...the outside. The waterproof outside. And it has snaps! They had the snaps against his skin! I think I died laughing. (Which Z probably didn't appreciate "Mommy, my pants are on the ground and you're laughing so hard you're crying...")

I'll still try to have a pocket diaper on hand whenever I have to drop either boy off with someone, but I think I'll spend just a moment to pull the diaper out and explain how it works ;-)