Getting caught up

Sometime between my last post and now, Geo grew his very first adult tooth, the bottom front right tooth. It's coming in behind his baby tooth which I thought was a little odd, but it's pushing the baby tooth right out and it'll be just a few more days before he'll have lost his tooth, but won't exactly be "toothless."

We've made 2 trips up to the new house with a small moving van and my folks' minivan so we have most of our stuff up here now. There's still some junk and stuff at the other house than we need to clear out, I'd just love to chuck it all, but I suppose there might be a few things we might need before throwing in the towel.

We're all just getting over two bouts with two different flus, one traditional one lasting about a week (DH being the only one to come out unscathed), followed by (for some of us) 2 weeks of gastrointestinal flu. My mom was supposed to come help me unpack this week, but now she's coming down with the GI bug so there goes that wonderful idea. Sigh.

Camping and stuff

I couldn't take it anymore living so far away from DH so we loaded up his truck and our car on Monday and we "moved" up to the new house. We took what we absolutely needed, diapers, clothes, pots and pans, food... and we're setting up house. It's kinda fun :) I keep changing my mind about where I want to put things (ie in the kitchen). We've been cleaning almost non-stop too since we got here. The people who moved out were supposed to clean, but all they really did was make sure the visible surfaces were decent looking (countertops, sinks, ...) and vacuumed the carpet. We were hoping that they would shampoo the rather bedragled carpet, but they didn't so we got a rug doctor and did most of it ourselves on Tuesday. My mom did the kids' rooms and the living room (newer carpet and not as dirty), and DH and I did the bonus room (very dirty) and the family room (as dirty as the bonus or worse, lots of coffee stains). We worked as long as we could stand it (till 1 a.m.) and crashed. We didn't get around to doing our room or the hall, guess we'll have to use mom's carpet shampooer for that. But we got most of the house done anyway. We did such a deep cleaning in the two rooms we did that the carpet was still mighty wet this morning. Luckily God blessed us with a nice day and the kids did go outside a fair bit to play. Also DH sent over a fan from the club to help things dry out. That helped a lot and the family room is now almost dry and the bonus is on its way.

I didn't manage to pack a play pen for Eli so I am improvising by waiting till he's good and tired before I lay him down, then I leave the room so he can settle himself without me distracting him. Usually he's out in under a minute. But a couple of times today he did a little wandering. I put him down in one spot and then checked on him a few minutes later to find him sprawled out on our air mattress, sound asleep. Guess he wants to be close to us, even if we're not right there. Kinda sweet. I'll be glad to have his crib next week tho. Hey, I'll be happy to have a lot more next week, why stop at the crib? lol

My folks are coming down to our old house on Sunday and will help us load up a small moving truck, their van and Daniel's truck if he choses to drive it down. That way we can get our washer, dressers, beds, sewing table, possibly the love seat, kitchen table, desks and whatever other things we could really use before we get around to "the big move." The big move will be the one that hopefully our church will help us with. It will be whatever is left after the mini-move and this Sunday's move... the entertainment center, dining set, guestroom bed, couches, dryer, and all the rest of the junk in our basement (can we all say "yard sale!"?)

Gideon is getting one of his adult teeth in and he's mighty proud :) It's the bottom right front tooth. It's growing in behind (not under) the tooth above it so I hope that's not a problem. He's been so jealous of one of his friends who only just turned 5 and started loosing her baby teeth when she was still 4 so I know he's ready to join the croud. We must hurry and take our family pictures while his teeth are all still intact. Now if Eli would stop being so succeptible to gravity, stop losing his balance and toppling over when he's crawling... Poor kid, he's kinda like his brother in that regard, G1 was always clunking his head on something when he was learning how to crawl and walk.

I love my new kitchen. It's smaller than my old one, but it's laid out so much better, everything is right there and very convenient and there's actually more storage and counter space so I'm pretty pleased. It's cheery and warm and a lovely place for me to hang out during the day.

