Home Repairs

We've lived in our house for a little over four years. Amazingly, in the first three years we had to deal with no major home repair, and aside from the usual clogged sinks and leaky toilets, almost no maintenance. It's like the universe took pity on us. After all, when we moved in, Ree was the same age that Natalia is now..

...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.

Blur

So, all of a sudden, it's the night before the first day of school. How did this happen? I mean, I KNOW how it happened, but WOW that was a quick summer. Admittedly, Ree does go to a year-round school, and summer break was only five weeks this year, but sheesh!

Tonight I was all proud of myself for having Ree set out her clothes for tomorrow and for remembering to ask her what she wants in her lunch and in her snack. Then as I was tucking her in, I realized we need to take first day of school photos tomorrow. (Mental note: Get up 5 minutes earlier than usual for a school day.) It wasn't until she was in bed that I realized Oh! I should get the school supplies out of the shopping bag (in her room, of course) and label them and put them in her backpack, which I still need to find (also in her room, of course). More to do in the morning! Better make that 15 minutes early.

You know, I used to be an organized person. Really. But I've read articles noting research has proven that we only have so much willpower/patience, which is why we are supposed to do things like exercise in the morning and why you don't want to be the last case of a day that a judge hears. I think this is what happens to me in terms of organization/productivity/coherent thought. I start out strong in the morning, and by the end of the day, I am shot. Brain is mush.

This morning started out great. Michael woke us up at 6:15, but I actually felt pretty good for once and I was out of bed and functioning by 6:45. (I couldn't get up right away. Really. I had to at least somewhat enjoy my last day before having to rush around in the morning again.) Got everyone breakfast, cleaned up, worked out, brushed the dogs (they are shedding like mad), vacuumed (to deal with the dog fur everywhere), showered, answered some work emails, and got the family out the door by 9:45. Not to bad by our standards.

Then we headed to Jungle Rapids where they have an indoor play area with lots of climbing stuff and ball pits. When we got there, we were the only people in the place and there was no music or any other noise. It was kinda creepy, but the kids had a great time. We stayed for almost two hours, and at the end it was pretty crowded and my tired, hungry children seemed to get injured a lot. (Nothing serious, just lots of whining.)

We had a gift card for Applebee's, so we headed there for lunch. Natalia asked for a high chair (hallelujah!) but then refused to sit in it (boo!). She had ants in her pants while we were waiting and didn't even want to read books with me. She mostly just climbed in and out of the booth. She did okay with her food at first, then she just wanted to lay on the booth. Actually, she and her brothers just wanted to lay on the booth. They were exhausted.

Although Applebee's is only 10 minutes from our house and we employed every possible technique to keep the kids awake (stay awake or you have to listen to Mom and Dad sing!), Leon passed out on the car ride home. Miraculously, he let me tuck him back in when we got home. Unfortunately, he chugged a juice box at lunch and didn't go to the restroom before we left the restaurant, so 30 minutes later he was back up to potty, and I don't think he ever fell asleep again. In the meantime, we'd had an epic battle getting Natalia out of the car (most of our days are filled with epic battles with her lately, hurray for being 2 1/2!) and I was trying to get some work done. (I technically work half days from home on Monday, but I have all weekend to get in the work. I always have grand plans of working two hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday so that all I have to do is periodically check email on Monday, but I almost always have at least two hours of work left to do on Monday.)

Got some work done, and then I took off with Ree to get her new dance shoes. She outgrew her ballet and tap shoes around April, but I avoided getting her new shoes since she was on the fence about taking dance again. ("I want to try ice skating!") The poor girl practically limped through the dance recital. Then she stated summer dance classes last week, still wearing the old shoes. So I promised her that we would get her new shoes before tomorrow's class. We did try and go on Saturday during a super-epic shopping trip, but we discovered the dance store is not open on the weekends in the summer.

Thankfully, shoe buying turned out to be incredibly easy and when we were done, we headed to a local frozen yogurt place where I was able to find not one, but two flavors of dairy-free sorbet to eat. (I've recently discovered I have all sorts of food allergies and sensitivities. It's been an interesting journey.)

We made it home within an hour of leaving. I sat down on the bed with my laptop, intending to work until it was time to leave again to go to the open house at Ree's school. The room felt warm. I mentioned to Jeff that I had noticed the thermostat was set for 78 degrees, but it was reading 80 degrees in the house, and that seemed weird. (I was too tired to have a though beyond it being "weird.") That's when we discovered the A/C wasn't running. We couldn't even get the fan on. Then it occurred to me I had been awfully hot around 4 or 5am and the air had probably been off since then. We have ceiling fans in every room, and we had been gone so much, that we hadn't even noticed the heat building all day. Thankfully, after a series of phone calls and texts, we were able to get people from the company that installed our heat pump out to our house within an hour or so. It turned out to be a quick fix, and we are cool again.

