goodbye little house

We sold our house.   

We had two weeks of mayhem after I returned from a quick trip to Colorado - packing, moving, cleaning the new house, cleaning the old house - you know, the usual moving drill.   It's funny that with everything going on, I didn't have much time to process it all.  Until Tom dropped me off at the old house the night before the final walk-through.  He took the kids to Chick-Fil-A for yet another nutritious dinner-on-the-run.  And there I was, with only my sponges and Chlorox spray as witnesses.

And I had a good cry.

It kind of felt good to just sit there and cry and take it all in.  I don't know why it hit me while cleaning, of all things.  But there was just something so sad about wiping all the little handprints off the walls, like I was erasing the evidence of a family that lived there.  Then I went to clean the oven and couldn't help but think of the hours and hours I'd spent in that kitchen, making meals and making cookies with my kids.  As I swept the hardwood floors upstairs, I thought of every night I'd tucked our little kids into bed and sang them songs.  And so it went with the whole house: the bathtub brought memories of babies' first baths, the front porch reminded me of the many rainstorms we watched out there, and on and on.  And on.

I guess you could say that I'm just a wee bit sentimental.

It was a wonderful first house for us, though, and will always be special to me, much like this whole magical time we've spent in Pittsburgh.  These have been some of the most intense and stressful years of my life and have also been full of joy for me.  We have learned so much, both about ourselves and about others and about what really matters in life.

I wish that my farewell to our little house were the last goodbye, but unfortunately, the goodbyes are just beginning!  The next month is going to require waterproof mascara on almost a daily basis.  But it will be fun to have a few last get-togethers and to live it up before we say goodbye to this little city and all of these people we love.

Anyway, life is good.  We found a short term rental for two months and are busy planning our next move.  I'll do my best to keep you posted!

Howdy

Howdy, folks. It's been awhile, hasn't it? That's okay, this way I have lot of updates for you. Well, kind of.

I am going to make this quick and painless, which will hopefully make me feel all caught up and warm and fuzzy so that I will hopefully stop associating my blog with guilt pangs :)

Since Halloween, we have:

• celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, Meredith's 30th birthday, and Valentine's Day (please use your imagination here in place of individual blog posts)
• contemplated moving to 12 different states and settled on none of them yet :)
• gotten our house ready to sell (think paint touch-ups, basement wall painting, dejunking, and lots of magic-erasering)
• listed our house with a real estate agent
• had 2 showings
• accepted an offer after 6 days on the market
• continued to contemplate moving to the 12 aforementioned states plus a few others
• visited craigslist daily
• hunted for short-term housing since we have to move out by April 12th

And so far, no trabajo y no casa (free translation: no job and no house). Which leads me to my to-do list for this upcoming week:

1. Research storage facilities and the cheapest hotel we could live in that doesn't have bed bugs
2. Hope the last hope we have for a short-term apartment doesn't fall through
3. Appear calm and collected despite inner panic
4. Think about packing? Then postpone.
5. Sew a cute apron
6. Visit craigslist hourly instead of daily
7. Refrain from asking my husband where we should drive the moving truck to (sorry, these things are just nice to know for people like me)

So, yeah. House is sold and waiting to close, but we are jobless and homeless for now. But we're working on those and hopeful. And if all else fails, we can always go camping all summer and get fast food jobs, right?

The children are doing well. I took Keri recently to get her hair cut and here is the face she made the whole time:

It's a classic Keri look.

Then, there is Grant. He is my smallest child yet. Braden weighed about 5 pounds more than him at this age and was huge! Grant is 50th percentile or lower on everything, which explains why he is moving so much faster than Braden...less chub to haul around :)

He is crawling, diving off hardwood staircases, standing up on everything, and eating every crumb and piece of trash in sight. He also likes to declare, "GA!" repeatedly. It's kind of fun having a conversation with him using only these two letters. He thinks it's hilarious.

