Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Awesome new toy
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone
For Sale
Two weeks ago we put our house up for sale.
Let me start by saying that I'm not a good housekeeper. At times I'm not even an adequate housekeeper. My house usually contains entirely too much clutter, dust, and more than one article of clothing in the floor that needs to go in the washer.
I've owned this place for seven years and it has never been this clean. I mean it's clean. We rented a storage building and piled it full of excess stuff, including some larger pieces of furniture, to declutter and make the house look bigger. At this point I'm wondering if I can just sell the contents of the storage building and be done with it because the house looks so much better, is so much easier to actually clean, and most of that stuff has been in storage for over a month now and we haven't really missed it (except for the two boxes I had to go retrieve last week). The only thing I'm really missing is my bookshelf, and that's because every time I have a book requested on Paperback Swap I have to dig through a box to find it. This time of year that's an issue. The start of every semester means reading lists that usually put my account on meltdown. But I digress.
We had new carpet installed that I love. We had half the inside of the house painted, which turned into a nightmare. We still haven't finished touching up all the places that the painters either missed, forgot to do, or just made a mess of. It was bad enough we didn't want them coming back to fix it. There are several other repairs that we know need to be done, but I'm thinking they aren't at the top of my list right now, we can do them if requested after home inspection. We're about a year away from needing a roof and I'm ignoring the fact that we've had another foundation shift that needs to be dealt with at some point, but it doesn't seem to be severe yet.
I keep hoping the house will sell quickly, but it's not really an urgent matter. We don't have to move, we just want to. I'm not looking forward to having another mortgage. I am looking forward to an adult sized bathroom. We've found 3 houses that we really liked, two of which have since sold. One is still on the market and just had a price drop, but it had some quirks and I'd like to look at it again and have a foundation report done before we buy it. I know it had a crack but I don't know how bad it is. I can live with a small shift (been living with one for seven years!) but a big one would be expensive. None of which will matter if our house doesn't sell.
We had our first showing this morning. I'm hoping we get some feedback from it because I'm really curious to know how people see it. They certainly can't say it wasn't clean. Small, yes. Old, yes. A bit outdated in places, yes. But it's clean! I'm hoping that at some point, for some buyer, that will be enough.
Let me start by saying that I'm not a good housekeeper. At times I'm not even an adequate housekeeper. My house usually contains entirely too much clutter, dust, and more than one article of clothing in the floor that needs to go in the washer.
I've owned this place for seven years and it has never been this clean. I mean it's clean. We rented a storage building and piled it full of excess stuff, including some larger pieces of furniture, to declutter and make the house look bigger. At this point I'm wondering if I can just sell the contents of the storage building and be done with it because the house looks so much better, is so much easier to actually clean, and most of that stuff has been in storage for over a month now and we haven't really missed it (except for the two boxes I had to go retrieve last week). The only thing I'm really missing is my bookshelf, and that's because every time I have a book requested on Paperback Swap I have to dig through a box to find it. This time of year that's an issue. The start of every semester means reading lists that usually put my account on meltdown. But I digress.
We had new carpet installed that I love. We had half the inside of the house painted, which turned into a nightmare. We still haven't finished touching up all the places that the painters either missed, forgot to do, or just made a mess of. It was bad enough we didn't want them coming back to fix it. There are several other repairs that we know need to be done, but I'm thinking they aren't at the top of my list right now, we can do them if requested after home inspection. We're about a year away from needing a roof and I'm ignoring the fact that we've had another foundation shift that needs to be dealt with at some point, but it doesn't seem to be severe yet.
I keep hoping the house will sell quickly, but it's not really an urgent matter. We don't have to move, we just want to. I'm not looking forward to having another mortgage. I am looking forward to an adult sized bathroom. We've found 3 houses that we really liked, two of which have since sold. One is still on the market and just had a price drop, but it had some quirks and I'd like to look at it again and have a foundation report done before we buy it. I know it had a crack but I don't know how bad it is. I can live with a small shift (been living with one for seven years!) but a big one would be expensive. None of which will matter if our house doesn't sell.