Our impending move

The cat is finally out of the bag to our church family. We let the church board know on Wednesday to start looking for replacements for our positions (Men's Ministry Leader, Communications Director, Youth Song Leader and whatever else DH does, and Cradle Roll Leader [me]), and then sent out a post to everyone else on Thursday. There are still lots who will be surprised since we didn't have their email addys. The associate pastor's wife and kids came over on Wednesday afternoon to help me pack (or watch the kids so I could pack). They were able to stay quite a long time which was GREAT! I got all of my kids' clothes sorted (20+ large plastic totes full!), weeded out and ended up with 2 large & 2 smaller boxes to donate or sell and 2 large boxes to hand-down to the kids' girl cousin (just a little older than Eli). I'll probably end up keeping 5 or 6 boxes (maybe a couple more) of clothes that each of my kiddos is either currently in, or will grow into in the next few years. All of Gigi's too-small clothes will keep getting saved for her cousin so I won't have to keep them longer than a few months to a year at a time. I also got some books packed for our once and future yard sale and a couple more boxes of the kids' books that we'll keep.

On a different note, today was DH's birthday so I made fresh bread and rice pudding (a couple of his favorites) and the kids & I gave them the dress shirts and ties that I was able to get on an old gift card that I needed to use up. I totally got the wrong sizes so we'll have to go back and get the right ones, but at least he had something to open on his birthday :) I hope he had a nice day.

Our very mobile baby

Eli has been doing the military crawl for a couple of months now and just the other day (Wednesday) he took about 3 crawl "steps." He took a few more yesterday and then today he started taking a few steps behind a walker. All this at just over 8 months. He's also started saying "Baa baa baa," "baa baa" or sometimes just "Bob" when he wants to nurse (short for our code word Boppy?), who knows, but I still count that as his 3rd word :)

Firefox is flaking on me

I may have to reinstall my Firefox because it's acting weird on me. It won't let me post images in blog posts, not sure why. Probably an extension that I installed that's wigging out on me. So till I can get around to it, I'm stuck with IE. Guess it'll work in a pinch.

Light at the end of the tunnel

We now have a closing date... January 15. I was really hoping that they'd be willing to move the date up a little, and we just found out that on my parents' part, it would have been a go, but the owners of the house will be closing on the condo that they're buying on the 15th as well and just want to do both of them on the same day. Oh well, I'm not ready to move just yet anyway. I did get one more box packed today, lol. Didn't really make a dent tho.

As I was looking at pics of the house again tonight, I realized that the floor plan for the house was a little off in the master bedroom so I re-did it. Here it is:

I don't have bedside tables for the kids yet, will have to work on that (freecycle) and I'd eventually like toget matching bedside tables for my room (maybe the kids could have ours and we could get "new" ones). My dresser can either go over by the crib or in the nook by the dresser (we'd have to remove a dressing table area which is fine with me). I measured all of my furniture so most of it is to scale in this mock-up.

I did this with the really cool, online furniture placement subscription service from icovia.com. They have a "try it free" option which I have had so much fun playing around with. I just can't save my creations so have to screen capture them. I wish I could make a living drafting up floor plans for people to help them determine furniture placement. That would be so much fun.

Getting more real

Mom just told me that they got their funds for the house so closing could happen soon. I told her to let the current owners know so they can start making arrangements. They still have to get the mold treated and the wiring straightened out and the final inspection. Plus 10 days to move, but at least there is light at the end of the tunnel. I'm very excited, can't wait! Poor G1 is still dealing with some feelings of sadness and/or loss in regard to the move. He says he'll miss his friends (I will too, sniff), they will be too far away to visit very often (true), he'll miss this house (the only one he remembers), it's so nice and big... the other house has a lot of doors (I think meaning that it's not the open floor plan that he's used to). I kind of think that the sooner we can get settled in the new house, the better it'll be for all of us. Wish I had more time to pack (more time during the day, not between now and when we move), maybe I'll be able to do some packing this weekend, I hope I hope.

Almost Cruisin'

Eli is pulling up on things now and I will find him standing up in his crib, holding on to the side rail when he wakes up from his naps. His balance is getting better and better.

Aha! I knew it!

Another tooth showed it's face today and I'm glad that Eli's wakefulness has a reason. He actually slept in till 8:30 this morning which was mighty nice. Hope he'll do that again tomorrow.

Happy Boxing Day

When I lived in Malawi, Boxing Day was the day when we'd "box" up our leftovers or small gifts to give our help, and any other locals who provided a service to us. It was usually soap and toothpaste and practical things like that. Anyway, I regress... I am now over the Christmas hump and I'm still all in one piece, lol.

