We made it in. The move went without a hitch. The house is great. Now we are doing the whole UNpacking thing and trying to keep the kids alive while doing so.

The dishwasher holds more than my old one.

The rooms are painted the colors we chose.

The bathroom fixtures are not far from what I would have chosen myself.

The kids now have their own rooms.

Our living room is not overwhelmed by both a TV and a computer (each are in their own separate rooms).

But the best part, you ask? The best part is that at approximately 3:15 school lets out, and at that time ALL of the school buses go by our house heading to the school parking lot and back out again. And at that time, you can find Sam, sitting joyfully in the living room window eating his snack and yelling, “Look! Look! ANOTHER one!” And that, my friends, is a great investment. (Pictures to be posted later because Flickr is being annoying.)

I will say, however, we have not a window dressing to speak of, and no intention of doing anything about that until the weekend. The neighbors are getting to know us quite well.

And sorry for the comments being down over the weekend - my brother was moving us to another server and, of course, I didn’t know there was a problem because our computer wasn’t hooked up. Hope all are well. I’ll read blogs again soon, I hope, once we are functioning. I think I have like over 200 posts on bloglines . . . heh, heh.

Labels: House, Pictures, The Big One

All right - about to sign off and pack up the computer. Move is tomorrow. I leave you with a little reminder of how ridiculously horrendous our move from Chicago was two years ago. As long as we don’t get anywhere near that, I think we’ll be ok.

Labels: House

Ugh, you guys, moving suuuucks. I always forget how bad it is. I hate packing and taking care of all the stuff that goes along with a move, and I get overwhelmed really early on and know that it is something I loathe. But somehow it always ends up being worse than I expect or remember. See that house down below? I hate that house! I want to live in this lame apartment under my especially lame neighbors forever, just so long as I don’t have to pack one more single thing. Ok, I don’t hate it. I’m just ready to be in it.

It was around this time two years ago that we were doing exactly the same thing as we prepared to leave Chicago. It was hard packing with a mobile baby - he got into everything imaginable. A few of you may remember Sam eating the zipper. I thought we’d learned our lesson from that incident but nooooooo. Today Hubby and I were dealing with files and paper shredding, and when I went over to check on Robby he had that exact same expression on his face, causing me to open his mouth and sweep out a tiny piece of plastic that was working its way toward the back of his throat. It was something that had no business being on the floor to begin with ( I think it was a broken piece from the cord to our blinds or something), but of course the whole apartment is covered in packing material and crap right now so everything just kind of blends together. Packing with one baby and one toddler is, well, it’s ridiculous. And now I’ll stop complaining because it will all be over in a week.

And on a really, REALLY good note, I’m going to be writing for Mama Speaks, which I am so happy about. Mama Speaks is an awesome review blog that showcases mom-designed products, eco-friendly tips and merchandise, lesser known charity organizations, and generally very cool stuff for moms. It’s a great place to check out for new products and to get a mom’s opinion on whether or not something is a good purchase for you and your family. I’m sure I’ll be biting my nails when it’s time for my first reviews, but I’m totally excited.

Labels: House, The Little One

****Edited below****

Nothing quite so disconcerting as handing over pretty much ALL of your money in one tidy cashiers check, is there? We closed on the house. All went well. I think my stomach is finally settling down. And, well, I guess we’re home owners now. So I suppose one of us had better get around to mowing that unattended lawn . . . and moving. That would be good too. We move a week from Saturday because we wanted to have work done to it before we brought the kids in. Now I wish we could just get it over with.

You know, this was a very different post when I put it up two hours ago, but it felt wrong (and I apologize for any confusion for the few of you that may have seen it in its original form).  It was sort of a downer, which is not indicative of how my husband and I feel about the purchase of our new home - it felt dishonest and forced.   And most of all, it told details of a story that is not mine to tell, so I’m taking a lot of it out.

What I really want to say is this:

That’s our house.  Those trees? Those are our trees.  That’s where my family is going to live and play and settle.  And we’re so excited about it we can’t stand it.  We can’t wait to be there and wake up for the first time in our new home.

Labels: Bodily functions, House, Pictures

Today we visited our house, our very first house. Hubby and I have lived in various apartments since we graduated from college nearly ten years ago. We close at the end of this month. Very exciting, very overwhelming. We took measurements and tried to place furniture in our minds. We need to look at paint cards and buy a lawn mower. It’s like we’ve been college kids for years, living on a budget in small apartments. We’ve been kids with kids. But look at us now! A house, life insurance policies; we’re so very adult. It’s been a long time coming.

I’ll tell you what I won’t miss - apartment neighbors. I would say one of the main reasons I have wanted us to buy us a house so much has been to get away from crappy neighbors. Yes, I realize it is possible to have crappy neighbors in a nice neighborhood, and that in many ways it is worse because you are stuck with them when you own a home. But I think nothing can compare to sharing walls (or floors, or ceilings) with really bad neighbors. We’ve had some really “special” people surrounding us in our years of apartment living. It’s always something that’s really difficult to deal with when the people who live around you are bothersome. You can’t really do much for fear you will make things worse, and then they are still your neighbors, just now they hate you for say, calling the cops, writing a letter to their landlord, etc.

Usually I resort to writing letters in my head to make me feel better. I’ve told these people off repeatedly in my mind, drafting letters to be stuck on their door for them to find, but I never actually do the sticking. Perhaps I can find some closure if I get them out of my head and share them here. So, from our most inoffensive bad neighbors to the ones that I will truly never forget, I give you part one of a series of “Letters to My Bad Neighbors.”

