The Waddle

It's official. I am waddling. Really, I only have a few more weeks to go, so I should have anticipated this day, but I have felt so good during this pregnancy that I thought it would just last forever! My days of gracefully walking around the block are over - now I will have drivers slowing to check if I am in labor or if I need a ride. I also had to take my rings off today - that was a chore! Lots of cream and elbow grease, so I'm glad I did it today otherwise they would have had to be cut off!

The plan for the day is to have Peanut hang out with our babysitter/mother's helper while we finish projects up around the house. We've got plenty to do, and now that the house is sparkling clean it feels like there is some inspiration to complete these unfinished details. We always start with a huge list though and realize halfway through the day that we will never get it all done. Oh well. We do have a few more weekends, and my nesting instinct should kick in hard soon!

Clean!

For the past few years, we have been cleaning our own house and it seems to go fine albeit in spurts. We did have a company come out when we first moved in to do a thorough cleaning and a few times after as we were doing so much construction, but i thought "Oh, I can clean - I'm home some of the week now and will be here full time when the baby comes". Then reality started to sink in, and I realized it would be a question of how dirty I was comfortable with it being. Well, we decided to give our housecleaners a biweekly gig - just to try it out and see. By the time they were done with the main floor today I was sold. I went to work this morning, came home midday and had a mostly clean house! When I came back from my afternoon appointments, it was spotless - cleaner than I think it has been in months. What an amazing thing - I told Honey it was the best idea we had since getting married and having kids. I felt badly cooking dinner tonight because I didn't want to mess up the kitchen. And I am savoring our stainless appliances without fingerprints!

Oh Happy Day

I keep thinking that this will be the week that everything slows down and I have a minute to catch my breath. I look at the calendar and think "oh good, when that is done, I'll have so much free time" and then something else pops up. Oh well, I guess that is what life is all about.

My wish for Mother's Day was to sleep in and not do any cooking and get to play outside all day. I did "sleep in" but really, how do you do that when you are a mom? Peanut fell out of her bed last night (first time she has done this and it's been a while in the new bed) and we sprang out of bed - I don't think I have moved so fast in months. She was fine, but then woke several times complaining and of course I start to think about concussions and whatnot... so I slept until about 7am and then I was awake for good, but I forced myself to lounge in bed and let Honey get up with Peanut. She got into bed with me while breakfast was made for all of us and then she got her shoes on, brought me my shoes and the dog's leash. The girl had a plan!

We walked the dog, then started building the sandbox that great grandma (Goose) got for Peanut. I did get to be outdoors for much of the day and it was really beautiful today. Perfect weather for working and playing in the yard. Peanut loved her new sandbox and sat right in it to dig. She helped with some raking (I wished I had my camera outside when she picked up the big rake and tried to rake the pine needles all in her little pink outfit with her pink baseball cap on backwards) and weeding, and kicked her ball around the yard.

As I looked at the backyard, I had this realization of how huge of a project this yard will be! I've always had a plan for any house I have lived in and been able to tackle it in a year or two at most. This yard is going to take a long time to plan and pull together. I think that will be fun though since it will change with our family and our needs. It is hard though to stick to basics and not go nuts planting and building patios and all - there is so much potential. So we have our garden plot and our sandbox. Next we need to start lining out planting beds and mulching, but i think we will do these one at a time.

Honey grilled up some filet mignon (from the farm - we are truly spoiled!) and made a salad. I have never seen a little tiny person eat so much steak. She had probably 1/3 of my cut! We all ate well, she is gone to bed, and now I have a moment to relax. Ahhh, maybe Mother's Day should be once a month...

The Clean Slate

I love the New Year. It feels like you can just start it all fresh in one day. People don't expect you to be out and about on New Year's Day since we were all up late last night. You have free reign to wear PJ's all day long if you want to. You can piddle around and clean out the old to bring in the new. For me, that means lists. I love making "to do" lists. Now, that doesn't always mean that everything on them gets done, but the act of writing each thing down and then crossing it off as it is completed is really satisfying for me. I started my lists this morning - all of the things that still need to be done in the upstairs rooms was the first list. I'm happy to say that I have already checked some things off! If you are wondering, the answer is yes - I am the kind of person that will add something to the list that I have already done just to be able to check it off. i did not do that today though - it is all newly listed and newly accomplished New Year tasks!

I also sat down and worked out a budget with Honey. what better time than when all of the big projects are winding down and we are starting to look at how we are going to meet all of our financial goals and still save for future projects knowing that I wont be working (at least for a little while) after May. That was an eye opening exercise! I'm looking at my Starbucks mini-addiction and giving it the heave-ho in the New Year. Five bucks adds up fast when it is all written down.

Last night we tag teamed a party at the neighbors - Peanut had a cold and went to sleep early, so I went over there for a bit, then came home and sent my better half over for a while. We did wind up in the same place at midnight though - have to be with Honey for the smooch! I know I've said it many times, but we really have a great bunch of neighbors. Really hospitable and nice people.

I have learned so much about our homes' sordid past from our neighbors - the stories are really crazy. Apparently, the lady who lived here really liked horses, so her husband decided to get her this huge horse statue for the backyard. They bring it to the house in a truck, feet up ala Bachelor Party, and unload the thing. He and his sons get it all situated, and she come out and starts screaming at them - how could you, what would so and so think...yadda yadda. Now that is a dysfunctional family giving heartfelt gifts. They also used to leave the sprinklers going in the backyard for days on end. I'm sure this helped with the shroom cultivation, but it also flooded the next door neighbors shed. Nice.

