Cute Kids in the Bathtub

No Title Today

I finally finished reading 'Dracula' today. I've read it before, but it's been years. I still like it, but I'd have to say that I enjoyed the first 60% more than I did the last 40%. The 'diary entries' became more like exact transcripts of long conversations. Anyway, still a good book. Now I've moved on to 'Life, the universe and everything' by Douglas Adams. It's utter silliness, naturally.

I'm oddly energetic tonight and feel like doing something. Nothing major, mind you. But I'm not in that stupor that usually accompanies the end of the day. I guess it helps that the kids and I had a pretty good day. As in, we weren't ready to throttle each other by the time Doug got home. And I successfully made a yummy dinner of Tilapia, Sauteed Bell Peppers, and Pumpernickel Bread.

Ha! I just remembered something. Back before we had kids, when Doug was working and I was at home all day (doing what?!? i can't believe i actually thought i was busy!), I would get up at 7 a.m. to have breakfast with Doug before he went to work. How sweet! Now I stay in bed until the last possible minute before I have to take over responsibility for the children. And even then I'm not really "awake".

The Real Me is Back!

Hey, look at me! I'm updating my blog regularly again! (AND i'm voluntarily making phone calls? hmm... definitely suspicious.)

[sigh] Charlie is wearing me out. He has an attitude about the new house and is taking it out on us by going potty on the carpet! Grr! I suppose he doesn't like having to haul his chunky, 10-year-old butt up the stairs every time he needs to go. He also can't slip through the bars of the stair rail like Cordy can, so he gets trapped by the baby gates. He's just about to earn himself a trip to the vet to make sure nothing is wrong and get advice on breaking him of this nasty habit! Cat Head.

I finally got a good night's sleep last night! I think my problems falling asleep have been caused, or at least aggravated, by not getting any exercise. I went to the gym yesterday and worked my body hard. It felt great! Now that I've gotten us back in a bit of a routine and life isn't so nuts, I should be able to get to the gym two or three days per week again. Hopefully that will continue to help.

Of course, nothing helps my emotional and mental stability like prayer, so I need to make sure I don't let my time with God fall to the side now that life is on an even keel again. I wander most when things are going well. Short attention span and all.

The Uncleaners Strike Again

My focus this week is on getting the play room unpacked, organized and cleaned up. As with all other rooms, I can only work on it for about 10 minutes at a time, but it's already going more quickly than I expected.

So, a little while ago, I went in and cleaned for a while as the kids played. I made a good dent in all the "stuff" that was littering the floor and felt quite proud of myself. I then came downstairs to take a break and left the kids upstairs. Lila, apparently, needed to vent some frustration.

I headed back upstairs a few minutes later and she met me at the top with: "I made a mess." [scowl scowl scowl] She then stomped off into my room, announced that she wanted to be alone, and shut the door. I explained to her that she could be alone, but not in my room and directed her toward her own bedroom. I then went to investigate the mess she claimed to have made.

Well, she wasn't kidding... She had totally trashed the play room. It looked worse than before I started! I calmly extracted her from her room and told her that she'd need to help me clean up the mess she'd made before she got to be alone. She put up surprisingly little resistance and we got the room back in order in about 10 minutes.

It's a wonder I get anything done around here!

This plant was mean to me. (stinging, itching, redness, bumps) Anyone know what it is?



UPDATE: It's a Stinging Nettle.

This post took me all day to finish.

I'm not the type to want to rush time, but I do wish that Fall would arrive. I think that Summer should only last one month - July - and an extra month should be added to both Spring and Fall. I love the cooler weather of Fall and the holidays and the decorating possibilities. Mostly, I love the cooler weather.

I wonder if we'll take any vacations this year. We had talked about taking the kids on a Disney cruise at the end of summer, but the end of summer is fast approaching and we haven't made any plans. Maybe that's how we'll celebrate after we finally sell the Forsythe house. I'd also love to hit the mountains of North Carolina again. We did that a couple of years ago and it was so beautiful!

