It's Ugly Here

There is a lot of anger living in our house. We all seem to have anger issues. Peanut is 3 so you can understand he has a million things wrong or at least thinks he does. Of course, 99% of that is easily fixed. Thumper (who will now be known as SweetFace or SF) is 6 months so there are a few things that anger him. Mostly he wants to eat and we can't get the food in his mouth fast enough. Or, like tonight, he backed himself under the coffee table and got stuck again. These are also easily fixes. No, it's the anger that Husband and I carry that is the issue.

We aren't connecting like we used to. I guess kids does that to a couple, but I'm not sure how to get over it. We spend so much time getting from one tantrum to the next until bedtime, that we are both wiped out. Then we spend the evening/night doing all the things that need to be done. Babysitters are hard to find (and afford) so we don't go out much. At one point we each had a night off to go out, alone. Even that has been reduced to a couple of hours. Husband goes to his study group one night and school another. I play volleyball and have a study group. Both of those last 2-3 hours. I don't think it's enough for either of us.

I'm tired of pretending it's OK when I hear yelling in the house. I'm tired of making Husband feel bad when I call him out on anger issues. Yes, I'm sure it makes him feel bad, but am I not supposed to step in? I'm tired of pretending it doesn't bother me just to keep the peace. Mostly, I'm tired.

I love being a mom and I have two great kids, but I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the all the time-ness that seems to have taken over. I haven't had a haircut in a salon in over a year. My sister cut it 6 months ago, but it needs professional help now. I haven't gone out to do it because I hate asking Husband to watch this kids. I know he has a rough time and gets angry. So instead I just stay home. Perhaps the hour or two for volleyball and the 2-3 hours for study group is enough to ask him to watch them. It's easier for Husband to go out. It seems like when he gets time off it's a lot of time. I hate to keep score, but when he goes out he doesn't have to take a child with him (though he usually does take Peanut when he can). I usually do have to take SF. Otherwise I have to be back every 3-4 hours to feed him or use the milk in the freezer thus confirming no babysitter since there would be no milk.

On top of all of this I think we lost the baby pictures of SF. I can't find anything earlier than two months. It's bad enough he has second child syndrome and there are hardly any pictures of him, but now we have nothing. It makes me sick to think of it.

So right now it's not pretty here. The stress is getting to me. I'm tired.

Merry Christmas

Loads of Random

We've lived in our house for one year. We made the offer on July 4th and closed on my birthday. Then we moved in two days later. One month later I got pregnant. In the following months we've slowly painted and re-painted a few rooms. There is still a lot to do, but a couple rooms look pretty good. None of them are totally finished, but look nice enough for now. Maybe if I had mucho money to spend we could finish the decorating in a flash. I'm going as fast as the budget allows (which is pretty slow). That's ok. It gives me time to think of what I really want.

Why do smokers wear seat belts? Does anyone else think that's weird? Smoking slowly kills you whereas a car crash could kill you instantly. Are they afraid to die fast? I believe smoking causes cancer and other bad stuff to infect your body. Smoking will kill you. Sure, it's not immediate and some will argue that you will die anyway (although sooner if you ask me). A car crash would probably kill you pretty fast if not instantly. So smokers are ok with dying a slow cancer death but not a quick car crash death. Go figure.

I'm going to the dentist on Friday. I hate the dentist. Sure, I've never been to this one, but I already hate it. They clean your teeth and tell you how awful you are at taking care of your teeth. I do the best I can. Yes, I could do better, but I don't. So please don't make me feel bad about it. Just fix me up and send me on my way. Oh and could you just knock me out while you do the work? That would be fantastic.

My boys are growing so fast. Peanut will be three soon! It occurred to me he will be moving to a new room at daycare. He'll have a new teacher and be with new friends. Of course he has to be potty trained first, but I think that will happen soon enough. I hope he copes ok. Some of the kids in the 3's room he already knows from when they were in the 2's room. I'm not sure I can handle it.

