The Real Work has begun...

I think the three of us are finally starting to feel the stress of this move. It's not terrible, but the strain is definitely there. I'm extra sensitive, Lila's extra whiny, and Doug's extra irritable. And the kitties and hedgehog are fuzzy and pointy, respectively.

The good news is that the house is ours now! We closed yesterday morning and picked up the keys yesterday afternoon. As soon as Doug got home from work, we loaded up everything we would need for dinner and went to the new place. Lila and I were back over there this afternoon, cleaning. The house is in great shape, but the baseboards and doors need wiping down and some of the walls need cleaning too. (Also, the cleaner I can get the doors, the less likely Doug is to insist that we need to paint them!)

In spending so much time with my face that close to the floor, I became well acquainted with several tiny spiders. I didn't tell them they'll be going the way of the fire ants soon. (my first act today was to sprinkle amdro on the ant mounds in the back yard.)

Well, I'm pretty sure there's something important I should be doing right now, so I'll stop. I wonder if the outer doors of the post office are still open at 9 p.m. We still need to fill out a change of address request...

Insomnia

We close on our new house tomorrow morning and I'm so nervous that I can't get to sleep. Not nervous in a worrying kind of way. Just nervous in an expectant kind of way. Or, I suppose, it might be the fact that I can't breathe through my nose that's keeping me awake. Either way, that's why I'm posting to my blog at midnight.

This photo is of Lila with her friend, Naomi (daughter of my friend, Ellen). This was a particularly cute day for the two of them because it was the first time that Lila actively played with Naomi (who's roughly a year older). When this picture was taken, they were sharing a snack of pita and hummus while laying on the coffee table. Not long after this, they began collaborating on some kitty torture. As cute as their interactions were, I had to intervene at that point.

And speaking of photos, I have been terrible lately about having any pictures printed. I usually do that monthly - pick my 10 favorites from the past month, upload them to the Walgreens website, have them printed, and put them in our photo album. I like having physical photos to flip through now and then (and to show off). I get double prints of some of them and those get sent to various family members who don't make it down here to see her very often. Anyway, I'm about three months behind on this and I need to catch up! . . . after we move.

The Good and The Not-So-Good

Some family and friend updates for you:

One of my grandfathers, Dorsey E. Jordan, has been having some health problems lately and I would love it if you'd join me in praying for him. The short version of the story is that he had an artery that was 75% blocked, which they cleared out and put a stint in. He is also anemic and they found masses on his kidney and lung. He is going to start receiving injections for the anemia - something to try and prompt his body to produce more red blood cells. The masses are still being explored and I don't have anything more to report on those yet. I will keep you updated. They did, however, just tell him that his kidneys are only functioning at 50%. That is bad, but not bad enough to need dialysis. They can't reverse the damage, but they think they can stop it from progressing. Whew! Please pray for him.

Our friends, Wilson and Melissa Wicks, had their baby girl, Bryce Michelle, at 10:20 this morning. She is 8 lb. 9 oz., 21" long, was delivered by c-section, and she and mommy are doing well. Hooray!

Achoo! Waaaaaaaaaa!

Since I started taking allergy shots and prescription antihistamine/ decongestants again (couldn't take them while i was breastfeeding), my health has been SO much better. I only get sick occasionally now, instead of monthly. And when I do get sick, it's not as bad and doesn't last as long. Praise God for allergists! Sadly, all this dust that we're stirring up with packing has been too much for my poor body to handle.

I was sick sick sick this weekend, but felt mostly better by yesterday evening. I started packing again this afternoon and have become a sniffly sneezy mess. [sigh] It makes me want to stay up for 24 hours straight and get all this packing done so I don't have to worry about it anymore. That would be way better than a few weeks of prolonged torture. Doug seems to think that plan is not in the best interest of my health. Oh well.

I think Lila had a bad dream last night about bumping her head on something. :( She has had a few more incidents than usual recently where she fell down or got a boo-boo in some way. Early this morning, I heard her start crying and I could tell from the way she sounded that she was crying before she even woke up. It just sounded like a bad dream cry. When I made it into her room, she sat up and said, "Bump on da head," and kept crying. She was really upset - tears and everything. I rocked her for a long time and she went back to sleep, but I felt so bad for her! Poor baby...

Lila's Friends

Lila has a new friend in the neighborhood. For a long time, our 12-year-old next-door neighbor, Elizabeth, would come over about once per week to play with Lila. Sometime over the past several months, she kind of lost interest in that activity and we haven't seen her at all this summer. Kinda sad, but not a big deal. There's only so long that a pre-teen is going to think it's cool to hang out with two adults and a toddler.

Well, Elizabeth's place in our family has now been taken by Tichina, a 13-year-old who lives up the street. Since school has been out, she shows up at our house 2-3 times per week to play with Lila. I really find it amusing that these girls like to come over and play with my toddler. Fun, and amusing.

On a less fun note, I've been sick all weekend. This was both helpful and detrimental to my Harry Potter reading plans. On the helpful side, I couldn't do anything besides lay around anyway and Doug admitted that if I hadn't been sick, he would not have let me sit around and read all weekend (though i would have been lobbying for that). On the detrimental side, I was reading more slowly than usual because I felt like dookie!

