Home Is Where Your Family Sleeps

August 24, 2009 By

So, we’re home. I’m still not sure what that means exactly and today may have been the first day I didn’t go back to the apartment (that YES we still own) since we actually moved, but we’re home.

I have my kitchen 99.9% done, my bedroom 99.9% done, my office 75% done – but the important part like Internet. And my new desk from Ikea which was something of a bitch to build, but very very nice. Ann came over today and now my dining room is 99.9% done. She made me feel so much better. Thank you my friend! Oh and she brought Meli the cutest sweetest bench for her new backyard! Thank you!!!

Here are things I’m loving: my movers! YES – I LOVED MY MOVERS! I know, it’s crazy, but I can’t say enough good things about Suddath Moving Company. They were fantastic right from the start and my moving crew – headed up by one fine chic named Chris. She and her team were funny, respectful, and completely hardworking. I actually missed them when they finally left us. (Also I might have been freaking out at the sheer number of boxes in my house.)

My Levelor Cellular Shades from Lowes. LOVE THEM! They’re cordless which is awesome because Meli likes to play with the cords and it scares me because she puts them around her neck. They came in fast, the installers from Lowe’s were great and they look nice and are totally functional. I have black outs (which are REALLY DARK) and some that let in light and they are some of the best purchases I’ve made for my house.

There’s something else I love but I can’t remember now.

I’m exhausted. Moving totally sucks and I can’t wait until the house feels like ours, really, and I’m begging to get back into a routine, but I fear that won’t be for awhile. Oh and toddlers and unpacking don’t mix very well.

Tomorrow Meli and I are heading down the shore to my sister’s. It’s the last week really that we can hang on the beach before school starts and I need to get away from “home.” I actually think I might miss it when I’m gone.

I’ll see you when I get back and hopefully have some pictures for you. I just hope I can find my camera in all this mess.

Thanks for all your good wishes. It’s nice to have people out there rooting for you. I really appreciate it.

Filed Under: Home Sweet Home

Moving Day

August 18, 2009 By

Today we move. Georgie and I have been mondo sentimental the last few days as we’ve lived in our building for 18 years. Over 18 years. We grew up here – TOGETHER. When we moved in here lo those 18 years ago I was 21 and he was 27 and now we’re old(er.) As much as we want to leave and are excited for this new chapter, it’s really sad. It truly is the end of an era.

Also fate continued to show me that while we don’t have the best luck, we don’t have the worst luck either. We got an offer on the apartment yesterday. It might not be THE offer, but it’s an offer and traffic has ramped up considerably in the last week or so. There may be an end to this yet.

I’m not sure when I’ll be back on line – Verizon has proven itself to be just as wonderful as the cable companies of old – but as soon as I am I’ll check back in.

Okay. There are still lots of boxes to pack. Movers will be here in two hours.
L, C

Filed Under: Life

Proust had his cookies

August 13, 2009 By

and I have – losing my cookies? In packing up my closet, I came across a skirt I wore a lot in the first trimester of my pregnancy and I was overcome with a feeling of intense nausea. It was like I could smell how things used to smell to me and it turned my stomach instantly.

I’m definitely not pregnant, just stressed. And filled with memories.

Filed Under: Life

Night

August 11, 2009 By

Today is Meli’s 17 month birthday and I want to get this down.

So we started night weaning last Thursday night. Georgie had Friday off (for his birthday – sorry honey!) and I thought it was a good night to start because it gave me three nights where we didn’t have to wake up early. (I link to a site on night weaning which I basically used as a guideline – no nursing between the hours of 11PM and 6AM – otherwise we’re kind of doing our own thing but I think it’s a great resource, so I link.)

The first night I nursed Meli to sleep right before 11PM and honestly fell asleep so she was on the boob for awhile after 11. But then we settled in. She woke up around 4AM and cried and cried but I didn’t nurse her. I tried to hold her and comfort her but she’s a stubborn little girl so she pulled out the big guns:

“Pease! Pease! Pease!”