Sunday, we went to the pediatric ward at the hospital around noon and gave out gifts to the few kiddos who were there, also left a few more in the kids ER for the ones who might come through later.

Then we came home and we all cleaned house a bit, the kids cleaned in their room too so I could wrap presents. In the evening the kids and I acted out the Christmas story as read from the Bible by DH. We also sang a bunch of Christmas carols which was fun. Then we opened presents (well, the kids did anyway). We actually ended up with more than I thought. I forgot that DH had brought some dollar store toys home awhile back so I got them out of hiding and wrapped those (Dora dominos, a Dora velcro bullseye game, a plastic doll, some trucks, several stocking stuffers, and whatever I came up with the other day). I didn't get the quilt or finger puppets done in time so they will have to wait a little longer. They had fun playing with their toys till it was time for bed. Gigi played with her tea set with her ceramic doll. Then it was bedtime and mommy got to stay up till after 1 a.m. again working on Gigi's quilt.

Yesterday, after getting up, we did some more cleaning before my parents got here. After they got here, I started an apple pie and my rolls in the bread maker. While we were waiting for lunch, we worked on a puzzle. For lunch we had roti, vegetarian "conch" stew on rice, rolls (they were't done till everyone was done eating tho :(, green salad, and green bean salad (diced tomatoes, chopped small cooked fresh green beans, chopped boiled eggs, mayo & garlic salt to taste...yummo!). Very non-traditional, but very good! We waited on the dessert for a couple of hours to give our tummies time to digest. After lunch, we let the kids open their presents from Grandma and Grandpa. I know I'll probably forget something, but here's what I remember: a coloring book and large box of crayons each (these are for the older two unless I specify), a Russian hat for G1, matryoshka / nesting dolls for Gigi, a Leappad Word Wammer game for both of them, a firetruck and train that track a dark line on paper (a black crayon or magic marker line works), a quilt for Gigi and a box of real Legos (not Duplos) for G1. Eli got a graduated shape stacker toy (with the rings getting smaller as they go up), and a baby Leappad. After this, DH & I sat down with Dad so he could show me some things for the contract work I'm doing for him. Then a little before M&D left to go back home, our new neighbors came over with gifts for the older 2. I had never met the wife so it was really nice to chat with them for a little bit. They were really nice. I'm going to make some banana bread today or pumpkin bread to take over there as a thank you. I'll have the kids make a card too.

Eli started babbling "da da" yesterday so that was his gift to his dad. He also let me sleep in till 8:30 this morning so that was his gift to me :) He's doing much better so I think maybe it was just teething (he did get snuffy too) and hopefully he's past the bad part for whatever tooth is trying to come in.

House Update

Mom's glad that they did a home inspection because the inspector found mold under the house which the current owners will have treated. Also there was a problem with the ground wires to the outlets so an electrician will have to come out and get that fixed as well. There is only sub-flooring under the carpet. If it had been hard wood, we'd probably have ripped up the carpet. Oh well... Also, Mom asked about their piano and they said that if their son didn't want it or have room for it, they'd be open to selling it. We can hope :) G1 is getting so good on the piano and I really want him to have one available to him at the new house.

Christmas Eve

I can't believe it's already going to be Christmas tomorrow. I'm not ready, waaaaah! I stayed up late last night knitting finger puppets for the older 2, got about 4 done. Well, mostly, I still need to add hair and faces. I'm hoping I can do that this afternoon during "quiet time" and I'll have to get the wrapping done then too. I guess it's going to be a craft kit for G1, a ceramic doll (for Gigi's dresser), a couple of other odds and ends from the thrift store, and the finger puppets. Plus G1 and Gigi will be exchanging dollar store gifts that I helped them get for each other. I hope it will be enough. This afternoon we're going to go to a local hospital and take presents for the kids who will be stuck in the hospital at Christmas. Tomorrow my folks will come down and bring more presents and I'll also hopefully have a quilt sewed up for Galena by then. Kinda tips the scales in her favor tho... hmm, maybe I'll save the puppets and quilt for tomorrow and we can open the other ones tonight. I feel kinda rotten because I didn't even have time to make anything for DH or my mom & dad. My intentions were to have a passel of finger puppets, a collection of nice knitted food, some sweaters, hats and scarfs for their Pooh bears, ... a scarf (Flora) for my mom, maybe some slippers for my dad, a manly scarf for DH... If I didn't have to work every spare moment, I would have been able to do it I think. Oh well, I just hope the older folk will understand. For DH (whose birthday is coming up in another couple of weeks or so), I might be able to knock out a scarf and I also have a couple of gift cards that I can use to buy some necessities like underwear/undershirts, socks, dress shirts, nice ties... I thought I'd wait for another week or so to let the holiday shopping/returning die down a bit before doing that.

