June 16th - the Heat is On

Literally. It's 2pm on a rainy June afternoon. Malcolm is taking his nap and I am shivering. I look at the thermostat in our house and it reads 64 degrees. No wonder I am cold. And no, we don't have air conditioning. It's because it's even colder outside. Yes, I turned the radiator on for a few to help warm up the place. So wrong.

Moved, but Still Much to Do

The movers came a week ago. We've been sleeping in our new house for a week now. There are still several unpacked boxes and a long list of things to do, but that's how it goes when you have to entertain a toddler and are 8 months pregnant. Plus, there is still a lot of things to get done at the old house. I'm hoping that Tony and I can spend several hours there on Sunday w/o Malcolm to make significant progress.

Saturday is Malcolm's preschool's end-of-the-year picnic. We're definitely going to miss preschool this summer. His last day is next Tuesday. We'll have things to fill our days with over the summer, but he's not old enough for any of the summer programs that I looked into since he doesn't turn 3 until August.

We're going to head out to the park to enjoy the sunshine since rain is forecasted for this afternoon. Our summer has yet to arrive.

Happenings

It was my birthday recently and we had fun. I said, 'No!' to cooking so we went out to eat twice over my b-day weekend. I am 36 and I feel older. I even dyed my hair brown in hopes of never coloring it again. What? Yes. I'm throwing away my hair-dying shirt and saying goodbye to my artificially hair colored days. Well, that's my goal anyway. Let's see if I can do it.

The little brother in my belly is kicking up a storm and growing like a weed. My OB even said so. I have outgrown my maternity pants that I wore with Malcolm already. I don't want to go shopping for maternity clothes, but it looks like I'm going to have to since I've exhausted all of the options of borrowing from friends.

I am happy to say that we are no longer on the hunt for a place to live. We found a place on Capitol Hill that is much larger than our current townhouse, has a yard, lots of charm and is just a few blocks away from our old apartment. We are pleased as punch. It's a duplex and we'll be on the top two floors. Friends of ours live on the bottom half; they were the ones who referred us to the owner of the house once they heard that their current neighbors were moving out. Our lease starts on June 1st. Now it's time to put this place on the market and get the hell out of dodge!

Finding a New Home

At 5:30 today, we're scheduled to look at an apartment on Capitol Hill that is larger than our townhouse. Townhouses around us have been selling quickly lately, so we are hoping that ours will do the same once we put it on the market. We moved away from Capitol Hill 3.5 years ago and can't wait to move back. What can I say? We're people that just need to be in the center of it all even with our kids. Plus, it will save us quite a bit of money to go back to renting from owning.

New Neighbors

In December, our old neighbors moved out. Since then, the unit next door has been blissfully empty until this weekend. While we were enjoying the snow in Whistler, people moved in next door. I realized this fact this morning as I heard lots of running up and down the stairs. However, we should have been clued in last night when we came home and our main floor had the aroma of fried food.

The joys of living in a townhouse. I honestly thought the soundproofing and smellproofing would be better.

Mine!

Ah, the sound of possessiveness. It has caught us both off guard. It started this week and we can only guess that Malcolm learned the "Mine!" thing at the childcare at the YMCA. While there on Monday, he got really upset and they couldn't console him so they came and got me from the gym. I originally thought that he was overtired, but Tony thinks he had an altercation with another kid that upset him and it had to do with the "Mine thing.

We pretty much just ignore him when he says it since we're not really sure how else to respond. If, during play group, he has issues with sharing, I'll address it then.

We're in the process of refinancing our home. When we first purchased our home, we thought we'd be selling in 5 years. Now we're not so sure that's going to happen. The rates are so good right now that we just couldn't pass the opportunity up. It's still a little scary, but I'm not sure why.

Setting Goals

My darling husband mentioned to me the other day that he'd like to set some family goals for our household. Want to help me come up with some good ones?