BOING! CRASH! That sound you heard was the arrow piercing my heart and shattering it into a million pieces. I’ve been trying to teach her please and thank you and here she goes and uses please CORRECTLY and WITHOUT PROMPTING and I can’t give in. Yeah. Mommy breakdown moment. I’m still picking up the pieces of my broken heart.

That first night we ended up being up from 4AM until 6AM, with 5:50 to 6 being the longest 10 minutes of my life. Thank god for Sprout. I nursed her the minute the clock hit 6 and she was asleep within thirty seconds and slept until like 10AM. I was bone tired and felt like I had totally given in at that 6AM mark.

The second night I was a bit better prepared. I had her milk and her water close at hand and was fully prepared for a night of Thomas the Tank Engine. She woke up around 1AM and wasn’t as fitful and angry as the night before, but still had some ammunition. This time it was a plaintive wail of:

“I know, I know, I knoooooowwwww!”

She says this because this is what I say to her when she’s upset. I hug her and pat her and say, “I know, my love, I know.” So when she’s upset, she tells herself the same thing. Only it sounds so much more sad and pathetic when she cries it than when I say it. “I knooooooooooooooowwwwwwwww!”

Luckily, this only went on for about ten or fifteen minutes before she trailed off and went to sleep. I think she woke up again around 3AM and did another round of “I knows” but all in all it was MUCH more successful than the night before.

The third night it got even better. She would cry and complain but quickly go back to sleep. She was never up for more than five minutes at a time, although it seems to me she was sleeping a lot lighter than she usually did. For instance, most times I can move her around in bed without waking her (like when she’s turned sideways and is kicking me in the back) but that night any time I moved her the slightest she woke up. So I stopped moving her and woke up with a sore back from trying not to move all night.

The fourth night I don’t remember so well, although I think it was a little bit worse than the third night. The fourth night became about her sippy cup, which I gave to her and she clung to like a talisman. I tried to take it away from her once. ONCE. Yeah.

Last night was the fifth night and I really didn’t have many high hopes that things would be better than the fourth or third night. She was doing okay and NOT nursing and honestly that’s really what I’m weaning her for – the NOT nursing. If I have to go without sleep, well, sleep is for sissies anyway.

The fifth night I was armed with her current favorite stuffed animal, dog. I nursed her to sleep around 10PM and while I was nursing her I told her that we were going to say goodnight to nursies and then sleep all night long and that in the morning we could have nursies again. I told her that Mommy would be next to her all night and that I would hold her if she was sad but that everything would be okay.

Wouldn’t you know it? She’s still asleep. It’s 6:26 AM and she’s still asleep and she hasn’t nursed ONCE all night. Not only hasn’t she nursed, but she hasn’t woken up at all either. She tossed and turned a lot and she seemed to need to be TOUCHING me the entire night, but she didn’t wake up. In fact, at around 5:45 AM she laughed in her sleep. Nothing better than the sleep laugh.

I know the kind of night we had because I didn’t sleep. I waited for her to wake up. I alternately panicked over all the stuff I have to do and all the stuff I haven’t done and was completely proud of my little girl for being so big and was devastated that she’s so big and I tried to sleep but it didn’t really work. Even when I moved her around a bunch – she still didn’t wake up.

I’m prepared for the fact that tonight she might wake up every hour on the hour demanding to nurse, but if she can do it once, she can do it again.

We move a week from today and I’ve already run out of small book boxes with still more books to go. Yipee!
L, C

Filed Under: Baby? OH BABY!

Color My World!

August 3, 2009 By

So I did a bit of swatching:

We were talking about all my paint sampling and Ann commented that it’s just like a gauge swatch and really it is. So necessary. Annoying. You hate that you have to keep trying new combinations but oh so worth it in the end.

I’m trying to match an area rug in the dining room and I started out with the three colors directly to the left of the doorway. Way too light, not enough red, practically blend in with the woodwork. (By the way – don’t the floors look great? Just some sanding and poly – no stain – that’s how they look. I’m so happy to have wood floors!!)

I went redder in the next go around. The winner is in this picture. Actually – the winner is in ALL of the pictures. Is it this one?

Nope! But maybe Meli likes that best. C’mon baby girl! Show us the winner!