We had our first showing this morning. I'm hoping we get some feedback from it because I'm really curious to know how people see it. They certainly can't say it wasn't clean. Small, yes. Old, yes. A bit outdated in places, yes. But it's clean! I'm hoping that at some point, for some buyer, that will be enough.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
Mystery package
We were driving along today when we saw a UPS truck hauling a little brown UPS trailer behind it. I commented that he must have a lot of extra packages to deliver. Greg said it was probably one extra large package. After a few minutes of quiet thought on the matter Greg said, "Its a hippopotamus."
Me: The package?
Greg: Yep.
Me: A hippo?
Greg: Yep.
Me: I WANT IT!
Me: The package?
Greg: Yep.
Me: A hippo?
Greg: Yep.
Me: I WANT IT!
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Warning
Ok, so I've been thinking that I need to post some of the funny pictures that I spontaneously take of Kaycie doing typically destructive or funny stuff. The thing is, I usually take them with my phone and the quality is pretty terrible. But I'm going to post some anyway. Because she's pretty funny. I send these to Greg most days so he can keep up with what she's doing, why not share some with you too? (And Lauren, if you were my friend on BB messenger I could send these to you, too...) I'm getting a phone upgrade next month, maybe (but most likely not) it will be an improvement in camera quality. But who am I kidding? Next to my Nikon, phone cameras just suck. Anyway, just be aware that there might be some random posts that consist of low quality pictures of my kid doing weird stuff. It's because I'm posting from my phone. Here are a few recent samples:
Practicing for her future blog
Proof that she'll eat anything:
Destructor! But at least she loves books.
Begging for my toast. Who do you think will win?
And by the way, how about that new carpet! Woohoo!
Practicing for her future blog
Proof that she'll eat anything:
Destructor! But at least she loves books.
Begging for my toast. Who do you think will win?
And by the way, how about that new carpet! Woohoo!
9 Months - Time For Change (Updated)
My baby girl has now been my baby girl for as long as I was pregnant with her.
Wow.
Today Kaycie flipped the calendar to 9 months old. We went to her check up and she's been deemed perfectly healthy and a child giant. Her weight didn't go up as much as I thought it would, she was just under 21lbs which puts her in the 85 percentile. That's the first time she's been under the 90th percentile since she was born, and I'm sure all the extra exercise from crawling around looking for trouble helped! She measured in at 30 inches, which was off the chart. Literally, doc said they called it "greater than 95th percentile." That explains the jump to size 18 month pants a couple of weeks ago.
She has done so much in the past month, it's hard to capture it all. She had her first lesson about hats. Hats are defined as anything you can put on your head. She didn't much like her first lesson.
Later lessons went much better. She liked this hat, probably because it matched her outfit so well.
Wow.
Today Kaycie flipped the calendar to 9 months old. We went to her check up and she's been deemed perfectly healthy and a child giant. Her weight didn't go up as much as I thought it would, she was just under 21lbs which puts her in the 85 percentile. That's the first time she's been under the 90th percentile since she was born, and I'm sure all the extra exercise from crawling around looking for trouble helped! She measured in at 30 inches, which was off the chart. Literally, doc said they called it "greater than 95th percentile." That explains the jump to size 18 month pants a couple of weeks ago.
She has done so much in the past month, it's hard to capture it all. She had her first lesson about hats. Hats are defined as anything you can put on your head. She didn't much like her first lesson.
Later lessons went much better. She liked this hat, probably because it matched her outfit so well.
She also had the opportunity to hang out with two of her namesakes, Aunt Kay and Sharonda (also a Kay). I think Kaycie is going to find that she has been named after quite a few amazing women.
Since she's started crawling we have been having all kinds of fun playing chase around the house. Kaycie usually catches me, which means standing up beside me while I'm on my hands and knees, and beating me in the back. I'll cry out, "Attack!" and she'll usually respond with a battle cry of, 'AAAAAHHHH!" It's ridiculously funny.