And Braden is my imaginative and very curious child. To illustrate, tonight we went for a walk and he found a baby pinecone. When we got home he made a bed for his baby pinecone out of blue construction paper and while I was rocking Grant to sleep he was inquiring about the dietary habits of pinecones. He asks me at every meal where everything we are eating grows and frequently walks around the house asking where everything in our house is made or "grows". He likes to cut and color and build things. He likes saying our realtor's name and talking about what "Bill" does. He is also very concerned about how we are going to move everything in the house into the yellow moving truck and likes to go over the list of what we will take to make sure his bed is on the list. I am doing my best to field these questions and reassure him. Overall the kids are excited to move and are lots of fun.

Well, I hope that gives you an idea of the glamorous Draper life we lead. And by way of survey, if any of you happen to have a serious love for your particular state, please leave a comment stating why you love it and perhaps we will consider moving there :)

The Halloween Festivities

I'll make this snappy.

We tried going to a pumpkin patch the week before Halloween, but Pittsburgh betrayed us and rained a heavy rain. So, since our munchkins were not willing to brave the rain to get out of the car and pick pumpkins, we went to the local grocery store and picked pumpkins there. A little anticlimactic, to say the least. But a pumpkin's a pumpkin...and they all come from the ground, right?

This year Tom did the pumpkin-gut-removing-and-seed-extracting and I did the actual face-creating. Our current kitchen knives leave a little bit to be desired, so we are very lucky that no one was injured during this little party.

Tom was gone over the weekend so the kids and I had to attend the ward Trunk-or-Treat on our own. But he was back in town by "the real Halloween" (as Braden calls it). This year we had an astronaut, a kittycat, and a little fluffy bear.

And if I'm not mistaken, don't I get bonus points for posting this before Thanksgiving?!

Mobiles and Other Infant Entertainment

Before Grant was born I made a simple wooden toy bar and a whole bunch of attachments and mobiles to go on it. It has been so useful! I wanted something simple that I could use for awhile, and not just for a month or two. I used this tutorial for the toy bar and then just sort of figured out how to make the mobiles and other stuff up as I went along. By the way, I didn't come up with the names, they are Montessori.

Here is one of the first ones I made (called the Gobbi mobile...it's 5 felted wool balls in graded colors that hang from a bar):

And here is Grant's favorite so far (called "The Dancers" because the hologram people move when the fan is on and look like they are dancing):

Then I made an attachment that has a hanging wooden ring and there is elastic on the attachment so they can pull on it and use it as a teething ring):

I also made another attachment that has a fabric ball attached that he can swat at and stuff...he squeals every time he hits or kicks it and it is hilarious :) [Sorry there is no picture.]

And lastly, I decided to make him a mini art gallery on our wall of black and white prints (using dollar store frames...gotta love those!). Since babies love black and white for the first while I decided he should have something fun to look at. I got the free images here. It's kind of funny seeing a baby mesmerized by a picture!

And......hello!

Well hi! It's been awhile. Sometimes life hits you full-force, as I'm sure it does for each of you from time to time. But I'm back (at least until I take my next extended blogging break, right?!)

Well, my two-month-old of yesterday is now 5 months old! And I love him. He is happy happy happy and I'm loving his cooing, strangled bird sounds, and belly laughs (which also faintly resemble some sort of bird or duck sound at times). He sleepeth in his own crib now (unless the weather turns chilly and he needs some extra snuggling) and yes, that makes 3 kids in 1 room. So far, so good.

Here's the little Grant man, who we sometimes call Humphrey (Why, you ask? Not sure really, just seemed like a good idea at the time).

Keri is doing well. She is funny and cute and dramatic and willful...but she's two, so that's to be expected. And because she has the shadow of an older brother to reckon with, she sometimes finds herself wishing she were four years old and not two. Maybe that's why I am loving this picture (she dressed herself...doesn't she always?).

Here she is back in her own clothes:

And then there is my Braden. He is full of imagination and ideas and projects that he has envisioned that must be done right now. Today he asked me if we could make some robots out of tires to sell like the Michelin man? Ummmm...sure. Not sure where that idea came from but I asked Tom when he came home and he said there is a Michelin man at Costco they saw or something. Anyway, below he is dressed up as Captain Moroni and the tie-tied-to-a-wooden-dowel is his Title of Liberty. You know, in case you couldn't tell. There is nothing I love more than kids using their imagination!