The baby is growing fast too. I looked at him today while he was asleep on my lap. His head is enormous. I can't believe he is almost 3 month old. Where is time going?

My sister scored a couple of painting jobs. I do hope I can work some. I think it will be hard with the baby, but he does nap. Part of me doesn't want to work while he naps since that is my time. Making money seems like a pretty good motivator to do something though.

My cleaning service accidentally ditched me. I got a letter saying they were sorry I left when actually I never left. I told them to forget it. To me good customer service is making me feel like I'm the only customer regardless of how many they actually have. The gal started talking about how she has so many customers she can't keep track of them. Well, now she has one less. Apparently two less since some other person did cancel. She try too hard to get us back either. She said they could still come, but didn't offer to make it up to us in any way. I thought a little discount or something wouldn't have hurt them at all, but whatever. Saving the money is fine with me. We'll either find someone else or I'll try to get my butt in gear and do that on top of everything else.

Speaking of everything else...I've been doing the washing, folding and putting away laundry, loading and unloading the dishwasher, washing the other dishes by hand and putting them away, going to the grocery store, planning and fixing meals, generally cleaning up as well as trying to sort through the disaster that is the office and oh yeah, raising two children. Could I get a bit of appreciation? I'm feeling a bit overlooked. I think some of that comes from my sister. She asked me to help her design her daughters new room and I gave ideas and made drawings. She didn't really appreciate anything I did. Eventually, I sort of backed away. I wanted to help and be a part of it, but I also wanted to not be taken advantage of. So it's done or at least getting there. Some of it is how I suggested, but most of it is how her mother wanted it. So much for doing something the daughter wanted.

I've wrenched my back. I was on the couch and stood up with the baby and then it was stiff. It hurts to move. Guess I better figure out what medicine I can take. At this point I need a heavy dose of something.

Summer is almost over. I think we did what we could to enjoy it. Sometimes I think we stayed at home too much, but we made it to the pool quite a bit and did have some fun. Having a baby takes a couple options out of your life, but we tried to just incorporate him when we could.

I'm also attempting to sew again. I'm making new bedding for the baby. I've bought the fabric and I'm trying to sew a bumper pad and bed skirt with only the existing ones as a pattern. This should be interesting. I'll try to post a picture when they are done. If they are ever done that is.

I'm going to try to make this for a party this weekend.

Clean it Up

So even though I'm not working and we bought a house, had a baby and bought a new AC all in the last year, we hired a cleaning service. See, with the new baby I wasn't getting any cleaning done. We put it off thinking we would get to it eventually. Months later (Eww, I know!) we still haven't gotten to it. Something about a constantly crying two year old, a breastfeeding newborn, grass that refuses to stop growing and just look pretty, an MBA to get and oh yeah, a full time job just makes it difficult to find time for anything else. I keep thinking 'this will be the weekend we get something done' and each weekend we do not get anything done.

To help with the dirty house part I hired someone to clean my house. It's pretty expensive, but about average as far as cost goes. It's a luxury I'm willing to spring for, for at least a little while. It's wonderful to have the bathrooms clean and the floors mopped. I only wish they came more often. So far it's every two weeks, but that is way better than what I'd be doing.

Some days I think I would really like to go back to work. Partly for extra money and partly for some 'me' time. Once the little one is a bit older I may try my hand at something part time. I really want to nurse him for about a year and I figure I may as well stay home and enjoy everything in that time. Our daycare doesn't take kids until one year anyway so I'm in no hurry.

Geez! It's July.

Our AC went out. It is totally dead. We spent last night with all the windows open and several fans going. I won't say it was pleasant, but it was OK. Today was fine since the weather was cooler. We keep the lights off and the fans going and that makes a huge difference. Someone is coming tomorrow to install a new one. The stupid thing is we haven't even lived here a year and the thing was new just before we moved in. It's not even a year old and it died.

In other news, Peanut is becoming more testy. He tries at every moment to get away with things he knows are wrong. He is hitting more, yelling more and all around being testy. We're trying to be patient since we just brought home a little brother and all, but come on already. Plus we realize he is two and that's what they do. Still. It would be nice to not have a half dozen time outs during a day.