I've been feeling a bit discouraged lately and I wonder how much of it is because I haven't taken much time to be alone. I am recharged by being by myself - preferably in a public place. I like to be surrounded by people, but not be expected to talk to any of them. I'll let you figure out what that means about me. I just get tired of people needing things from me by the end of the week. Ya' know?

Unpacking, Cleaning, and Naughtiness

I really don't mind unpacking. I definitely prefer it over packing. It's fun to pull things out and decide where to put them. It's like taking the paint off a canvas you've already painted and then putting it on a new canvas in a different way. Unfortunately, I've been spending so much time unpacking and organizing that everyday sorts of chores have fallen terribly behind.

There are mountains of laundry in three different rooms and the toys are starting to spread across the floor like a nasty rash. Today, Doug had to ask me if I could put away the clean clothes that have been sitting in the laundry room for a week because he was having to come downstairs naked after his bath to find clean underwear. And I think I put Eli's last clean outfit on him this morning. [sigh] Laundry is a disease.

And then there are thing things that happen because I have two small children. I spent approximately 7 minutes upstairs earlier, putting away clothes and toys that had migrated to my bedroom. I left the kids downstairs. Bad idea. I should have known by the way they were both laughing that something was up. When I came back down, they had scattered the food from both cat bowls all over the floor and made a big mess with the water from their drinking fountain. I was too shocked to be angry. Eli I would expect that from, but Lila knows better!

Yesterday's Title Confused People

We've been getting involved in the Gateway South campus over the past couple of weeks and it's so exciting! I find it ever so much easier to feel comfortable and connected in a smaller setting. And being in a theater (junior high auditorium) with music that is far too loud felt like the Gateway of old. There was a tangible sense of comaraderie among the volunteers as people started tearing down and packing up after the service. I'm really looking forward to becoming a part of this little family.

Oh, goodness, I did something stupid yesterday. I left my coffee mug where Eli could reach it. Thankfully, the coffee in it was cold by the time he found it, but the carpet still suffered. As soon as I heard the sound of the mug scraping across the coaster, I started jumping up and diving toward him, but Eli still managed to spill a lovely arc of coffee across the floor. [sigh] Good thing the carpet is already light brown.

I wonder if I'll be able to go to BSF this year. Lila is still young enough to be in the kids class, which I am very happy about. She learned so much the year that she was in it! Eli, however, is still too young, so I'll need to find some sort of child care for him. I suppose I'd better start looking now because I think classes start at the beginning of September...

South Phone Birthday

I wonder... now that I live in South Austin, how long will it take before I start to think that tie-dye is cool? That's one particular trend that I've never been fond of, but it's all over the place down here. Instead of taco stands on the side of the road, there are tie-dye stands. Okay, so really there are both, but I still find it odd. I wonder if anyone's ever tie-dyed a wedding dress...

My family members will be happy to note that I've started making phone calls more often! I am part of the 5% of women who hate to talk on the phone and I receive no end of grief over how infrequently I talk to some people. Occasionally, however, I tap into some vein of desire to stay connected to those I love and I resolve to actually speak to them. As of a couple of weeks ago, I made a list of six people (or sets of people) and I call one of them every day.

Lila's 4th birthday is coming up in one month and for once I'm not stressed over planning her party. That's because she pretty much planned it herself and all I have to do is implement it. Sweet! The only thing she doesn't know is what she's getting as a gift. She keeps saying she wants a teddy bear, but we're not too hot on that idea. The girl has stuffed animals coming out her ears. We have other ideas...

Update from Tuesday

I'm typing this update from the library. I had to call Doug at work and have him look up the nearest branch and give me directions. We will have Internet access again on Thursday, but for now I'm afraid to try and find any new places because I don't want to get lost. I hadn't realized how dependent I had become on the Internet for finding information and directions! No Internet and no TV means I've been doing a lot more reading though, which has been nice.

I read an Agatha Christie play (called The Unexpected Guest) that was adapted to a novel. It was a pretty easy read, so I finished in about 24 hours. Now I'm re-reading Dracula.