The Wakey Monster

I think we have a "wakey monster" loose in our house. His job is to keep Eli awake as much at night as possible and ruin mom & dad's chances for a decent night's sleep. Yawn, yawn and loooonngg drawn-out yawn. He used to let me sleep in till 8 or 8:30 (before the time change), but since then, seems to want to wake up before the sun does. If I get to bed early enough it's not a huge problem, but last night (er, this morning), it was 1:30 a.m. And then he didn't want to sleep in his crib, he would wake up and cry every time I put him in his crib after nursing him. So I let him sleep in bed with us which worked a little better, but then I was more accessible. He's either trying to "up" my milk supply or his sniffles that he seems to have developed in the last day or so are interfering with his sleep. Ugh! I hope whatever it is decides to vamoose soon so I can get some better sleep again soon.

Pullups

These are the physical pull up type rather than the disposable diaper type and they are being performed by Eli. He's also getting up on his knees, rocking back and forth so will be crawling soon. What a guy!

A Blue Christmas

I'm having such a hard time getting into the Christmas mood this year. I have the spirit and desire, but time and energy are another thing altogether. With 2 kids messing things up faster than I can clean and one baby crawling around (me going one step ahead making sure there isn't anything on the floor he could choke on...), I'm not getting a whole lot done. Plus I've started packing and the place is quite frankly a mess. I really want to find room for the tree... I really almost wish we could be in the new house for Christmas. We could put the tree in the living room (or family room for that matter) in front of the window, we'd have enough room... Oh well. I did get the mantle decorated and the kids put a bunch of plastic balls on our ficus tree, lol. I'm really hoping that I can get to it sometime this weekend or next week when DH will be home.

The House Story

It's really a pitiful story and yet is full of hope too. DH owns/runs/manages (with the help of 1 part-time employee, well, not counting me) a fitness franchise almost 2 hours north of where we are currently living. He's been in business for himself for 3 years and we're still not breaking even. In his defense, there was gradual growth and it was paying for itself for a few months prior to Hurricaine Katrina hitting. Then gas prices spiked and our membership started dropping. We haven't had an income aside from $400 a month that DH was able to pay me for awhile (I work part time handling the deposits). Last year I started doing some contract data entry work part-time from home which paid a little better, but still not enough to make ends meet. We've used up our savings, cashed in all our profitable stocks and bonds (we'd lose money after commission on any we still have), cashed in our retirement, racked up massive credit card bills, till finally we got a foreclosure notice and chose to avoid that with bankruptcy. Not a fun thing, but we really want to try to make the club work, we just need more time/a new start... yada yada. We've prayed and prayed about it and know we have lots of people praying for us. We feel that God is leading us to leave our house and probably to move closer to the club so I can help out more and so that we can be together more as a family. DH has been staying up there during the week so we only see him on the weekends. It's tough being an only parent during the week to 3 very active/needy (one nursing and in diapers) kiddos and trying to find time to fit in 3 or 4 hours of work a day. So we were going to have to see if we could find something in the $300-$500 a month range, but even that was going to be pushing our limits (after taxes, utilities, insurance...). Then my parents said they wanted to look for investment property up in that area and they'd let us live in it rent-free until we can get back on our feet or start making payments. My mom got on the ball right away and her realtor neighbor helped her find an older (40 years old) brick home about 10 minutes away from the club (hallelujah!!!), 3 minutes away from our bank (where I'd be making the deposits), 4 minutes from Wal-Mart (appologies to those who HATE Wal-Mart, but that's all we can('t) afford right now), very close to a library, maybe 10 minutes from my best friend, 15 minutes away from my brother and his wife (and the mall), a few minutes from the interstate... The house is on 2+ acres of land and even tho it doesn't have a basement like our current house, it has an extra room and both a living room and a den (which our house doesn't have) so it may actually have more room (at least more rooms). It comes with a pool (yee-haw, and it's fenced in), a treehouse, riding mower, some other tools and pool equipment and a long paved driveway. I am just so jazzed and almost can't wait for closing so we can start to move our things in. It'll be a cinch for DH to take boxes every time he goes up to work (till we finally get moved in for real). There are so many good things about moving up there, but we will really really really miss our church family down here. I wish we could transplant our favorites up there. I think that'll be the hardest part. It's not like we're going where we know no one, but it's still going to be sad. And it'll take time to build up new friendships... I just hope we can find a church that has a good kids program. I think our church down here does pretty well, but not all churches are like that. DH is going on the home inspection today, wish I could be there, but I really didn't want to have to spend the day up there and also didn't want to have to drive so far just to see the house so pics will have to do for now. As soon as my parents close, I'm hoping DH can go get exact dimensions of the rooms and what-not so I can draft up a more accurate floor plan. I'm so goofy about that sort of thing, I love to imagine where I'm going to put things, how things are going to look...