We had planned on getting to the open house at 4:00, but it was 4:15 by the time we left, and the kids were engrossed in Arthur, a show they don't normally get to watch. So they finished it, and then we all headed off to school so that Jeff and I could both see her classroom. Ree met her teacher, saw that there is very little to see in a first grade classroom (just her desk and the reading center in first grade versus her table and the art center and the reading nook and the club house and the centers and the baskets of toys in kindergarten) and we were quickly back at home. I made dinner, and then was finally able to sit down and finish work. Of course as soon as I finished it was time to walk the dogs and start the bedtime routine...

I am thinking that is how a lot of our days go, and perhaps that is why summer has gone by so quickly. Maybe things will slow down with school starting. Hey, a girl can dream!

Vacation

So we got back from a family vacation last Friday, and I haven't posted anything about it. Anywhere. In the modern world of instant gratification and constant status updating, I am apparently a complete and utter failure. There was no grand announcement of my vacation plans, and no steady stream of fabulous pics while we were away. Part of my reason for not posting is I do a lot of work in internet security, and there is nothing sillier than posting, "Can't wait to be gone on vacation!" (Translation: Come rob me soon!) followed up by, "We are having such a great time at this distant destination!" (Translation: Now! Rob me now!) Granted, we don't really have anything worth stealing. Our house is mostly filled with broken toys and stained children's clothing with the occasional outdated piece of electronics thrown in for fun. We do possibly have the world's largest collection of toddler-size Angry Birds underwear, but alas to would-be preschool looters, we took most of the collection with us.

But the other reason for not posting is the pressure. Yes, the pressure. Have you looked at what people say? This great! So glad to be away! The beach is wonderful! Fun! Fun! Fun! This is the most amazing thing EVER.

Our vacations, especially with children involved, can never live up to that. Personally, I think everyone writing things like that is lucky, insane, or has a very selective and limited memory. (Helloooo vacation Jello shots!) We've been fortunate enough to have a wonderful vacation with our children. My cousin got married in Orlando around Thanksgiving 2011, and we got to spend a week there. In addition to going to the wedding, we celebrated Leon and Michael's birthday and spent a couple of days at Disney World. Things went really well, but they weren't perfect. Natalia screamed in the car on the way down and the way back. (Not to mention, thanks to holiday weekend traffic, the return trip on I-95 took 13 hours instead of the usual 9. On the bright side, that allowed our kids to experience the fast food trifecta of having McDonald's for breakfast, Wendy's for lunch, and Burger King for dinner. That clearly has to be on someone's bucket list.) Then there was Michael. Poor little guy got so stressed out he broke out in hives every morning, then they miraculously disappeared the day after the wedding and he was fine for the last day away. His suffering did lead to some (unintentionally) entertaining memories such as Michael (that's him on the left) walking around Disney World in Ree's sun hat to cover his skin since we were afraid the hives were an allergic  reaction to sunscreen.

And then there was last summer's vacation. It wasn't horrible, but I suppose I did have unnaturally high expectations after the Orlando adventure, and last summer's vacation was more, um, real life. Among other things, there was no air conditioning in our hotel the first night, no electricity in our friends' house the last two nights thanks to a freak derecho, and we got to come home and buy a new heat pump (air conditioner) for our house.

I would say this year's vacation fell somewhere in the middle. We went to Cincinnati to visit family, and we had a pretty good time. The kids had fun, and we all survived. So maybe those of us with kids can just start sharing that. Went on vacation, and we survived! For our family, at least, that pretty much sums it up.

(And don't worry, vacation photos will be shared at some point. There were actually many enjoyable times, and we even have some pics to prove it.)

Strange Conversations

It is hard not to be somewhat stunned by some of the conversations I have with the kids. Sometimes, it is truly because they are actually impressive. Ree has a very dry, sarcastic sense of humor that is just entertaining, and Leon has a monstrous vocabulary, and we have absolutely no idea where it came from. But then there are the moments that leave us scratching our heads. Like when Michael, who taught himself to read before his third birthday, asks the most basic of questions like, "Mom, what's a mom?" Or these recent conversations...

Leon was playing "hockey" in the house by hitting a ball with a broom. (Yes, he declared it hockey and not broomball.) He tells me his team is up 10-0. I told him that was great and asked how they scored so many goals. His reply was, "We got it because Tiger Woods had 13 at bats." Okay, so he loves sports but can't quite keep them straight.

