****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

I know, I know. I’ve not been around very much, not been posting, not been commenting (I have been reading your blogs though, just so you know). You may recall when I warned you all that I was going to take blog break to do NaNoWriMo and you have jumped to the logical conclusion that that is what I’m up to, that is, if you even noticed my absence and bothered to jump to a conclusion. Well, I’ve written 3 chapters…all right, 2 and 1/2. I have my whole outline of the plot and my characters and all that. I just really havn’t felt motivated to write during the extremely rare times when I’ve actually had the opportunity. So no certificate or whatever it is for me. I still plan to write the thing, just not in one month.

So what the hell have I been doing, you ask? House hunting. Yep. Well, not real house hunting, not yet. We still have about 7 months on this lease, but we decided we should go ahead and start looking at what was out there in different areas and stuff since we’ve never bought before and are totally freaked out by it. How do you people do this? How do you make these decisions? I’ve been going to open houses and driving around and looking at houses my agent is sending me and reading the details of hundreds of listings and I’m already stressed yet barely have begun. I can’t narrow this down at all. And what’s more - I think I might be old, because the ‘burbs are lookin’ real good to me right now. When Hubby and I discuss this we always decide we aren’t ready to leave the city yet, but I tell ya when I’m out there looking at what’s available in our price range I’m really leaning toward that little rancher with the small fenced yard and super high taxes (better schools) over that 3 story rowhouse with no parking but leaves us with money to spare. All right, that’s an exaggeration. But the point is this is freakin’ hard and I already feel like I’m going to have an aneurism. How do you do it and avoid a panic attack? Yesterday, for the first time, I actually liked one of the houses I saw and it felt like a panic attack because I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I don’t think I can keep this up for 7 more months.

You know what else I’m totally indecisive about? Babies. It’s this whole second child thing. See, about 2 months ago I was totally thinking Hubby and I would be officially “trying” by now. I was thinking around the time Sam was 18 months old would be a good time to get started. I talked about it all summer. Seriously, I was ready. Went off the pill and everything. Even almost wanted to go ahead and get going, if you know what I mean, because I was baby crazy. Now…not so much. And I don’t really know what happened. I kind of just want to hang out with Sam. The apprehension about the second baby thing might have started when we had that incident at the playground. You know, he got hurt while I was trapped holding a baby. And I see other moms unable to do things with their toddlers because they’re holding a younger child and I just don’t want to let go of any of that with Sam. I just can’t quite envision how it all works. Then I look at other moms and calculate the ages of their children in my head and see that they’re doing just fine and think, “I could do that,” and recognize that it will always be scary to make such a decision.

But the thing is, how do I say this, I have started to feel like I might resent another child for getting in the way of my relationship with Sam. And I hate to use the word ‘resent’ because it feels so harsh, especially when talking about a newborn of all things, but that’s the best word I’ve got. I’m trying to be honest here. Are these feelings normal? For those of you that have more than one child, did you experience anything like that either when making the decision or as you waited for the second to arrive or even after the baby came? I can’t tell if this is an actual change of mind and we’re really not ready, or if it’s just normal apprehension because the decision is so close at hand and therefore more real. Because really I can’t imagine that there would ever come a time when I’m not worried about losing my time with Sam due to another baby; that threat will always be there no matter when we decide to do this. It’s quite a change though. All of a sudden I feel very protective of my time with him and my ability to give him my undivided attention. And then someone passes me their 3 month old at a playgroup and Sam walks up and gently pets her head and I wonder what we’re waiting for…

Labels: House, Mommyhood