The kids are doing pretty well with all the chaos. They got to bed really late for a few nights, but we finally got them to bed on time last night. In fact, they had trouble going to sleep because they'd already gotten used to staying up later. Lila is having a bit of adjustment difficulty that's displaying itself in disobedience. Nothing shocking. Kids don't have many ways to cope with the things that are bothering them.

Eli doesn't care what house he's in as long as he's got people to play with and a place to sleep. Right now he's staring at all the other kids here at the library, transfixed. Actually, I should be going because we are all getting hungry. (and lila keeps trying to slip her little fingers in to touch my mouse and keyboard.)

Update I Typed on Sunday

We've been in the new house for two days now and we're all exhausted. I've hardly done any manual labor myself. My fatigue comes from still being half-sick and – well, I'm always at least a little tired, aren't I? Doug, on the other hand, has worked himself like a mule for two days and he's at it again as I type this.

Things look about as good as they can with boxes all over the place. I have the family room as put together as I can and that's where the kids and I have been hanging out. We have all our utilities going except for the gas, which means no cooking and no hot water. I just took a cold shower, which was... invigorating. We've been doing a lot of eating out, which would be great if the food were FREE. The gas should be hooked up tomorrow though. I will go find our nearest HEB and we should be cooking real meals again by dinnertime.

To add to the insanity of last week, I developed an extremely painful ear infection just as the flu finally started going away. For one day, it felt like someone was sticking an ice pick in my right ear. Now it's just clogged and ringing with only occasional, minor pain. I have felt like total wimp during this move because I can't even unpack a box without getting winded. I guess that's what happens when you are sick in bed for a week.

Long Overdue

It has been far too long since I updated this blog. I've been spending more time on other sites and I really must put a stop to that! Things have been completely insane around here.

Doug is in Japan right now on a business trip. He's been gone for just under a week and won't be back until Thursday. Our whole stinkin' family fell apart after he left, but I'll go into that more later. He's working hard at his new job with IDT, but finding it somewhat stressful. He's responsible for creating the roadmap for a whole new product line and that's not easy! He's been fairly stressed over all this buying and selling of houses too. We've already closed on the new house, we close on our current house July 6th, and we will all be glad once the Forsythe house is gone and done with too.

Lila is just getting over strep throat, but is nearly back to normal. She's having a bit of a tough time adjusting to all these changes, but she's a resilient girl and will be back to herself within a few months, I expect. She had her last gymnastics class today and handled it rather well. She's already talking about finding a new gymnastics school and a new teacher near our new house. The girl LOVES gymnastics. She also loves little tiny women (named Cinderella and Belle) and Pet Society on Facebook. I finally had to create my own pet on Doug's login because I got tired of sharing with her!

Eli is doing something new every day. He is SO close to walking. He just got his fifth tooth this week (my theory: it was the cause of the ear infection that he also had). He's starting to say a few words. His version of Mommy: Ama (AH-mah). It's way too cute! He also meows at the cats and says Lila, all done, night-night, and probably a few other things, but he refuses to repeat them for me. He's still got the biggest smile in the world and he still makes that awful raptor/predatory bird noise when he's angry or frustrated. He loves to put one toy inside another and has been very helpful with packing and putting things in drawers. In fact, there is one drawer that we've learned to check anytime something goes missing.

I would say that I've been great, but that wouldn't really be true. A couple of weeks ago, I had a nasty bladder infection that had me in bed with a high fever for two or three days. This week, I got the flu for the first time I can remember. Headache, fever, cough, sore throat, chills, sweats, body aches, you name it. I was completely incapacitated for four days, but I'm starting to recover now. I still sound terrible, but I feel well enough to take care of my kids again. Many thanks to Grammie and Papa Joe for coming up and helping while we were all puny. When I have NOT been laid up in bed with a fever, I have been trying to prepare for our move to the new house, which takes place... in four days!!!

So, to put it all together, Doug left for his business trip, and the next day I started coughing and Eli came down with a fever. Enter the flu and Eli's ear infection. The day after that, Lila developed a fever. That would be the strep. Ack! Crazy!

I know this wasn't the most eloquent post, but I'm still really not feeling well, so it's the best I can do for now.