Then there was the other night at bedtime with Natalia. She has always been the last to go to bed, and she closely observes her siblings' bedtime routines. In an effort to stall just a little more, the boys have started getting back rubs at bedtime, and this has apparently not gone unnoticed. One night, stalling herself, Natalia demanded a back rub. She was laying on her back, and I asked her to roll over. As I started to rub her back, she batted my hand away and said, "NO! Do it myself!" And so I just stood there, while she rubbed her own back. When she was done, she dismissed me and went to sleep.

Monkey Toes

I am quite lucky in that I am generally able to escape from work to attend school events for the kids. Over the past few weeks, I have taken full advantage of this and have made it to several different events for Ree and the boys.

For Ree, I first went to her class's end-of-year party. The room moms had planned to hold it at the park directly behind the school. However, surprise! We got a (very minor) tropical storm the first week of June, and it messed with the plans. So the party was moved indoors, and the kids still had a fabulous time.

Among other activities, the kids had a contest to see who could pick up the most pennies with their toes. I am quite proud to say my monkey-toed daughter was the big winner in her group. (She didn't have the highest score for the whole class though. There are some truly talented kids out there!)

They briefly got to play outside, and they rotated between stations where they hula hooped, blew bubbles, and drew with sidewalk chalk.

They also had an informal award celebration, and the teacher gave out awards to all of the kids. The teacher read the description of each award, and then she had the kids guess who the award was for. Rebecca seemed to have her named called out for nearly every award. I'm not quite sure what that meant (The kids liked her? They thought she was a good student?), but we went with it. And I am happy to say that she was one of two students to get an award for being a great reader. (Although clearly not nearly as proud as I am of her penny-grabbing prowess.)

This week I got to go back to school for part of the school's fun day, which was basically a field day where the kids participated in about 15 events. Ree is clearly my child, and not nearly competitive enough (or big enough) to excel in sports, but she had a great time. Everyone in the class even wore matching shirts. Their teacher loves the Wizard of Oz, and so they all had Dorothy and Toto on their shirts. The girls even had little red bows on Dorothy's hair. (I hear the teacher was still hot glueing bows as the kids were coming into school that morning. I like how she works. I am pretty sure there are few things in this world that can't be assembled with hot glue or duct tape, and it's good to know I'm not the only one assembling at the last minute.)

Her shirt was a little big, but you have to love the head band. She was a serious athlete!

She loves sack races.

Not quite dominating in hockey.

And the very fun looking water relay. (I wanted to participate!)

And now, after all the fun, we have a first grader.

Home Stretch

We are in the home stretch of the school year. Although most of the schools around here got out for summer last Thursday, with Ree in year-round school, we have one more week of getting her out the door bright and early. But the end is very much in sight!

We've certainly been celebrating the end of the year for awhile with all kinds of events. It started with the boys' preschool graduation on the Friday before Memorial Day. (Leon and Mike have a year to go, but all the kids graduate every year. I like that. Maybe we should do that at work too. Instead of getting an annual evaluation we could all celebrate having made it another year. And maybe there would even be cake involved...)

The weather for their graduation was absolutely perfect - mid-70s with clear skies and a breeze. The park where it was held was nice and shady. It was really nice. The kids got to play at the park for awhile then we gathered to hear them sing. Leon not only kept his clothes on this time (and his hands mostly out of his pants), he sang. Loudly. And danced. Lots. He was quite entertaining. Michael did a great job with all of the songs too and even remembered the choreography to the song in sign language.

(It turns out I don't have any graduation photos without the faces of other kiddos in 'em, but here's a recent pic of the boys making themselves comfortable on the floor at Barnes and Noble during a Mommy-Boys date. Some day they will find out you can actually PURCHASE the toys there, and I will be in serious trouble.)

Then it was on to Ree's dance recital last weekend. She performed a tap routine to the song "Popular" from Wicked and for ballet, they did the bluebird dance from Sleeping Beauty. Her class is teensy and has just four girls. They did great job with the tap number and even managed to stay with the music fairly well. (It was funny, though. For the little ones, you could hear the teachers calling out the steps from where they stood off stage.) Ree ran into a slight wardrobe malfunction during ballet - she got tangled in her bluebird wings. Thankfully, after a brief, failed attempt to untangle herself, she finished the dance. For kindergarten, I'd say that was pretty good. And overall, she said she had fun and she's spent her spare time this week teaching me her tap dance. She is very excited to get the DVD of the recital so we can practice it to the music. She clearly doesn't want me to get bored.

Waiting to go on stage for tap dressed as "Glenda" from Wicked. Ree is the little one on the right.

Where Have We Been?

So I didn't mean to go into hiding for a month. Some things that happened while I was away:

Leon and Michael went to a farm on the first ever field trip.

The kids had play dates at home...

...and at the beach.

And, yes, we finally made it to the beach in warm weather.