That’s Pomegranate. Here’s the swatch:

I actually think there’s a bit more purple in it than the swatch, but it’s pretty close. The best part is when G was at the house and I had the rug down he chose this color and the color to the right of it as the two finalists. When I first put the paint up on the wall, they looked almost identical. In the end, the color to the right is a tad darker. And pomegranates are G’s favorite, so it’s only fitting that the namesake color adorn the walls of our dining room.

Tomorrow they start the paint!! They were supposed to start last week but the floors took a bit longer and then we had to let them dry. They were then supposed to start today. That’s why Meli’s in her diaper – I literally took her out of bed, still sleeping, so I could get to the house in time to let them in only to have the foreman tell me they’re starting tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow – it’s only a DAY AWAY!

I feel like once the paint is on the walls the house is really mine. Even though they’ve already hung my new chandelier and put up a bazillion baby gates and we bought a new kitchen table and chairs at Ikea this weekend (thank goodness for their odd sizes since the kitchen doesn’t really have a lot of space for a table and yes I’m mixing my woods) and I’m about to order my new bathroom vanities and pick up the sconces tomorrow and…and…and! So many details.

When I’m not obsessing about the new house, I’m procrastinating on a job I MUST finish by packing. So far I’ve got about 55 boxes done – ALL BOOKS. And there’s still a bunch more to do. I haven’t even touch the knitting books. I feel like if I can just get the books packed it will all be good. Although I’m terribly depressed because my Ikea bookcases that have lined my walls for the past 12 years pretty much won’t fit in any of the rooms I’ve designated as book rooms in the new house. I’ve looked around but bookcases are expensive! I guess I’ve been able to have so many because Billys are cheap. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but packing up all my books has been sad – especially since I’m not quite sure when they’ll be unpacked.

But tomorrow the painters start! And if all goes well, we’ll be moving two weeks from today. Or tomorrow. YAY!

Filed Under: Home Sweet Home

Victory Shall Be Mine!

July 28, 2009 By

Here’s the color of today:

It’s really not the best representation. If you want to, go here and see it. (Although I think the color is actually a bit more blue and a bit less gray on my wall.)

This gorgeous color (trust me – it’s beautiful!) will grace my bedroom walls. It matches perfectly with the great carpet we got which changes between a gray/blue and a deeper midnight-ish blue depending on how you look at it. The carpet is pretty neat: it’s made from corn. Besides been kind of “green,” it’s super soft and cushy. We’re doing the bedrooms, hallway and stairs with variations of it.

They started working on the house at the end of last week. (And by they I mean the tradesmen that will make my life hell for the next couple of weeks. We’re three days in and already I’m ready to quit.) The electricians are gone and the floor guys started today (we’re having the first floor wood floors refinished. Figured it was good to get that done while the house is empty.) Then paint, then finish the floors, then carpet then MOVE! I’ve packed a total of…TWO boxes. Books. I’m not sure you’ve ever seen my house, but my book collection makes my yarn collection look like I started knitting two weeks ago. Truly. The really sad thing is that I have barely any wall space in the new house for all the bookcases. There are a TON of windows – literally walls of windows, which is wonderful and makes our Tudor home bright and cheery, but doesn’t leave a lot of wall space for bookshelves. For sure a lot of them will end up in storage. Anyway, I’ve packed two boxes of books. Only 58 more to go.

Another thing about the new house: I have my own yarn/fiber room! There is a really lovely sun room off of the main entrance/hallway and it’s ALL windows (except for the doorway wall) and it’s got a slate floor and I’ve bought a lovely area rug (the pattern is the same as the gorgeous one I bought for the dining room – only it’s a different color scheme.) Eventually I’ll get a nice chaise chair and some other seating but as soon as we move in my fantastic yarn cabinet (it’s worth it to click on all the links – in the order linked) will go in there and my wheel! I’m going to make sure my wheel has a special place in the house. The poor thing has been in storage for forever!