She is also getting into trouble going and coming. She loves to pull up on things that aren't sturdy and a we've taken a few tumbles. Greg and I have decided that our goal as parents is to keep as much of her blood inside her as possible. I haven't felt like I've done a very good job of that this past month, as she took two spills that resulted in busted lips. The first one was pretty bad, not long after she started pulling up she tried to pull up on our bed by grabbing the sheet, slipped and hit the bed rail with her face. There was much crying and more blood than I care to think about now. I think that was her first lesson that mobility is a dangerous thing. I wish I could protect her better, but she has a little bit of an adventurous spirit that sometimes leads to pulling a side table down on her head. These things are going to happen.
She's also started standing up for several seconds on her own without support. I wonder if I will be writing about her walking in my next update post...
Her favorite toys right now are balls, anything that plays music that she can dance too (that girl LOVES to dance!), the thermostat, light switches, door knobs, and the curtains over the back door which are perfect for peek-a-boo. Her nemesis is wash cloths. She like to bend them to her will then use them as weapons. And of course to play peek-a-boo.
The next few weeks will likely prove to be a challenge for us all. She's still not sleeping well most night and that's going to have to change. We're going back to gremlin rules - no feeding after midnight. She's not going to like it, since she's been having a mid morning snack between 1 and 4am most mornings. Doc said it time for her to suck it up, in part because it's time to lose the bottle. Kaycie is very attached to her bottle. Like, time for a 12 step program attached. So as we move her off formula and onto milk over the next few weeks we're also moving her off the bottle and onto a sippy. She's been drinking water from a sippy with her meals for a couple of months and likes it fine, but it's not her bottle and she doesn't usually drink as much from it as she will a bottle. I don't know how she will take to milk - she's been on soy formula because she had a lot of tummy issues with milk early on - but we're will be finding out tomorrow morning. Hopefully it'll work out fine and we can expand her diet to include all kinds of fun dairy. She needs to have some ice cream! And mac and cheese, and just plain cheese, and yogurt... So many new things waiting for her. Oh, and she's pretty much done with baby food. She's a big girl, she wants to feed herself things like carrot sticks and diced fruit and sweet potato chunks and my toast. I can't imagine how I'll get enough food in her to survive once we're done with formula. It takes her forever to eat!
I can't believe the first time I posted this I forgot to mention her four new teeth, all of which arrived within 48 hours of each other. And her doc said she thinks a couple more are on their way. Don't kids start popping teeth out without even thinking about it at some point? Let's hope so, because Kaycie will have a mouth full in about a week at this rate. AND didn't mention that she's finally started babbling. She was down with the "ma-ma-ma" a couple of weeks ago, but then she learned the "bwa-bwa-bwa" and the "ma-ma-ma" was so last week. I've been desperately trying to get her to do the "da-da-da' but she's not into that yet.
For the record, I went back and updated that last paragraph (twice) not because I really think anybody cares, but because this is my record of her progress, and the way I'm keeping up with all the new things she's learning. I usually do these later at night after she's in bed, so I'm exhausted and forget a lot. When I think of important things later, I'll go back and add them for my own record.
Finally, I have about a dozen posts I want to do about things that are pretty much not at all related to Kaycie, things like trying to sell our house and the crazy things related to that. Things like the fact that she's napping well enough for me to be reading some great books again. Things like the fact that my parents bought a motor home, and I think that's awesome. Things like the fact that I've been off my ADD meds for two years now and how I'm managing. Things like how we're certifiably insane for planning a trip to Disney World for Kaycie's first birthday (we're soooo taking a set a grandparents!). I need to make a point, at least once a week, to reserve a nap time to sit and write. I miss blogging so much, but it's habit that it's too easy to fall out of when you're not sitting at a desk at work all day! =)
I can't leave a Kaycie update post with that, so instead I'll leave with one of my favorite pics of the past month. She's almost perfected her pitiful:
She is also getting into trouble going and coming. She loves to pull up on things that aren't sturdy and a we've taken a few tumbles. Greg and I have decided that our goal as parents is to keep as much of her blood inside her as possible. I haven't felt like I've done a very good job of that this past month, as she took two spills that resulted in busted lips. The first one was pretty bad, not long after she started pulling up she tried to pull up on our bed by grabbing the sheet, slipped and hit the bed rail with her face. There was much crying and more blood than I care to think about now. I think that was her first lesson that mobility is a dangerous thing. I wish I could protect her better, but she has a little bit of an adventurous spirit that sometimes leads to pulling a side table down on her head. These things are going to happen.