Sad Pet News

We found out yesterday that our sweet little hedgehog, Hurley, is not going to be with us much longer. He has cancer, probably in several places. The vet sent us home with steroids to help him feel better for a while and then he will either pass on his own or we will have to put him to sleep. We are all very sad because we love our little prickle-puss...


Puffa-puffa, stick-stick, Hurley! XOXOXOXO

Frustrated

Do you ever have a day that just makes you want to cry? Yeah, I'm having one. There's not any one major bad thing that's happened. It's more the accumulative effect of 100 little things that have gone wrong (or just not gone the way i expected).

No one has come to look at our house for nearly two weeks. I'm sick of cleaning it every time we want to go somewhere, just in case a realtor does call. Eli only took a 30 minute nap this morning. Lila said she didn't want to bring her snack and drink out of the car and then decided she was thirsty (and later hungry) almost as soon as we got to the playground. Lila wanted to sit on the bench beside me, rather than playing. I couldn't put Eli on the ground because there were ants. Lila wanted to be pushed on the swings while I was in the middle of giving Eli his snack. Eli spilled water all over himself. Eli fell over my legs and scraped his face on the sidewalk. Lila didn't want to leave the park. I hadn't been dressed for two hours before I had a mysterious substance crusted onto the shoulder of my shirt. Eli fell asleep in the car, just before we made it home to eat lunch. Lila refused to eat because I cut her sandwich into triangles the 'wrong way'. Lila decided she wanted to eat her lunch AFTER quiet time. Lila decided she wanted to eat her lunch BEFORE quiet time. Lila threw a fit when I put her in quiet time. Lila wanted me to bring her books into quiet time, but refused to ask politely. Lila made so much noise with her fit that she woke Eli up from his nap after only 15 minutes or so. Lila finally asked politely for her books, then got angry because I brought her the WRONG Bible. Eli wouldn't go back to sleep (or couldn't because of the continued fit throwing). Lila threw toys against the wall. Lila wouldn't stay in the room. Lila threw more toys. Lila threw books. Eli made a giant mess of me, himself, the high chair, and the table as he ate lunch. I discovered a small hole in one of the two pair of short pants that fit me. The house is still a mess, so we can't go anywhere this afternoon until I get it cleaned up. I'm not going to get any sort of break from the kids because I took away Lila's daily video when she was throwing her fit. I went to tell Lila that her quiet time was over and found that she'd thrown all her toys and books in the floor as well as pulling all the sheets, blankets, and pillows off the bed and throwing them in the floor (then she passsed out on top of the pile, which i have to admit is cute).

What I should be doing right now is waking Lila up so that she doesn't have trouble going to sleep at bedtime, but I decided to type out this post first. I needed to vent and I needed a few more minutes of peace before I wake her up and deal with the drama that is sure to follow. (after all, her lunch is now cold and she doesn't get to watch a video. no good can come of that.)

[sigh]

Have you ever seen a sheep give birth to a cat before?

Pesks

The kids and I just got home from the library. While we were there, Lila was wearing her princess shoes and complaining that they hurt her feet. Once we got in the car, I said to her, "Good. Now you can take those pesky shoes off!"

Her reply: "Why are there pesks all over them?"

Good question, Lila! I don't know.

So Over It

Okay, I cannot believe that it's been two weeks since I posted anything to this blog. Hmm... it's also been about two weeks since our house went on the market. A coincidence? I think not.

I am so over this House-Showing business. I love having a clean house. And it's much easier to keep a house clean than to get it that way. That part is fine. It's the fact that we can't leave the house without it being spotless that I hate, and let me tell you why. My children have radar. They know when I'm trying to clean the house so we can leave and that's when they lose their minds.

It's not just any old cleaning that does this to them. If we have no plans to go anywhere, Eli will play with his toys and let me do house work. But if it's the cleaning that takes place before leaving the house, he has to follow me around and scream bloody murder the whole time. This makes Lila and I both irritable, which leads to confrontations between us and it all goes downhill from there.