The victory in the title is the whole reason I can write this post. Weaning Meli continues on with the usual ups and downs. One of my biggest problems is that I nurse her to sleep and I can’t NOT nurse her to sleep. Other people, like my mom and dad, can get her to fall asleep without nursing, but unless we’re out and about and she falls asleep in the car or on a walk, I have to nurse her to sleep. She just won’t let herself go. Welp, today, after a long day of tantrums and play and general clingy-ness to the point of exhaustion, she let me sing and rock her to sleep. SANS BOOB! I was even able to put her down on the bed and she stayed asleep! I can’t tell you what a triumph this is for me. There’s hope that we won’t be nursing forever! (Especially since I have to be DONE COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY by the first or second week of September.) Full disclosure: while I was writing this blog post she woke up and I went into bed and nursed her back to sleep. Otherwise she would never have stayed sleeping and she wasn’t ready to wake up and I wasn’t done writing. See what I sacrifice for the blog?

So, small victories. I really shouldn’t be blogging at all. I should be working or packing or folding laundry. But no, I’m blogging and it feels really good! Thanks!

Filed Under: Baby? OH BABY!, Home Sweet Home

Color of the Day

July 24, 2009 By

I’m pretty sure this will be the new color of my new EXTREMELY beige kitchen:

It’s not the best representation. If you want to, go here and see it.

And here’s my beige kitchen:


Realtor Photo

There isn’t actually a lot of wall space in the kitchen that will be painted. The tiles go up really high and there are a few nice big windows with wide wood trim. The kitchen overall is pretty good – not the best, not the worst. We have a lot of cabinets, but surprisingly little counter top space. Who am I kidding? There’s a refrigerator, a dishwasher and there will be a microwave soon. The kitchen’s PERFECT.

We’re only painting a few rooms in the house – a couple of bedrooms, the dining room and the kitchen. Believe it or not, I’ve had a crisis of confidence when it comes to color. But after painting a few samples on the walls yesterday I’m feeling better.

This awesome yellow is a great start.

PS – Thank you all for the comments yesterday. They’re still all going to the junk folder but I tweeked things a little bit this morning so hopefully I’ll be getting comments emailed to me again. Off to meet with painters this morning then joining my siblings and parents for a weekend at the beach. Hope you have a good one. Next up: The Master Bedroom Color. It’s a good one!

Filed Under: Home Sweet Home

It’s Alive!

July 23, 2009 By

Oh my god! I really thought I had killed my blog.

So I post this super long post in a super long while and… nothing happened. As far as I was concerned I didn’t get a single comment. At first I thought this was weird and then I did some snooping around – no comments in MT in the comment section OR the entry. Nothing in my email. The comments appeared to be working. This precipitated an existential looking back on the last almost five years of this blog and an OH MY GOD I KILLED MY BLOG! It was my own fault. If you don’t post, people don’t read and with all the competition out there (twitter, ravelry, facebook) who can blame them?

In the end I was surprisingly okay with it all.

Then I posted again and still no comments and I was curious but resolved that if I was going to continue with the blog, well, it WAS really only going to be for me! I said it all along and now it was really true and that was OKAY. Pressure was off and maybe I could even get back into writing again the way I used to about things I love and excite me and I could be all funny and pithy and I could build it all back up again. Or not. I did it once I could do it again and besides I’m doing it all for me anyway so what’s the difference if it works or not. I’ve always said you have to write for yourself in the end or it doesn’t really work even though the audience is a super big plus.

I end up being all proud of myself for not being so upset that I’ve lost you all and gone ahead and killed the blog and I’m sitting here patting myself on the back for being so grown up about it (I will be 40 in January and I’ve been thinking a lot about being grown up) and then I get a hit on bloglines from my comment feed and WAIT… there actually ARE comments!

Turns out that there were actually quite a few comments (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!) and that somehow they had all been trapped by the spam filters and ended up in the junk bin. That’s why they didn’t show up on the blog – at least most of them didn’t – and they didn’t hit my email and they didn’t hit the MT entry and I have no idea why all of this happened but in the end I’m glad. (The truth is my MT needs desperately to be updated but I don’t have it in me to do it anymore. I used to be able to stay up for days figuring it all out but those days are long gone. I’m not sure what I’m going to do here.)

It was an excellent exercise in the long run because I’m still here. For better or worse. With you all or all by lonesome. Seems I’m not quite done yet.