The baby is doing well. He's growing like a weed. We go for our first check on Monday so we'll see where we are on the charts. I think it will be just like Peanut and he will plot his own line in space. What is in my milk anyway? I should bottle it and send it to starving countries. Forget oatmeal and rice, have some fattening milk.

Thumpity Thump Thump

Thumper has been at it for almost 3 days now. It's hard to sleep. On one hand it's wonderful to know the baby is in there and doing good, but on the other hand it's starting to make me ill. Sea sickness maybe? The constant rolling, flipping and kicking stops only when Peanut tries to feel it. He's not all that gentle though. His idea of putting a hand on my belly is playing a bongo drum. Thumper does not like that.

Husband was away for a week and I really took a relaxed approach to parenting. I enjoyed my child. So now that he is back we're trying to find a balance between letting Peanut get away with everything and being parental rulers. I've let certain things slide, but the basic rules are still there. He still gets punished for hitting, kicking etc.

I think Husband has a hard time with parenting by the seat of your pants. He would like there to be rules for handling every situation. He wants bedtime to be 8:00 and not a minute later. I'm more flexible. There are no rules for every situation. As parents you deal with what comes. Sometimes when the next situation comes you are better prepared, but the same answer might not fix the new problem. I do stick to a bedtime, but I can also tell when he just isn't ready or is ready earlier. Putting him to bed when he is ready makes it much easier.

We've also stopped pushing. At nap time and bed time I would sit and steam because he wouldn't go to sleep. Well, now I kiss him and leave. Most times he talks for a while and goes to sleep, but only occasionally does he get up. Nap time is hard still because unless he is dead tired and I stay with him he won't sleep. I sit quietly in the chair in his room and he wiggles and talks for a bit. For the last week he has given up after 20 minutes or so. Yesterday, not so much. Though he was like the walking dead tired he wouldn't sleep. He did go to bed early though.

Trying to start a business with my sister. Might work out ok, but we're running into some issues. The biggest being my pregnancy. I can't do much and won't be able to do much even after baby is here. She seems to think otherwise. We need to sit and talk about it, again. I brought up all the issues she's talking about now a few weeks ago. She didn't seem to see a problem then, but now that's it could mean less money for her she is concerned. Oh well. I'm sure we'll either work it out or go our own ways. She can do the work and keep all the money, but she better not expect me to help unless she is going to compensate me fairly.

I think in her mind she wants to use me as a daycare, but since I'm family she doesn't want to pay me much. In my mind I think if it's just babysitting once in a while that's fine, but if it's true all day care, feeding them and taking them to activities I should get paid daycare rates. Once baby is here I don't want to care for 4 children all day long. Especially, when two of them have activities three days a week to go to. I'm not taking a baby out and about that much. Plus...I just don't want to. So anyway, we'll get it figured out.

Trying to get my house in order. I still have several weeks, but I'm feeling the urge to get things done while I can still move around. I wish I had a little more energy though.

So Much To Do

I would like to get some decorating done here at the Mutt house. I'm not feeling very inspirational. It's very easy for me to go to another house and design a pretty good looking room. Doing that for myself is hard. I know what colors I like, but I want all the rooms in the house to get along. In our old house the majority of the rooms were some shade of purple and/or green except the office. It was blue.

I see lots of houses on decorator shows and they all look like the whole house was planned, not just one room at a time. Does that make sense? Even though I'll work on one room at a time, I want the house house to be one gorgeous unit. I'm having trouble planning that. How much does a decorator cost? Can I get someone to come in and just give me advice? That would be great.

Meanwhile, screamfest is happening in Peanuts room. Again. Nap time has not been going well. For the last several weeks it's taken him over an hour to fall asleep. I've tried several methods, going in and soothing him, snuggling with him, leaving him to cry it out and they don't seem to work. Yesterday after listening to him for two hours I went to his room (furious), plucked him out of the crib and put him on the floor. I said "do whatever you want." I went downstairs and watched TV. He stayed in his room for an hour and a half reading. He went through nearly every book on the shelf, but he stayed in his room and he was fairly quiet.