So here's to a new year and a new outlook for this house - I know this year will be better for it than the last! We are looking forward to a lot of chaos in 2009 - the antics of our toddler who continues too amaze and surprise us, the ongoing house mayhem and foolishness, the two additional work projects I've taken on for the next few months, and our new addition this summer. I know there is more that we have not yet considered yet as well. May you all have as much or as little chaos in your lives this year as you like!

Adding some chaos to the mix...

Really wonderful things are happening lately!

We got a new front door which is absolutely beautiful. Our new slider in the dining room was installed as well - it is so nice to have a door that seals and locks there. What a difference in the temperature!

Today, the electrical is being made functional - outlets and switches are going in as well as light bulbs and trim for the ceiling lighting. We also have our favorite cleaning crew here to help get rid of the drywall dust. By the end of the day, I suspect we won't even recognize the house.

The kitchen cabinets are up and we can really begin to see the kicthen take shape!

We do have a few significant things to do before the family arrives tomorrow. We need a shower curtain rod and a sink in the bath upstairs. I'm not sure we are going to get there. We also need to put the closet doors back on both of the guest rooms. Speaking of guest rooms...one of them will not be a guest room for very long. As you know we love chaos and what better way to create it than to have another little one?! Yes, we are expecting - and the due date is the same as Peanuts was - imagine that!

FINALLY!

It seemed this day would never arrive, but here we are! We close on our new house this afternoon, and I can't wait to start tearing carpet out. The gas and water were finally turned on yesterday (water was still off when the inspectors arrived!) and we completed our inspections of the furnace and other appliances. To our absolute shock - everything worked! We truly expected to have a house full of non-functional systems. Our front hall in the apartment has our calendar covered with appointments and tasks and it just keeps getting more full, but now comes the fun part - we get to start making this house our home.

My tasks for today are finalizing my appliance selections, scheduling the cleaners, plumber, electrician, and HVAC contractors, and I need to go grocery shopping - the dog has no food. I've been working on the appliances for a while, and thought I had it all figured out when I discovered that the fridge I want is not energy star compliant! That just can't be! So now we either spend an extra 1k on a fridge in the same product line, or we risk having the finishes be different and get the original pick, which was a KitchenAid fridge. Oy! Of course, I have a spreadsheet going for this as well. What a complete geek.

My mom and her boyfriend are here to help watch Peanut while we get some work done this weekend. They are having a great time with our little muffin - everything she does is the cutest ever - but who's biased? :)

we just need a little gas!

We have already rescheduled our closing on the house from last Friday to this Wednesday. As of today, the gas company still did not show the balance on the account had been paid. They won't turn the gas on until the account is cleared. Better yet, we can't go to closing because there is a lien on the house because of the unpaid gas bill! So now we are scheduled to close on Friday. I have been spinning my wheels thinking about everything that needs to be done since last week, so I sure hope we can get the gas on and get the house inspected in order to close. That way, I can stop spinning and START WORKING! I never realized how much I really love gas...

CONTRACTORS!

So we are planning on doing some work ourselves on the new house, but we've been there before and would love to hire some folks to do some of the dirty work. This whole week has been about meeting lots of contractors, designers and handy people. We have been to the house almost every day, and poor Peanut has just about had it. She is so happy to run around on the sidewalk, but once we go inside, into the Ergo she goes and it is HOT with no power on and being so close and snuggled into mommy. She has be a very sweaty, rosy cheeked munchkin this week. I just can't let her down since we have no idea what is on the floors and she will put anything she finds in her mouth.

We have had some good meetings with folks - it looks promising. I think we will be able to hire someone to do most if not all of the kitchen at least. We are meeting with someone tomorrow who is giving us an estimate on cleaning too, which I'd really love to pass along and not do ourselves. The house was owned by some really heavy smokers and the ceiling and walls need to be scrubbed before they are painted to get the stench out. It is not going to be fun work and really I'd rather save my energy for painting over all of the garish colors. What is the deal? Almost every foreclosure we looked at had crazy colors on all of the walls. Beware - if you have bizarre colorful walls, your house might be next!

We could be crazy

So, we are in the process of buying a foreclosed home. Our home inspection was today and while we didn't hear anything we weren't expecting, having all of the things that need to be done laid out in front of us has got my head spinning! The plan is to do much of the work ourselves (a little rough with a 1 year old underfoot!), go "green" on everything possible, and to maintain some semblance of an emergency and savings fund.

Meanwhile, we are living in an apartment and our lease ends in a week. We are extending to month to month, but that takes our rent higher than our mortgage will be! I've spoken with the leasing office, and it seems that I am getting the run around. I proposed that we pay two months up front, give our move out notice now and have a reduced rent. Seems reasonable - they will make interest on that money, have a date for new people to rent - everybody wins. Seems that is too out there for anyone to get. Last night, I was lamenting how I sometimes feel like I am from a completely different planet than everyone else. If I am thinking out of the box, everyone I meet is cowering in the corner of the box, so afraid to do anything. Well, hubby told me that he has come to join me on this planet I live on. I'm glad to have company!