Moments around the house

Big blue eyes enjoying some banana bread batter:

Very intently helping Daddy assemble the new stools:

The results of letting a two-year-old dress herself: (Easter dress + Arielle socks + jelly shoes = awesome.) Her quote as she shows off her get-up: "NOW I'm ready for a good day."  Yes honey, now you are.

And one pictoral installment of good new/bad news...

The Good News:  We've collected quite a fun assortment of outdoor toys now that we have our own yard!

The Bad News:  Toys aren't the only things in piles around the house. One day we're hoping our dining room will actually be a dining room and all these pictures will eventually find a home on the walls instead of on the table.

All-in-all, "the new normal" is starting to take shape around the new house. We're almost to the "one month in" mark. 
BIG plans this weekend with Tia, Tio, Lyla, Grandma & DD all staying here for the long weekend. We're soooo excited for our first houseguests!  (And hope they don't mind a few piles, a few ants, and a houseful of curtains that still haven't been hemmed.) 

Some Before & After Shots

Okay, as promised...here are a few before & after shots. Fortunately, most of the "real work" on the house was done before we moved in. It's just been up to us to convert it from bachelor-pad "flip" house to a home for our family.  No surprise, we tackled Josie's rooms first.

Josie's Bathroom - Before, then After:

The playroom - Before & After shots (from roughly the same angles):

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Josie's Bedroom - Before & After shots:
(These are the most dramatic because we had the walls painted lilac - including the fireplace which was crumbling when we arrived.)

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I promise more photos are coming.  We're really starting to get settled in, so it's much easier to post pics now that there aren't boxes everywhere.

Little earthquakes

There's no better way to put it - sometimes I have to just be gentle with myself and remember that I've been through a helluva lot in the last year.  So, this morning when a seemingly minor thing sent me into quite a downward spiral, I just have to remember where I've been and let myself go back to grief for a little while.  It was as simple as a trip to the dentist.  And I hadn't even remembered that I wasn't able to have xrays when I was there last because I was newly pregnant.  And it was the realization on their faces when they checked my chart, did the quick math and realized something didn't add up.  And that's when I realized I would've been somewhere around 6 months pregnant right now...

The good and the bad...

The Good News: I found my camera and took some pictures around the house.
The Bad News: The pics haven't made it from the camera to the computer yet so you're going to all have to wait a few more days. 

The Good News: We have a kitchen table! Hip, Hip, Hooray!
The Bad News: Our kitchen has been invaded by ants - a whole team of teeny, tiny, nothing-will-phase-them little boogers.  If any of you have any ideas (short of fumigating the whole house since we're not so into that idea), please send them my way.  Obviously, they're a big deal around here if one of the first things Josie said to our new neighbors was "We have ants in our kitchen, and they are freaking my mom out!"

The Good News:  We're finally starting to get settled.  I even ordered curtains!
The Bad News: Not a single window in this house is standard-sized. This means there will be no store-bought blinds, shades, etc.  This is going to mean a lot more hemming that I'd like to do and a much bigger financial investment than we'd like to spend.

The Good News: Josie is doing better every day.
The Bad News: Supernanny Carissa has been out of commission for two weeks and while her fill-in Lauren is awesome, all this deviation from her normal routine is really taking its toll on all of us.

The Good News: I've realized the need to be more patient with J as she works through this massive transition.
The Bad News: We had a twenty minute stand-off on the stairs today. (She is tired of marching up & down them and wants to be carried.)  It ended in lots of tears on both sides. That girl just won't back down. One day I will totally admire her for this quality, but today - not so much. 

The Good News: We have this whole weekend to buckle down and get this place in shape.
The Bad News: We have to wait a WHOLE WEEK more until the Austins & the grandparents show up. We are so excited to have our first guests, and Josie asks every night if tomorrow is the day they are coming.

The Good News: We caved and got "fancy cable" complete with DVR and on-demand.  (We had basic cable only at the condo, no box.)
The Bad News: There are about a thousand different things Lou could be watching on TV right now and for whatever reason, he picked "Weird Science" (which I just realized was - gasp - originally released 25 years ago!!!)

