Mistakes in Motherhood

What a joyful day! While our nation collectively celebrated, I had a ton of mini triumphs. I met a woman on Craig’s List last week who was buying diapers, I had some I had bought, picked out a few and decided to pay them forward along with a couple dozen other cloth diapers I either decided not to use or that Liam outgrew. I refused payment for them, so she thanked me by making these really amazing carrot cupcakes. They were fantastic!

After her visit, my MacBook died mid sentence again. The battery was almost fully charged, and it wasn’t just sleeping, it just shut off for no reason at all. One call to AppleCare and it was decided I would drive to the closest Apple Store, 40 minutes away, and they would take a look at it. My battery was swapped out, the inside was cleaned and I was sent home. I am letting it drain the battery after a full charge and it is down to 85%, dipped into sleep a few times, and seems to be working better than ever.

My third victory is that my maintenance guy stopped by this evening to install my new water heater. I had been having a leaking issue for months now and a couple weeks ago I decided to get to the bottom of it. A quick release of the pressure release valve convinced me the water was from the tank. Maintenance replaced the PRV, and my back patio was still suffering from Chinese water torture. He suggested that maybe my 23 year old water heater was dying, but we would need to wait for approval for it to get fixed, etc. New one is in and I have hot water. However I didn’t know that when you replaced the water tank, the pipes would drain, and water would need to be pushed out. If you want to simultaneously convince the toddler, baby, and cats that the Apocalypses is here, run air through pipes. My daughter ran to her room screaming, the cats had to be peeled off the ceiling, and the baby’s eyes about popped out of his head and he screamed bloody murder.

Cherry on top was Skyping with my husband. I love him.

No Comments | In: This is how I roll | tags: A lot about nothing, Bobby, House Stuff, Liam. | #

When we switched hats from homeowner to landlord, we had some new issues to think about. Before we moved out of our home, we had a guy come in and stretch, repair, and replace some carpet. I could not believe how much difference it made in the appearance of our floors, I would compare it to a face lift, for well-worn carpet. However, short of replacing it all for thousands of dollars, stretching was a practical compromise. My central Texas friends, if you have carpet repair needs, I invite you to try out The Steam Team, for your carpet repair services in Austin. The steam team also offers carpet pet odor removal Austin, which is so important if you have ever had pets in your home, even if they have never had an accident, because you may not notice pet smells and odors from the oil in their coat, or waste tracked in from outside or litter boxes on their feet, but your guests will. However, if you have ever had a cat, you know that cat pee odor removal Austin is so important if you want to prevent future soiling. I have a cat who will pee on towels if they are left on the ground, so getting those odors out is essential, because cat urine is one of the most pungent smells ever.

Hopefully you never know the feeling of wondering why your shower is not hot anymore, checking on the pilot of the water heater, and finding that it has failed. We have had that happen twice on us, but luckily it only burst the one time, and we lived in a house without carpet. However, if you are not so lucky, it is important to have someone you can count on for cleaning up water damage Austin, it is especially important that they offer around the clock service, 24 hours, 7 days a week, because the longer you let the water sit, the bigger the problem, and then you would need carpet mildew odor removal Austin.

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I have delayed posting this announcement, because I was afraid it would not last, but as of January 26th, Sophia has slept in her big girl bed, and on January 30th, I moved her crib out of her room and into my room to slowly transition Liam into it. Major steps like that, deserve major rewards, and in Sophia’s case that meant new bedding! I ended up finding the set similar to what I wanted locally, but I looked online first.

Since Sophia is so tiny, she transitioned into a toddler bed, and it was so much fun looking at New Girl Crib and Toddler Bedding, there are so many adorable colors and designs out there! Because she is such a girly-girl, it is simple to find beautiful feminine bedding that would accentuate her bedroom so well.

Because her old bedding was so feminine, I ended up browsing for a new set for Liam, since I just cannot put him into her old set, which was a Dwell Studio bird print that was dusty pink. I would have loved to get him New Crib Sets by Kid Funktional. I especially love the Savana Rana frog set. I seriously considered choosing an aquatic theme of turtles and frogs for him. I ended up finding some of Matthew’s old bedding I had forgotten about that I got on clearance years ago, and purchased the coordinating crib skirt on eBay. I think if we were planning on him having his own bedroom I would have gone all out, but as it is, he is in our bed and by the time he transitions into either Sophia or Matthew’s room, he will be too old for a diaper stacker (which probably does not work well with cloth diapers anyways), or crib bumpers.

I do know we need to get her some window treatments soon. Her bedroom is so light during the day that she gets woken up bright and early by the sun, and in the summer her room is the hottest in the house, because her window gets no protection from trees like the other bedrooms do. I love the bright colors of the New College Window Treatments , which would coordinate so much better into a child’s room, and I especially love the black out feature, which would keep the room darker in the morning, and cooler in the afternoons. Now I just have to decide if I want to go with lime green, or purple, to go with her Tinkerbell themed room.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: House Stuff, Liam, Sophia, Sponsored. | #

Obviously it will come as no shock to you that we are in a “housing crisis” as a nation. Housing prices inflated, banks gave loans to almost anyone who wanted one, and then gravity took over and what goes up, must come down and down went the market. Some states are recovering faster than others, and some cities in those states are recovering even faster, like La Jolla, California.