Today, we are back to screaming. It's only been 22 minutes. Jeez that annoys the life out of me listening to him scream. It's not a crying scream, it's yelling mommy over and over. Gah. I know it's selfish, but I need the break from him. I need him to nap so I can re-charge for a bit. Even though he isn't in my line of sight, hearing him scream doesn't really let me charge anything.

I'm still in the throws of all day sickness. It doesn't seem as bad, but I'm still very gaggy? Is that a word? Food really sound good, but after about three bites I can't seem to eat any more. It's sad. We went out the other night and I had really good steak and seafood, but couldn't eat much. I brought home the leftovers, but same story. It would be nice if I could actually chow down for a bit.

It's been quiet for a whole minute. Do I dare get my hopes up? Nah. I'll just keep reading and hope for the best.

Barbies New House

This is my new house. It's on a quiet street with nice neighbors. You can see the huge trees that line the back yard. When we are in the back yard or look out the back we feel like we're in the country. Since our street is curved the neighbor's houses are angled away and harder to see unless you are all the way in front or back.

So far things are going well. I'm hoping once we get pictures on the wall and such that it will feel more like home. It's definitely our house, but it's not quite my home yet. Make any sense? I'll post more pictures when it gets more organized.

It has four bedrooms upstairs so Peanut gets his own room and if we ever have the sequel he/she can have his/her own room too. The laundry is up there too. There is also a full basement with a full bathroom, storage area and wet bar. Our awesome friends J&A bought us a bar fridge for a housewarming gift. Cool. Things are starting to get where they should be, but it's taking a while.

Downright Neighborly

So we moved into out new house eight days ago. Yesterday evening during a walk with Husband and I asked about being neighborly. At the old house when we moved in one set of neighbors brought us treats. When we got new neighbors earlier this year we took over a pan of krispy treats. So after being here a week and not getting anything more than a hello from the neighbors I asked if people did that anymore. Husband thought maybe it was a lost polite act or people are too busy with work and kids in school. Oh well.

Then tonight we got home around 8:45pm and as we were getting Peanut ready for bed the doorbell rang. Fairly odd since we don't know many folks around here yet. One of the neighbors across the street brought us cookies. Our faith in nice neighbors has been restored. I guess they were letting us get settled a bit first. Either way, it made us feel special.

Do you think she heard me talking to Husband?

You Sell One, You Buy One

I don't want to jinx anything, but here goes. Please knock some wood before reading on.

We've sold our house and better still, we've bought a new one. There is still time for things to go wrong, but all in all it seems like a pretty done deal on both accounts.

The offer on our house was made on June 24th. We had an open house and a couple came and loved the house. By Wednesday it was all worked out. Now we're just waiting to close on it. Oh yah, and we still need to move out.

We bought our house on July 4th. I saw it the Monday before and took husband to look at it on the 4th. We both love it so we made an offer. Later that day the owners made a counter offer we accepted and now we're waiting on this one too.

Our new house is wonderful. I'm so excited about it. It is a huge step up from this one and this one isn't all that bad. The new yard is at least twice as big with trees in the back. It has a pretty nice deck too. The bedrooms are all upstairs as well as the laundry. It has a den in addition to the bedrooms so we don't have to give up a bedroom for our office. The basement is finished and is a walk-out. There is also a built in wet bar area. Perfect.

There are things I'd like to do to fix it up a bit, but we'll have to wait for time and money to do that. First things will be painting a little and decorating. We plan to be here while the kids go to school up to high school. Since Peanut is our only right now and he isn't even two yet, we plan to be here a while.

Even though it felt like our house was for sale forever, it wasn't all that bad. It went relatively fast for such a flooded market. We feel very lucky to have a buyer. I'm not sure I want to re-live this anytime soon, but it wasn't too bad.

So now we will be busy packing and saving all our money for the new house. I'm so excited!