And now I'll get working on some more blog posts here very soon. Hope you are doing well!

Two...Not So Terrible After All

Two year-olds are great, aren't they? No, I'm serious. Yes, they are a bit feisty and independent, but it is also wonderful to see their determination to keep up with everyone and master different skills. In my (very limited) experience, I have found that the more you embrace this stage and try to see things from their perspective, the better things seem to go.

Case in point.

This child is adorable. And sometimes a little (or a lot) demanding. Loves to snuggle, loves the color pink. Hates when you try to buckle her car seat. Or help her get dressed. Or help her do anything...unless she first realizes she can't actually do it herself and then asks you for help. So most of the time, I just let her try first and wait until she figures out she can't do something before I help. She surprises me often though and is actually capable of doing things I might have tried to do for her.

Discussing two year-olds would be incomplete if we didn't also mention tantrums. Don't you just love a legs-flailing, arm-flapping, high-pitched tantrum executed properly by a two year-old? Highly entertaining. With Braden, tantrums used to be very frustrating for me. He wasn't much of a tantrum-thrower but when he did throw one, IT threw ME. There is something about your protesting child lying flat on their back in the middle of the grocery store refusing to move that makes you want to rip your hair out. Agreed?

Now that I've had some more experience with parenting, I don't mind tantrums so much. I've realized that most tantrums occur because kids either feel out of control (because everyone is telling them what to do) or because they have a very strong emotion (frustration, anger, etc) and they don't know what to do with it. That said, I generally take one of two approaches. I either pretend not to notice it or help them try to figure out what they can do instead. Keri is much more dramatic than Braden and thus is more prone to dramatic behavior :) So you will often hear me saying (as I carry her convulsing, flailing body to her room), "Keri, it looks like you need some time to calm down. I'm going to let you calm down in your room until you feel ready to _____." I had to practice for awhile until I could say it in a non-sarcastic, calm voice. But already, she often tells me halfway up the stairs, "I'm ready to talk. I play nice."

Anyway, the only thing that has been much harder the second time around with a two year-old is that she desperately wants to keep up with her older brother and do everything he does. And she is such a determined little girl that she can now do a lot of the things he didn't master until he was older, like getting dressed or being potty trained. But sometimes, she just can't do what he does and I can see the frustration on her face. It really is hard to be two, I think. Your body just can't do what your mind wants to.

Well, different people like different parts of parenting better. Some people hate the toddler stage. Some people hate the teenage years. Some people like all of it. The good news is that if you are having trouble with a particular age, it will most definitely pass before long. I find each different phase has its challenges, but for the most part I am trying to just enjoy it all because I know that one day, when it's all over, I will miss it.

Anyway, I love The Two Year-Old. I like the challenge of trying to help her become independent and I like seeing her learn new things and develop patience.

Now that I just wrote that "I love The Two-Year-Old", it's kind of ironic that she just walked up to me wearing her shirt inside-out and her shorts backwards to inform me that there is "milk on da floor." Gotta love 'em, right?!

The Fourth of July

I thought it was hard to get two kids to smile at the camera. It turns out that it is even harder to get three children to even look at you, nevermind have a pleasant expression on their face (Grant is of course excused since he only learned to smile 3 weeks ago).

Well, from here on out, I think my main goal will just be to get all three children inside the little green box I see on my camera when I take a picture. That way, when we look back through our pictures when we are old, we will know that they were all healthy and alive and accounted for at the time of the photo, if nothing else. And that will be special, right?

So, back to the Fourth of July. Baked many many cinnamon rolls. Went to a breakfast with friends at the park. Took a long nap while cuddling Grant. Watched fireworks on our front porch.

Oh, yes. And tried to take Fourth of July pictures of our children. The best of which is seen above. It turns out that all of the ones where you can actually see the other kids' faces look sort of scary or blurry. Oh well. Happy Belated Independence Day!