Part of why Bobby accepted the hardship tour overseas is because of the chilly economic climate. We own a home in Colorado that we cannot sell, and because of a second mortgage on it, we owe more than it is currently worth. We have so far gotten lucky with great tenants, who’s lease won’t expire for another year, but I worry if they decide not to renew the lease, if we will be so lucky a second time. Part of our plan is to pay off the second mortgage with his overseas pay, so we can eventually sell. Unfortunately, websites like Zillow, do not have me too hopeful. Some websites however do suggest the market it starting to turn around, like this article on the Denver real estate market.

Part of the problem, is that we purchased our home with a zero down home loan and took out an equity loan, when our home was at its peak value. Now, even with the market starting to stabilize a bit more, we still have not built our equity back up. Once our second is paid off, we should at least be able to sell for what we owe. Next time, we will listen to Dave Ramsey’s advice and put at least 20% down on a 15 year loan and spend no more than 40% of our income on housing costs.

Until our Colorado home is paid off, we will not even consider buying a home here in Washington, which is so sad because I really loved the freedom of home ownership. I still have not hung any of my paintings in the house because it never has felt like a home.

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I finished the blanket! I also used some leftover yarn to make a matching hat last night, and I plan on knitting a couple more and a sleep sack before baby arrives! WOO!!

1 Comment | In: This is how I roll | tags: Domestic Diva, House Stuff, Pregnancy. | #

When the baby gets here we will need to do a transition of sorts. The seven of us will be living together in a four bedroom home and that means the baby will need to bunk up with someone when he/she is around 4-6 months old, before then, we have a co-sleeper in our room. By then we are hoping to have transitioned Sophia to a toddler bed, and then I can get the baby a lovely set of crib bedding to coordinate well enough in her room. However, I have never had a toddler sharing a room with a baby, so I am not sure if that will go over well. When we got Matthew’s bunk beds, which is kinda like a loft bed with a rolling shorter bed on wheels that can be moved, we toyed with the idea that they may eventually share the bed, with the “bottom bunk” in her room, and his loft bed in his room with a “play fort” of sorts underneath.

However, we may have to have Sophia and Matthew sharing a room for a year or so until the little one sleeps through a noisy sister in the room. I can imagine using so many different kinds of cute feminine kids beddingadorning the twin bed if she uses it, instead of transitioning to her toddler bed she inherited from Matthew. Excuse me while I hop up on this soap box, because I am about to sound like my mother.

Nothing grosses me out more than sleeping on a bed without a mattress pad. If you spend money on a mattress, get a quality mattress pad. Mattress pads are an inexpensive way to protect the bed from sweat, drool, and any other body fluids you encounter when you have kids (urine, vomit, etc). I don’t care how good you cleaned after Junior peed the bed, don’t expect that the next person is sleeping on a nasty mattress covered with only a thin layer of fabric, ewww. I will judge you if your beds lack mattress pads. And for kids, have several on hand. Matthew has three for his bunk beds, Sophia has two for her crib… both theirs are waterproof. I have one that I spent a fortune on, because it is waterproof and does not crinkle. We often have kids climbing into our bed at night, and that pad has paid for itself 20x over with how many times it has saved our bed. Austin and Christopher have one each, they were just cheapies, but they will tell you, I will get mad if I see a naked bed.

No Comments | In: This is how I roll | tags: A lot about nothing, Confessions, Domestic Diva, Family, House Stuff, Humor, Parenting, Silliness, Sponsored. | #

A week after my last post we started the moving process, a trip that took us several days and was a whirlwind of activity. We arrived in Spokane on March 4th, on the 5th Bobby, Sophia and I headed over to Olympia to look at houses and we signed for the first one we looked at. The house itself is not perfect, I would have loved there to be a bigger basement bedroom, more storage, a larger kitchen, and of course, more storage. However, the location is as perfect as you can get and the yard is HUGE. Overall there were a lot more pros about the property than cons. By the time we were done with that we decided to bed down for the night here in town, and Saturday we went back to Spokane. On Monday we loaded back up all the kids and headed back to Olympia and our stuff was delivered the next day. Other than a few small things, everything arrived in perfect condition and I was super impressed with the moving experience. Everyone was so kind and professional.

It is almost 4 months later and we still have not settled in completely. We have to organize the garage and have about a dozen boxes out there we have not touched. We have only hung a couple pictures and still have to build some shelves in the storage room. We have a good excuse, but more about that in another post.