The Letter 'S'

Snakes: Two. Caught. In our yard! Husband is my hero. He caught them both. One was living in a wood pile in our back yard. Moved the wood, caught a snake. This one was pretty little. The other was living in the tree right in front of our garage. It was on the tree soaking up sun. This one was bigger. Both were kept safe in a pillow case, shown to the neighbors, then released miles away from here. Bye bye.

Sleaze: The jerk at the car dealer thought he could get away with a tricky move. He offered an extended warranty with stain protection (for all the interior fabric as well as ding protection for the exterior) for x dollars. We agreed. When we read through the contract the next day we realized he charged us the same x dollars PLUS $700 for the protection plan. Hello. We went back today and re-did everything. We still paid x for the warranty, but they took off the 700 and gave us the interior protection for free. I guess they were pretty annoyed with us by the end of it, but if they had done what they promised we wouldn't have had any trouble.

Salesman: Our sales guy (K) was nice. He was very new, but nice and helpful. The other guy (J) 'helping' our sales guy was the definition of car salesman. J was friendly in a jerky way and tried to tell us what we wanted and get us out. We left. Without a car. Then came back and dealt with K. They have a cooler of water bottles to give to customers for free. J asked if we wanted anything. I asked for a soda (the planet dealer gives you soda) and he said "we don't have any, it's just water." OK. Except when I said something to K, he directed me to the repair shop where there is a vending machine. Why couldn't J have said that? K paid for my soda and a candy bar.

Stop it: Peanut has to stop being so helpless. He will drop something and it will be just out of reach. Tears. He can't seem to just reach out two inches and pick it up. The World has ended. I know he is still very young, but he knows how to ask for a snack or drink. Why will he not do this? It's frustrating.

Super: My new van. It's beautiful blue and drives nice. I'm nervous as heck driving it that someone will smash into me. I think this will work out just fine. I kind of miss our other car, but this will grow with our family if we someday choose to grow.

Sucks: The house is still for sale. We haven't had many lookers either. I know with the holidays it's bad timing, but if people need/want a house then it shouldn't matter. We're giving it another couple weeks and then our realtor needs to do something to get some folks looking at it.

Supervision: The dog is in trouble for digging up my landscaping the same night I got it finished. As far as I know the other dog is innocent. Trouble is no longer allowed to be free in the yard without someone out there with her to supervise.

Super Hero: Husband has been a real man lately. He wrangled two snakes, and caught two in our yard. Get it? The first two are the jerks at the dealer. Ha. Anyway, he's been great and deserves a cookie.

Day 22 and The Circle of Life

So it's day 22 of the house for sale. No showings this week. Hello. If you live near me and want a house, ours is fabulous. Really. Come by and then come buy. I think we are waiting for that one person out there currently living in an apartment to buy a house. Then those people will buy and those people will buy and so on. The chain must start. Then our house will sell. Or I'll go crazy, one of the two.

Did you also know we are selling our Vue? Yah. Sort of just decided on that. It's fine, but we could get a good deal on (are you ready for this?) a mini-van. I know. If we have another kid we'll need the space. Two adults, two kids and two semi-big dogs. There is no room. So we're trying to get all we can out of it. So come by and buy our Vue, then fall in love with the house and buy that too. Hey, what more could anyone want? A new house and a new car. Fabulous.

So, in an effort to spruce up the house I planted some grass seed. We have a few bare spots in the yard and I am attempting to fill them in. You might want to peruse the previous post about my green thumb (not) to decide how this will turn out. Anyway, I was outside watering some of the spots when a young bird came crashing/flying out of a nest not two feet above me. This spot was under a tree. So teen bird goes flopping across the street trying to get the flying thing down. It's sort of walking, flopping, kind of flying down the street. Then. The neighbors cat comes out. These cats go out of the house and just stay in the front yard. Weird. Anyway, the cat starts to chase the bird. I briefly thought of going after them and chasing the cat away. Then I realized it was the circle of life. I had to leave. I don't know if the cat got the bird or not. It was starting to fly a little, but couldn't go far. The cat was on the chase. I felt awful. If I hadn't been watering, the bird wouldn't have left at that moment and the cat wouldn't have chased the bird, possibly catching it, but who knows. Of course, it could have just been time.