Dear Dude and Wife Upstairs,

We hear you. We hear everything you do.

Wife, how can you stand your husband’s laugh? How can you hear it, day after day? The high pitched, hyena-like cackle: wuuuuuhp (a sharp scoop of roughly an octave here) buhp buhp buhp buhp buhp. Tell me, exactly how much pot are you guys smoking each day because WOW, it’s gotta be a lot.

I have to tell you that you guys are not nearly as good at Rock Band/Guitar Hero as you think you are. Practice has not made you any better either. Your rendition of Black Hole Sun has not improved with time. Although, I must say, I would rather hear your stoned, tone-deaf incantations than feel our apartment shake each time you dropped a bomb in your previous air strike game that you played for twelve hour sessions every Saturday.

I think it is safe to say that if I can tell you what movie you are watching just from hearing the soundtrack through my ceiling (Gladiator, by the way), that it might be a tad too loud.

Can’t say we’ll miss you, I just hope we get out of here before you get yourselves a Wii.

The fam downstairs

Labels: House, Tales

November? Really? My last post was in November? Dear God. No wonder I’ve started getting emails asking of all is well over here. Thank you for those, by the way. Hearing from some of you and knowing you still care to check in even when I am not posting and commenting on your blogs really means a lot - it proves to me what I said long ago: that blog friends are real friends too. And I owe you all an apology, because dropping off the face of the internet like that is not cool.

Please, let me explain (not that this is an excuse, because I know some of you were actually worried about me). For me, and this is certainly not to scare those of you with another on the way (see, I do lurk every so often:), but having two kids is more than twice as hard as having one. Honestly. I’m having my butt kicked day in and day out over here. How do you guys do it? Some of you have three, four, FIVE AND MORE children! How on earth do you do it? I think it’s something about the way I feel when I have two kids screaming at me simultaneously that is really throwing me. It’s like I can’t run back and forth between them fast enough for anyone to be satisfied, and that’s kind of what it feels like all day long. Any time I try to take all of us out it results in screaming scenes of horror for at least one (Robby screams for the duration of every car ride), if not two children (Sam refuses to walk), and sometimes one mommy, and anytime we stay in all day to avoid those scenes it feels like the days are 20 hours long, causing Sam and I to go stir crazy…on each other…if it is possible to go stir crazy on another person. So there it is. It’s been rough. And I know it will pass. I know, “things will get easier,” as they get older and it’s the age they are and all that stuff that people tell me. But it’s hard right now. And I’m having a hard time. And some days that’s ok and I can keep it all in perspective, and some days it’s less ok because it makes me feel like an awful mom. And when being a mom is all I’m doing, feeling like I’m bad at it is particularly hard. I’ve said all this before. In fact, I’ve started this post at least three times before and just never finished or put it up. But if I’m going to be honest, that’s why I haven’t been blogging, because if I sat down to blog it wasn’t going to be to post about how beautiful everything is with cute pictures and funny stories. It was going to be blah. And it’s not so much that I didn’t want to abuse you all with my blah - I know it’s my blog and I reserve the right to blah you all if I must - but I just didn’t feel like working up the energy and finding the time just to go and blah around, you know?

With that in mind, I’ve been trying to find other things to work on and focus on so that I have something of my own. This is, perhaps another reason for my long absence. What little time I have had (Sam doesn’t nap anymore!) has been spent looking at various degree programs and working on a few other little projects that I hope to one day share some good news about. Oh, and by the way, we also bought a house. Yeah, our first house. So that was huge and took up a huge part of my time for the past several months - searching, negotiating, inspecting, negotiating more, etc. We move in May.

But I’m still sorry. And I think I might finally be back. I’ve missed you guys. I’ve missed blogging, and this time I think I might really be back. I’ve been lurking around a bit and checking on everyone here and there, not typically commenting because that requires hands, but reading and responding in my mind. And I forgot how much I learn from reading blogs! I’m sort of getting back involved in some current issues on which I have a bit to say, and it’s not like I don’t have some cute pictures and funny stories to share as well. I’m hoping that by getting this off my chest - that this is hard, very very hard, damn hard - and admitting (and accepting) that, I can now move on to other things, other topics, other posts. I hope.

Labels: House, Mommyhood

I’ve been a totally bad blogger lately. I’m bad about posting, bad about commenting. I haven’t written a seriously thoughtful post in…I dunno, have any been thoughtful? There was a day when I was all reflective and stuff, and that day seems to have passed. I do have some post ideas in mind for some time soon - a response to the article in Mothering about toy guns and violence, more thoughts on mom cliques and middle school behavior among the best of us, but I’m just not feelin’ it today…maybe tomorrow. We’ve just got a lot going on over here. We might be making an offer on a house on Saturday, which is really exciting and scary. The house search has been time and energy consuming. Hubby’s got a case in court right now and has been coming home so late sometimes that he doesn’t even get to see Sam for the whole day, which is sad for him and killer for me. Sam and I hosted out first play group today which made me a crazy, cleaning, baking freak for the past 4 days. And there’s more too. Want a hint?

The other day for lunch I made myself an entire crab dip thing - the one with a layer of cream cheese and then a layer of cocktail sauce mixed with crab and shrimp; it takes up an entire large plate. I ate over half of it with crackers in one sitting and was hungry again a few hours later.

******edited to add another hint:

Oh yeah, I cried during Sesame Street yesterday when Ernie sang the song about how he’d like to visit the moon.

Labels: House, Pregnant