Pics coming this weekend. I promise. :)

Tales of Toddlerhood

We've been feeling pretty good about the fact that we've gotten through 2 years and 9 months without even the faintest hint of "the terrible twos."  We personally think that much of the "conventional wisdom" about parenting is a bunch of hooey, so we made a conscious decision early on not to buy into much of it just because "everyone" believes that's the way things are and things have to be.
For obvious reasons (new house, new babysitter while Carissa's out of town, etc), Josie has really been testing us lately.  But a little incident yesterday revealed that it really isn't about "bad" behavior, it's about truly trying to figure out the world and definitely just repeating back to us what we have modeled for her.  (After all, should a parent be surprised if an angry child raises his/her voice when an angry parent does exactly the same?)
Anyway, here's what happened...
We had exactly 20 minutes to get to the (recently discovered, awesome, peanut-free) coffee shop and back home in time for the HVAC guy to arrive. (Did I mention it's been about 95 degrees around here & our AC broke?!)  20 minutes should've been more than enough time because it is literally 3 blocks away - and we drove to ensure we'd be gone 10 minutes tops.  Long story short, I think Josie definitely sensed we were in a hurry & that just created chaos.  I've never seen her move more slowly. (Or maybe I have & I just noticed it because her speed wasn't in line with what I needed.)  So, we had our coffee and milk, she enjoyed her very first brownie (peanut-free assured) and we headed back to the car with about 12 minutes to spare.  About 11 minutes later, she STILL wouldn't get into her carseat.  She had pulled every trick in the book - the limp noodle, the "plank" pose, etc.  Clearly, I was getting very frustrated.  Even more clearly, Josie realized that. And here's what she said...
"Mommy, you REALLY need to be more patient.  I'll get into my carseat when I'm ready to get into my carseat."
Seriously? Yup.  And she was right. 
Sure, there are times (including this one) when I really did need her to listen and do something right then & there. We were going to be LATE.  But, my realization was that it was pretty unreasonable for me to expect her to be in a hurry just because I was.  After all, if I had just waited until after the HVAC guy arrived, then we could've had a perfectly-mellow trip to the coffee shop without all the fuss. 
And, since kids are little parrots, I feel pretty proud that she calmly reminded me to be more patient because that's a little evidence that this is what we've inadvertently taught her through our own example.

Now, I'm not trying to prop myself here. Because I was *steaming* when this all happened. Rather, this is a reminder to myself that I do need to be more patient. Even when (just this morning) our little lady stripped down completely naked in protest on the stairs because I wanted her to walk down them herself instead of being carried.  (Truthfully, I'm still trying to figure out the parenting lesson in that one...)

Our New Nest

Just came across the picture of the (vacated) nest we found in the yard as we were clearing out some weeds. What a nice way to be welcomed to our new nest by finding this one!

Throwing in the trowel...

"Gardening requires lots of water - 

most of it in the form of perspiration."  

~Lou Erickson~

Okay.  Guilty! We did it. We caved and hired a crew to come & get our yard into shape. It took exactly 8 days for us to admit that we were way in over our heads with all the overgrown plants, shrubs, trees & flowers and that they would quickly strangle us like stinkweed if we didn't bring in the pros. As I type, I can hear the whizzz and whirrrr of mowers, trimmers, weed-whackers and pure manpower drifting up from the yard.  They've been at it for 5 hours now and are about half-way to "that will do."  I have no doubt it will take months to get our yard into a place we can truly enjoy and years to get it to the yard and gardens of our dreams.  So, this is me admitting defeat - although feeling quite proud of myself for knowing when it was for me to wave the white flag.  In the end, I think we'll be much happier with the yard if we get to know it in small steps, over time.  There's a good chance I would be taking the first bus back to the city if it was me out there right now tangled up in poison ivy.  
I will share little Josie putting her green thumb to work in the planters on the porch with some of the flowers leftover from her visit to Chicago.  

And I must say here that my parents get huge gold stars for their two days of trying to whip our yard into shape.  You know it was a big project if even the two of them could only put a dent in it!  (Thanks for all your help mom & dad!)

You GOTTA see this!