Thank you for reading!! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your presence.

Filed Under: Blog, Life

Mommy Says

July 16, 2009 By

Here are some Meli tricks. She’s my rambunctious 16 month old now – no more a baby!

A Command Performance from January One on Vimeo.

Meli and the Jets from January One on Vimeo.

Thanks for watching!
L, C & M

Filed Under: Baby? OH BABY!

Checking In

July 15, 2009 By

Hey everybody! I finally got a minute to check out some blogs, read this post and was inspired to check in.

Things have been crazy.

We closed on our new house two weeks ago and I thought it would make me feel better – you know – have some closure on the whole thing – but it’s only made things worse. I love the new house – LOVE IT – but it still feels like we’re miles away from actually living there. We still are no where close to selling our current apartment – even though we’ve dropped our price to obscene levels. Every other week we get a looker but the only people who have been interested live in the building and are scared because they have to sell their own place. NOTHING is moving here right now. Absolutely nothing.

So since we have two places we thought we’d do a little cosmetic work to the new house before we move in. We’re putting in some carpet upstairs and we’d like to redo the first floor wood floors while it’s empty and my kitchen is beige to an extreme degree so I want to paint that as well as some other rooms and we need some electrical work done and I call and call and call vendors and I can barely get a proposal out of them and when I do, no one calls you back when you WANT TO HIRE THEM! It’s so unbelievably frustrating. I thought the housing market and everything about it was in a slump? Vendors were begging for work? Not around here I guess.

I honestly haven’t even started packing my apartment yet because we don’t have a move out date and I need that fire to get packing. Literally.

I’m back and forth all the time and it’s exhausting.

I have been knitting though! I finished all of the second socks to these first socks – so I have FIVE NEW PAIRS of socks for the winter. And believe it or not, I started a second set of five socks. All monkeys, all STR. I would be more than happy to show you them and I promise I will someday but the amount of work – taking the picture, loading it onto the computer, resizing it, blah blah blah – would just about kill me. That’s how emotionally, physically and mentally tired I am these days. And we haven’t even gotten to the hard stuff yet.

On the other hand, Meli is absolutely fantastic. She’s running, dancing, jumping (sort of) singing and she talks NON STOP from the minute she wakes up until she falls asleep. She has so many words and every day new ones pop out and she will try to say whatever you say. I’m working on happy birthday right now for my sister’s birthday on Friday. The saddest and sweetest thing she says is “here we go.” Whenever she’s upset and we’re in the car I guess I always say “here we go, here we go my love” to tell her that we’re on our way home and now, whenever she’s really upset she’ll start saying “here we go.” It just about breaks my heart but at the same time I’m bursting with the sweetness.

I’m in full court press on the weaning these days. I was doing fairly well weaning her during the day and then we took like eighty steps back and these week I’ve gone hard core. When she wakes up in the morning and has her last nurse, I tell her to say bye bye to the boobs, that we’ll see them when we go to sleep. We have our moments during the day, but for the most part she’s pretty good as long. I’ve got her drinking either chocolate or strawberry milk (our peds recommendation when she wouldn’t drink plain milk) out of these great cups (she prefers the straw) and when she’s upset I can usually get her to drink her milk while I hold her and she settles down. I have to say though we’ve been on the go A LOT. I feel like if we stop she’ll want to nurse so I run run run to keep her occupied. Another reason I’m exhausted. If things work our for the next week or so and we are through nursing during the day, I’m going to try this method for night weaning. My sister used it to wean her youngest – she said it was hard, but it worked. Oh and before I get crap for weaning her – the fertility clinic said she had to be weaned before I could start treatment again. What’s best for my family is best for my family. Discussion over.

Anyway, so that’s what we’re up to. They didn’t open our pool this summer because the construction is ongoing – when they work, that is, which is sad because we can’t even enjoy our last summer here. But we’re taking long walks and playing in playgrounds and I bought a hose and a wading pool for our new fabulous backyard. Summer seems like it might finally be here and I don’t care how tired I am, we’re going to enjoy it.

Hope your summer is going great! Thanks for checking in – I hope to be back soon!
L, C

Filed Under: Life
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