Swirl Ball

I made this knit ball for Eli for Christmas and thought I'd include how I "followed" (ahem, changed) the directions:

Pattern:
I use two different colored needles of the same size so I know which side I’m on, I had a green needle in my left hand when I was on the right side when I made this ball. Much easier than trying to keep track of what row you’re on. I didn’t bother with markers once I got the hang of the pattern.

Right side noted with + and wrong side with –.

Instructions for One Section:

For first section Row 1: Loosely cast on 30 stitches, turn.

For remaining sections Row 1: Knit next 4 stitches thru short row turn loop

and loop of next stitch (to close gap from short row turn from previous row), k
6, k next 16 short row stitches as before, k 5 (–) , turn.

For this next section, once I got started, I just knit till I got to the SRS
and knew that was my last stitch, then made a SRT and started the next row.

Row 2: + k 10, do a short row turn (SRT; yarn forward, slip next stitch purlwise, yarn back, move stitch back to left needle purlwise, turn)

Row 3: – k 6, SRT

Row 4: + k 6, k into short row stitch from previous row (SRS), SRT

Row 5: – k 7, k SRS, SRT

Row 6: + k 8, k SRS, SRT

Row 7: – k 9, k SRS, SRT

Row 8: + k 10, k SRS, SRT

Row 9: – k 11, k SRS, SRT

Row 10: + k 12, k SRS, SRT

Row 11: – k 14 (to end of row)

Row 12: + k 14, SRS, SRT

Row 13: k 9, SRT (6 stitches left on left hand/wrong side needle)

Row 14: k 9, SRS, SRT

Row 15: k 9, SRT (7 stitches)

Continue on like this, knitting up to and including the SRS, then performing an SRT on right sides, knitting to 2 stitches from previous SRS, then performing an SRT on the stitch just before the previous SRS, working your way across the row till there are 15 stitches on your right side needle (5 stitches after you’ve knit the 9+SRS for that row).

For this section, k to two stitches before the SRS from the row before, SRS, SRT, do this on the Right Sides and Wrong Sides.

Row 32: + k 15, SRT

Row 33: – k 13, SRS, SRT

Row 34: + k 12, SRS, SRT

Row 35: – k 11, SRS, SRT

Row 36: + k 10, SRS, SRT

Row 37: – k 9, SRS, SRT

Row 38: + k 8, SRS, SRT

Row 39: – k 7, SRS, SRT

Row 40: + k 6, SRS, SRT

Row 41: – k 5, SRS, SRT

Row 42: + k 10 > turn.

Change colors.

Our New House

I'll add the gory details later, but for now I want to post a pic of the floor plan (Note: Since I originally posted this, I have a slightly more accurate floor plan here.











It's very rough, based on a pencil sketch that my mom made. I haven't seen the house yet, but I do have some pics:

Crocodile Tears

Eli is starting to cry real tears now. And when he giggles, he sounds so much like his older brother and sister, it's uncanny. He's only 7 months old!

Kiss kiss

Eli has started making kissing noises. It's really cute. Of course I can't seem to make him do it against my cheek, but it's a start.