Head on over to my sister's blog for the photos of Josephine & Lyla the weekend that we were in Madison. Enjoy!

http://threeaustins.blogspot.com/2010/06/lyla-josie-forever.html

New home quotes & update

And now for a heart-breaker:
Josie to me a few days before we moved: "Mom, how long do we have to live at our new house before we get to come back home?"

I'm pleased to report that she is starting to feel more and more at home here (as we all are).  We're working through some kinks (*finally* got some WD-40 on the super-squeaky bedroom door that has woken her up every night so far) and we've met a few of our neighbors (did I mention the twin three-year old girls next door and the self-proclaimed "cookie lady" across the street?).  All in all, we're getting settled.  My home office is slowly but surely taking shape, and we'll definitely have a guest room in place by the end of the month (hint, hint).  That said, we still don't have a kitchen table, but our Phish stools are serving us just fine at the moment. Oh and Louie & I still don't have real sheets on our bed, but at least I finally found my own underwear and only had to wear Lou's boxers for two days.

One more thing: Many of you have asked for our new address, which I will happily share by email but don't want to post here or on facebook for security reasons. And, rest assured that there are "We've Moved" cards on their way from Shutterfly coming soon to everyone on our holiday card list. :)

I'll leave you with a couple pics of Josie thoroughly-enjoying her new front porch (which is quickly becoming my favorite thing as well).  Here she is waving down to me from the porch & enjoying some homemade banana bread with one of her favorite furry friends (with the box she converted to a playhouse with Carissa, doubling as a table here).

Big Squirt!

I found my camera bag with all my cables! Woo-hoo! That means more photos are coming soon!  Here are a couple from Josephine's first hours at the new house.  As some of you know, the whole reason this child even wanted a yard was so she could do a "big squirt" with a hose & sprinkler. So, before we even moved in a single box, we set up the sprinkler in the yard to make Josie's wish come true.  Does it get any more "summertime" than this?

Lyla & Josie

While Tia is busy working away on uploading the pictures of Josie & Lyla to her blog, I'll share the one I was able to catch of the two of them before we left for Madison.  It's pretty hilarious how many of the same clothes the girls ended up with, even though there's a few states between them.

I think I'm gonna like it here...

Since posting pictures of our actual house requires me to know where some missing cables are, I'm going to have to just stick with things already available online.  So, I've got a new song stuck in my head today.  I'm not kidding, I've been belting this out all morning.  (Now, if I just had a full staff like Daddy Warbucks, we'd be all good!)

"thank you for my new home"

So there's this song on Josie's favorite show Word World that always gets stuck in our heads.  Duck helps Caterpillar find a new place to live. And whenever he tries a new house he sings this really sweet "thank you for my new home" song. And the three of us have been singing our own versions of the song all weekend. Anyway, that's the long way of saying that we are in our new house. And we're madly in love with it.  Josie has been wonderful. I'd say she's about 90% happy with the move.  (Last night as I was putting her to bed she said "this place doesn't have a long hallway so we have to move back to the condo."  She got close to tears, but quickly recovered as I switched her focus to the birds outside the window "saying good-night.")
I promise we'll post pictures soon. As you can imagine, it's a little insane trying to dig ourselves out from under all the boxes! 
**Special thanks to everyone who helped us out with the move - especially my mom & dad who did everything from keeping Josie in Xenia to helping us pack & unpack and lots of sweaty odd-jobs here at the new house. We are so grateful. **

Update

In the interest of full disclosure...we are moving tomorrow and we still have not packed a single box. That's right folks. Not.a.single.solitary.box.
In other news, Josie spent Memorial Day weekend in Chicago with Tia, Tio, Lyla, Grandma & DD while Lou & I went to Molly & Dave's wedding, where we also got to hang out with Cat & Brandon. (I know. How lucky are we?!)  There will be lots of pics soon at www.threeaustins.blogspot.com and I promise there are some really good ones. So, head on over there!
We close on our house tomorrow morning and will likely be sans-technology until at least Monday.  If you get a minute over the weekend, send us some extra patience, strength, super-human powers or whatever you got.  I think we're gonna need it! 
(The next post will be from our new house! And we'll be sending out notecards soon with our new address, so keep your eye out for those.)