Wanted: Green Thumb

I went to the Home a De po today to work on landscaping. The house looks OK from the front, but the back yard is a little plain. I was overwhelmed to say the least. Did you know there are like 4,983 types of soil? I did not. There are also an equal number of fertilizers, plants, flowers, stepping stones, edging options and pots to put said plants in. I had to go home.

After eating lunch and thinking it through I went back. I purchased several pots of various shape and size, a bag of soil (the one the clerk suggested) and a handful of flowers (mostly purple since I like that color). I planted all the flowers and at least today they look lovely. How long do those things last? Oh well. There were a few other things purchased, but I didn't get to those little projects.

The dogs are not helping the yard situation. One or both of them keeps digging little holes. It looks like we have a groundhog or something. They also run through and and lay in the plants. At some point we'll have to contain them or block off the plants.

All in all I enjoyed the day. The sun was out, but it wasn't too hot. Peanut was at daycare so I didn't have to worry about him for the day. I can't say things are fabulous, but at least I had an OK day. Although, there is one thing that did try to spoil my day. There is a snake living in our yard. It was sunbathing in the front yard this morning and it was in the back yard later on. Ew. The neighbors boys have offered to catch it if I can spot it while they are home. That's the trick. Between school and work they aren't home much. Maybe I'll get lucky and they will catch my critter. Again. Ew.

One Week

So the house has been officially for sale for over a week. There have been no official showings, but a few people came to an open house yesterday. So far, this sucks. The house has stayed pretty clean and neat, but I'm disappointed we haven't sold it already. I know it's a lot to ask for, but why not?

Before we actually put it on the market I had dreams of it selling the first day. You always hear stories of "it was only on the market 3 days". Why can't that be us? So then it rained. For days upon days. No one seems to want to look at or buy a house in the rain. Last weekend were a lot of graduation days and next weekend is Mother's Day (Happy M Day to everyone!) after that is Memorial Weekend. Bah!! I hope this gets better. What if it never sells? Is it over-priced? Is it nice enough? Why is no one in love with it like I was six years ago?

On the flip side is the new house situation. I haven't looked to seriously, but I've gone to several open model homes and a few 'lived in' homes. There have not been any that I've fallen in love with. There are a few I like, but none I love. Maybe we should design our own house. Maybe we should try to find the land we want and build on that. I don't know. It's exciting and fun and stressful all in one minute.

In other news we went on a mini-vacation. We flew to Texas for a long weekend with family and it was very nice. Peanut did fantastic the whole time. Sure he cried a little during the landing of the first flight. I think it was more because we made him sit down in the seat than he was scared or anything. The flight back was pretty good too. Like I said, he was terrific.

House 4 Sale

Last night our house became officially for sale. The paperwork was signed and the sign went up in the yard. For some reason is doesn't appear to be on-line yet, but I hope that is fixed soon.

There are days I feel quite torn about this decision. On one hand I do want a different house and being close to family and friends will be nice. On the other hand, this is our first house. This is where we lived shortly after getting married. This is where we were when I got pregnant and had our first child. This is Peanut's only home. I feel sentimental towards this house. Plus we have quite awesome neighbors and we are sad to leave them.

The house could be for sale for a long time. I hope it sells soon because keeping it neat and clean with a 1 1/2 year old is not easy. Every where I look there seem to be more and more houses for sale. I hope we aren't too late and the market is getting flooded with houses. This is such a stressful adventure. At least the house is clean and neat. It looks pretty good. Why didn't we do all this 5 years ago? Seems dumb to wait until you sell your house to fix it up. We are vowing to not do that in the next one. I'm not sure everything will get fixed up the day we move in, but maybe we can keep it a little more organized.

So I hope to keep this updated as we go along our real estate journey. Please wish speedy sale thoughts to us.