Stirrin' up Dust

I think I'm enjoying this packing process more than I should be. I mean, I've never been excited about moving before and I've certainly never been excited about packing! Doug did make a good point though. There's a big difference between moving from one apartment to another (as i did in college) and moving into a new house that I'm excited about (as we are doing now).

We've gotten a good amount of work done this weekend. The number of boxes we got packed was not that many, but the amount of organizing and purging we did was much. We are spending our weekends working on closets because those are the hardest and require both of us to be here (to consult each other on what can be gotten rid of). During the week, I'll be packing the easy things (cabinets, bookshelves, etc.).

Lila has been exceptionally cooperative during all of this too. She has spent a lot of time playing with her new Play-Doh (an early birthday gift from some grandparents) and her new Barbie (which i bought at HEB for $2 on Friday). Speaking of this new Barbie, I've decided there must be a Barbie gene in some girls. About 10 minutes after I gave this one to Lila (the first she'd ever seen), without any prompting from me, she requested a comb and spent about 20 minutes "fixing" Barbie's hair!

Blah

I find myself with a lack of things to talk about today. Well, I suppose there is plenty that I could talk about, but nothing that is inspiring me. I will throw random facts at you to defend myself.

I have 6 friends who are pregnant and two with newborns.
I have 4 friends who are buying, selling, and/or building a house (plus us).
Doug and I saw Order of the Phoenix last night.
Lila tries to force bites of her food on the cats.
I have checked six things off of our moving checklist so far.
We are having a friend over for dinner tonight.
I need to buy more chicken.
Lila, apparently, has learned to find and open the bread bag.
She is currently eating our last slice of bread.
I am going grocery shopping tomorrow.
I'm tired.
The mailman has not come yet.

PG-13 Story

Lila has developed a recent interest in one of my moles. I have a few tiny red nearly-flat moles on my body and she spotted the one on my belly. Any time she sees it, she'll point and say, "mole!"

Yesterday, after I stepped out of the shower, she pointed and said, "mole!"

"Yes," I said, "That is my mole."

Then she pointed higher on my body and said, "Big mole!"

"No, dear. That is not a mole... Very funny, but no."

My Letter to the World

This is Charlie speaking. Mom has no idea that I'm using her computer, but I must get my message out! The level of disobedience among my humans has reached a level of crisis. From the beginning of my relationship with The Woman, I have suffered innumerable little indignities. Claw trimming... being held like a baby... being spun on the hardwood floors... being forced to wait for my food... being scolded for attacking the monsters under the sheets...

I have an impossible time getting these people to just stay put. Besides the fact that they seem to have selective insomnia, they don't know how to stay in one room for more then a few minutes at a time. Mom is the worst - she can't even sit still in front of a movie! And don't get me started on how disruptive it is to my emotional well-being when they leave town. I don't know whether they'll be gone two days or two weeks!

As time goes on, their creative means of torture have escalated. Was it not bad enough that they brought home this other cat to be my "sister"? You know what she's good for? Nothing! She picks fights with me and then starts causing a scene when I fight back. And then I get squirted!

Then there's that Baby Thing. Whose idea was that anyway? I haven't liked it from the beginning and things only get worse as it ages. Instead of becoming more civilized and subdued, as any self-respecting cat would do, it just gets lounder and faster. I've heard the Big Ones tell her to use "gentle touches" at least 7,000 times, but I think that is a secret code for "scream really loud while you beat on his head!"

A couple of months ago, Mom brought home this little pointy thing that makes lots of huffing and puffing noises. I still haven't figured out what that is, so I'd rather not talk about it.

And now they are using words like 'moving' and 'new house.' Someone, please, come and rescue me from these sadistic villains!

Changes

Goodness, has it been a week already?!? Clearly, we've been busy. 4th of July... Doug took a couple of days off... We went to Dallas for a visit with family... oh yeah, and we bought a house! This is a photo of what will soon be our living room. I'm very excited and more than a little freaked out! I haven't had to do this moving thing in almost 5 years. Plus, we've built up a lot of memories in this house!

Overstimulating Love

I think you already know how much I love Lila. I love the way her skin feels, the sweetness of her hugs and kisses (which she gives much more freely these days). When she sits in my lap, it makes me all warm and fuzzy, and when I'm rocking her before a nap, I just want to stay there forever.

However, by the end of the day -- or by 2 p.m. if I have had a muscle tension headache since I woke up that is progressing to include sinus pressure -- I just get tired of being touched!

I go to the bathroom and she not only follows me in, but leans against my knees and tries to play with the button on my shorts while I'm sitting on the potty. If I'm sitting at the computer or standing in the kitchen, she'll come and just lean and hang on me like she's a monkey and I'm a tree. If I'm sitting in the floor, reading books to her, she climbs all over me like I'm a piece of furniture.

Mommies get overstimulated sometimes too!

On a totally different topic, I wish you all could have seen her at church yesterday. We take her into the grown-up service with us to listen to the music, then check her in to the nursery before the message. Yesterday, she was totally getting into the music. She stood between us, clapping her hands and dancing, the whole time. The amazing thing about her clapping is that she was on-beat more often than some of the adults in the room. And her little Bob and Stomp dance was just too much! It was a definite "I wish we had the video camera" moment!