Anyone want to put me out of my misery and buy our house? :)

On the Market

As you can see from the modest sign in our front yard, the house is officially on the market. It went on the MLS Saturday and we just had our first people come and view it this afternoon. I was expecting to have to disappear whenever people came, but this realtor insisted that I did not have to leave. I was going to do so anyway, but he called from in front of the house (instead of before they left to come here) and said, "I'm here!"

I'm thinking it's really best for everyone that we not be home for future visitors though. It was just strange. They were being quiet, probably so that we couldn't hear their comments (though they seemed to be speaking another language anyway), and only stayed about five minutes. If I were not here, I would know nothing of this and just be curious. Instead, I'm convinced that the guy hated the house and am obsessing over why. I do NOT need anything new to obsess over!

I was thinking this would be fun - having people come to look at the house. Now I'm thinking it's going to make me crazy until the place sells. Not because I'm worried that it won't sell, but because I'm going to be wondering what it was about my house that each person didn't like. I'm just a little bit of a perfectionist, you know.

Too much.

I am so mentally exhausted that I really don't know what I'm going to say here, but I know I need to give everyone some kind of update! On top of everything that's going on with getting the houses ready to sell, Eli got sick this week. He had a high fever on Monday and Tuesday and spent most of his time laying on one of us or sleeping. His fever went away on Wednesday, but he developed a cough. This morning, I noticed he was wheezing.

I had put off taking him to the doctor because I knew they'd just say he had some virus and there was nothing they could do about it. When the wheezing popped up, that was my signal that it was time to go in just to be sure. So I called and tried to make an appointment for this afternoon, but when they heard that he was wheezing, they wanted me to bring him in immediately. Meanwhile, we were trying to have preschool.

Thankfully, the mommy friend who was here to help with Eli during school volunteered to stay home with her daughter and Lila while we went to the doctor. As expected, they couldn't find anything specific wrong with him and said it's probably a virus. They did hear the wheezing, however, and we did a nebulizer treatment there in the office. That was... exciting.

A few months ago, Eli was sick and needed a few nebulizer treatments, so we rented a machine and it all went fine. He seemed to find the experience relaxing and didn't mind it at all. This time, I had to pin his arms to his sides and hold the mask on his face while he screamed like he was being abused - for 15 minutes!!! Even more exciting, they sent us home with our very own nebulizer and we have to repeat this experience every 4-6 hours for three days.

Yipee. Hooray. And we're still trying to get our house in tip-top shape for showing to prospective buyers. Wow. Neat. And we could have people coming to see it as soon as Sunday. Fantastic. I'm exctatic. And did I mention that I need to go grocery shopping and make a separate trip to the pet store for cat food? -- Oops. I just fainted from excitement...

Brief Update

It's a busy weekend around here. Actually, it's a busy time in general. We decided on a house in South Austin that we all love and are set to close on May 29. That means we are now focused on trying to get our two current houses ready to go on the market. I've been scrubbing our living room from top to bottom for two days. I'm decluttering as I go and the room looks fantastic! I need to remember how much I love this simple, minimalist look when we start decorating the new place. Speaking of the new place, here's a photo!

For a quick Eli update: He's finally crawling! And his top front teeth are juuust about to break through. The downside to this is that he's doing a lot of biting and chewing on things... like, while he's nursing. And he thinks it's quite funny when I yelp in pain and surprise. Little imp!

Okay, back to the living room now...

New Trick

Eli has a new skill! No longer does he flop onto his belly and roll around until he's tired of it, then begin to cry in frustration! Now he very deliberately gets on all fours, lowers himself to his belly, rolls around until he's tired of it, and then pushes himself back into a sitting position (while making so many grunting noises that he sounds like he's in labor)! Hooray!

This morning, we even found him sitting up in bed. I guess it's time to lower that mattress!

He has also started napping for a total of three hours per day, rather than one hour per day. Hot diggity dog! I don't know why, but I'm SO not going to question it! And if the poor child doesn't manage to pop out those top front teeth soon, we may all go insane from the pain of teething. And I'm sure he'll find chewing to be a more satisfying experience once he has teeth on the top and the bottom.

Speaking of naps, why does my body wait until two minutes before Lila's Quiet Time is over before deciding it needs one...?