When I said the location here is perfect, I mean it. I love the schools, I love how close we are to a neighborhood park that is just gorgeous, and huge. We are a couple blocks from a 22 mile trail that runs miles through the county, and will soon be expanding to be 48 miles long. We are minutes from walking to lakes, ponds, streams, etc. On our back deck, we can sit outside and listen to a chorus of frogs at night. I have never been happier in any other city. The plan is to keep renting here until we sell our home in Colorado and then consider buying, but I have no desire to do that for another 5 years or so.

Ok, more updates to come, I am going to break them up by major events instead of backdating them to when they happened.

No Comments | In: People, Places & Things | tags: House Stuff, Moving, Updates. | #

It’s been about 18 days since Bobby got home and it is unbelievable to me that it wasn’t just yesterday. These last few weeks have been a blur of activity, and I feel like I have not even had time to exhale, yet alone process. He’s spending a lot of time working at home, and my routine of taking kids to and from school, cleaning, and going to appointments has resumed. But the craziest thing of this is that we are *still* in limbo. We still do not have authorization to move! Yes, here we are at 16 days past the day I planned to be gone, and we don’t even know when and where we are going.

I cope by knitting another row onto an afghan I have been working on for two years. I listen to Bob Marley and remind myself that “every little thing, gonna be alright”, I drink tea and sometimes wine, and take walks and watch documentaries on Netflix. But no matter how much I distract myself, I am still frustrated that we still don’t have the information we thought we would have at the end of December; and every other Wednesday I am thankful that he still has a paycheck, and insurance, and a job, even if he is at home driving me nuts.

I used to romanticize the idea of working from home, but if anything, the last couple weeks has taught me that working from home is the equivalent at working in prison, with between one to five noisy cellmates hanging off of you like a bunch of baby orangutans. I sometimes wonder if he volunteers to go to the store in the evenings just to get away from it all, and even then he usually has to drag along a few primates with him. I really respect that he hasn’t gone all “Here’s Johnny!” on us and redrum-ed the kids and I.

So whenever I complain to myself that I am tired, frustrated, or frazzled (the trifecta of mommy-hood) I just remind myself that not only is he dealing with the same triple-punch, but on top of that has deadlines and reports and real-actual-get-paid-for-work that he has to complete without a nice, quiet space to run off to. Sometimes the silver lining is obvious, sometimes you have to dig deep to find it, but know that it is always there.

1 Comment | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Bobby, Domestic Diva, House Stuff, Insanity, Lame-o, Moving, Updates. | #

Today Bobby asked his boss if he is confident enough with sending us to Ft. Lewis that he would sign a lease if it were him and he got an email back that just said “call me”. Oh man, the proverbial “we have to talk”; that is never good news.

To sum it up, seems like the entire department is going to be going through an overhaul soon and they are not sure how this will change things, so they are trying not to move anyone until they have all the kinks worked out. So now we don’t know if Ft. Lewis is still on the table, and when we would need to be there. We were planning on being there in early February, but now it is impossible. On a positive note, while they are sorting things out he stays here & works from home, which means he can help me with pre-move purging.

Speaking of pre-move purging, we had a walk-through with Mayflower and we have about 3,000 pounds of stuff to get rid of to get our cost below what the company allows.

I refuse to lose hope, no one says this has to change the statement that we will be needed in Washington state. Purging will be good for us, we have a ton of stuff that has outgrown its usefulness that I just have not had a chance to remove, large bulky things I cannot move on my own. This is positive, really it is, I have to believe it, we just don’t know what it means yet.

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Yesterday evening I had writing out a whiny, negative status about the lack of housing I was finding with my pets, and I decided, if I wanted to attract positive, I needed to think positive, so I deleted my whine, and wrote a very positive message Tomorrow will be a better day. Tomorrow will give us more positive leads on pet friendly homes. We WILL find the perfect home soon. And the government will give us an definite answer soon. The Washington State move is going to go GREAT! Let this become my new affirmation. This all came from a series of phone calls from a large rental agency in Olympia with about 10 homes in our price range, with the numbers of bedrooms we need, who claimed to be “pet friendly” who told us that with our two dogs, and three cats, that they have absolutely no rentals that would allow my number of pets, and told me they imagine no one would.

My mood after this phone call was so low that all I wanted to do was whine and vent and cry, but when I chose to be positive about it and post the positive message, my mood became more positive and immediately I was contacted by a home owner who was willing to consider us, despite our number of pets. Even though he has yet to give me an answer (same with the government, they have yet to give us a 100%), I remain more positive, because if someone is willing to say maybe, someone WILL say yes. This is the far cry from the “no one” I was told, and allowed me to get down in the dumps.

Today, I was emailed by another company, and they gave me a choice of 6 houses, but when I told them about my pets, they told me of a house that was the same price as the other ones, but nearly 1,000 square feet larger where it would be fine for me to have my animals. So now I have one for sure I can look at, and now four houses that are maybes. I am confident that in less than a week we will have our definite answer from his company, as well as have housing secured.

Next time you start feeling down in the dumps, just remember the power of the positive and see how much you can make a difficult situation turn around!

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Fur Babies/Pets, House Stuff, Insanity, Me, Moving. | #