...and my little men were only five months old.
We moved in May, and by mid-July we had made two week-long trips to Ohio with the whole family so that we could go to weddings. Clearly, we were nuts. So nuts, in fact, that within two years we added another little munchkin to our bunch.
During Natalia's first year, we went through our first hurricane and thought we lost a tree (it's as big as ever, two years later) but the house was still fine. Apparently our honeymoon/grace period ended last summer. It started with us having an emergency heat pump replacement. That was followed with a refrigerator that started dying at Halloween and was replaced by Thanksgiving. Within a week of the new refrigerator being delivered, our oven started acting funny, and we replaced the heating element in it just in time for me to bake Christmas cookies. (Funny Natalia moment of the new refrigerator saga: The new ice maker is quite loud. You can hear it dump ice and about two minutes later you can hear water fill the ice trays again. For the first few days we had to stop what we were doing every time this occurred to discuss the ice making process.)
Things were quiet for awhile, but two weeks ago our air conditioner went out. Again. Thankfully this time we just had to have a wireless thermostat installed, rather than replacing a heat pump. And we were only out of our house for 3 days instead of a week. And instead of staying at my parents' apartment 20 minutes away, we were able to stay at their house 10 minutes away. Not to mention, the repair guy was nice enough to leave us a large, portable window unit so we could at least keep the main part of the house cool for the dogs while we ran back and forth between houses. (Funny Natalia moment of the most recent air conditioner saga: For the first few days back in our house every time the air conditioner turned on she cheered, "Yay! Air conditioner works!" and every time it cycled off, she got very concerned.)
We've been down to one toilet since April or May, and staying at my parents' house helped us remember the beauty of having two toilets for six people. Plus we really ought to potty train Natalia one of these days, and it would be very helpful to have two toilets for that oh-so-fun process. So I went toilet shopping. (Jeff had already spent several hours working on the existing toilet when it first stopped working to no avail.) The new toilet was installed last Wednesday, and, inevitably, there was fighting and tears over who got to use it first. (Michael took the honors, Leon was "very sad" about the outcome.) Interestingly, it has gotten little use since then. We aren't sure if the kids are forgetting we have it or if they are afraid of it. (Funny Natalia moment of the toilet saga: On Wednesday night I asked her if the plumber had been to the house. Her response was, "No, just the toilet guy.")
Because we were obviously bored, yesterday Jeff got to spend a couple of hours battling a fully clogged sink. He eventually plunged it, and now it's working better than it ever has. (I never would've thought to plunge a sink. Thank you, eHow.) Today I was in the midst of battling a trashcan that STANK of dead fish despite it having a clean bag in it and us not having real fish (i.e. not canned tuna) for weeks when I discovered the dryer wasn't actually drying clothes. I then spent an hour cleaning out the lint filter, pulling the thing out from the wall (it has a storage drawer underneath which is wonderful, except when you need to pull it out from the wall), disconnecting it and cleaning it, and then putting it all back together. No luck. And having just seen something yesterday about half of home fires being started by dryers, I took that as a sign to leave it alone and call in a professional. So now we will wait for our dryer to get fixed. I would really like to just skip to the funny Natalia moment of this saga. And hope for no more home repair sagas, at least for a good, long time.
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