She's also started standing up for several seconds on her own without support. I wonder if I will be writing about her walking in my next update post...
Her favorite toys right now are balls, anything that plays music that she can dance too (that girl LOVES to dance!), the thermostat, light switches, door knobs, and the curtains over the back door which are perfect for peek-a-boo. Her nemesis is wash cloths. She like to bend them to her will then use them as weapons. And of course to play peek-a-boo.
The next few weeks will likely prove to be a challenge for us all. She's still not sleeping well most night and that's going to have to change. We're going back to gremlin rules - no feeding after midnight. She's not going to like it, since she's been having a mid morning snack between 1 and 4am most mornings. Doc said it time for her to suck it up, in part because it's time to lose the bottle. Kaycie is very attached to her bottle. Like, time for a 12 step program attached. So as we move her off formula and onto milk over the next few weeks we're also moving her off the bottle and onto a sippy. She's been drinking water from a sippy with her meals for a couple of months and likes it fine, but it's not her bottle and she doesn't usually drink as much from it as she will a bottle. I don't know how she will take to milk - she's been on soy formula because she had a lot of tummy issues with milk early on - but we're will be finding out tomorrow morning. Hopefully it'll work out fine and we can expand her diet to include all kinds of fun dairy. She needs to have some ice cream! And mac and cheese, and just plain cheese, and yogurt... So many new things waiting for her. Oh, and she's pretty much done with baby food. She's a big girl, she wants to feed herself things like carrot sticks and diced fruit and sweet potato chunks and my toast. I can't imagine how I'll get enough food in her to survive once we're done with formula. It takes her forever to eat!
I can't believe the first time I posted this I forgot to mention her four new teeth, all of which arrived within 48 hours of each other. And her doc said she thinks a couple more are on their way. Don't kids start popping teeth out without even thinking about it at some point? Let's hope so, because Kaycie will have a mouth full in about a week at this rate. AND didn't mention that she's finally started babbling. She was down with the "ma-ma-ma" a couple of weeks ago, but then she learned the "bwa-bwa-bwa" and the "ma-ma-ma" was so last week. I've been desperately trying to get her to do the "da-da-da' but she's not into that yet.
For the record, I went back and updated that last paragraph (twice) not because I really think anybody cares, but because this is my record of her progress, and the way I'm keeping up with all the new things she's learning. I usually do these later at night after she's in bed, so I'm exhausted and forget a lot. When I think of important things later, I'll go back and add them for my own record.
Finally, I have about a dozen posts I want to do about things that are pretty much not at all related to Kaycie, things like trying to sell our house and the crazy things related to that. Things like the fact that she's napping well enough for me to be reading some great books again. Things like the fact that my parents bought a motor home, and I think that's awesome. Things like the fact that I've been off my ADD meds for two years now and how I'm managing. Things like how we're certifiably insane for planning a trip to Disney World for Kaycie's first birthday (we're soooo taking a set a grandparents!). I need to make a point, at least once a week, to reserve a nap time to sit and write. I miss blogging so much, but it's habit that it's too easy to fall out of when you're not sitting at a desk at work all day! =)
I can't leave a Kaycie update post with that, so instead I'll leave with one of my favorite pics of the past month. She's almost perfected her pitiful:
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