One goal: look into refinancing our mortgages. First step accomplished today: I finally called the mortgage broker that came highly recommended by Julie & Sunny. The rates are excellent right now and they are both refinancing. He'll be calling me back tomorrow with the low-down.

Another goal: call the company that holds our home warranty. We mistakenly thought it was only one year but it turns out to be a three-year warranty. I need to give them a ring to see if they will reimburse us for the electrical work we had done recently.

The Garage Goal has been looming over our heads since we moved in. We really need to get off our butts and install shelving, organize and purge. The biggest reason why we haven't made much headway on this goal is because it would be best if both of us were doing it at the same time. Thing is, one of us always needs to be watching Malcolm. Our garage is less than childproof and he could get himself into some trouble down there if we let him.

The Electrical Problem

I found a great electrician to come out to our house Monday afternoon. He found an extremely disturbing problem: the 'hot' wire going into our electrical panel for the dryer was loose and melted. Every time we used the dryer, it was shorting out. This scenario was a prime candidate for a house fire. I cannot tell you how lucky we feel that the panel never set fire.

He fixed the damaged wire, tightened 3 other loose wires and replaced a blown fuse. Problem solved for less than $200 (or so we thought).

I attempted to do a load of laundry on Tuesday. About 20 minutes into the dry cycle, the power goes out. Crap.

Jim the Electrician comes out again this morning. He checks the dryer (Tony pulled it out from the laundry closet. No easy feat) and makes sure that everything at the panel is a-okay. He then checks our main breaker and found that it was very loose and not bolted down. Therefore, it would flip if you breathed on it funny. Just to be on the safe side, we had him replace the main breaker. I haven't attempted to do laundry yet, but he assures me that the problem has been fixed. He didn't think to check the main breaker before because the melted wire seemed to be the obvious problem and our main breaker should have never passed inspection.

Whoever did the electrical work on our place did a shoddy job. Whoever did the final inspection to make sure it was up to code did an even shoddier job. We will be letting all of our neighbors know about this and strongly urge them to have an electrician check out their panels.

Blog Changes

So as you can see, I changed the look of my blog out of necessity. There are a lot of templates that are unfriendly to photos :( I do not know Html well enough to create my own template, so my pickings were slim.

I also changed the title of my blog (again). The previous title was just too long and rarely do I actually write about our 'adventures'. We'll see how long I keep this current title.

Malcolm's sleep has been wonked ever since daylight savings time ended. I thought it would fix itself eventually, but he's showing no end of his 5 AM waking. I'm often able to get him back to sleep, but on mornings where I am not, I have a really hard time functioning throughout the day.

I can't seem to find an available electrician to come out and fix our problem. So lame.

The Last Day

I feel like I should do some monumental post for the last day of NaBloPoMo, but that's not happening at this time of night. Sorry, folks. I am tired. I have thoroughly enjoyed this long weekend with my dearest husband. We relaxed and enjoyed each other's company. I have also been eating lots of pie. Mmm...pie.

I have gone over to Julie's the past two nights to dry clothes because every time we try to run our clothes dryer, our main circuit breaker flips. I'll be calling around tomorrow to find an electrician who can come out ASAP. It's super frustrating that we are having this problem in new construction.

List Revisited

I made the banana muffins yesterday. They are, by far, the best banana muffins I have ever made. I made a couple of changes. I replaced 4 Tbsp of whole wheat flour with 2 Tbsp of ground flaxseed and 2 Tbsp of wheat germ. The muffins came out super moist and fluffy. Since I make them with whole wheat flour, they tend to be pretty dense. Not these! I believe I found my new baking trick.

I dealt with a little bit of the clutter in the bedroom. I listened to the advice of my Aunt Sally and just focused on tackling one pile instead of feeling like I had to clean up the whole mess at once. I still have quite a bit to do, but at least I've started. It can be so difficult keeping this house clean because my little toddler is constantly making messes for me to clean up. Fortunately, he's at the age where he can learn to pick up after himself. We play the clean-up game every day and he thinks it's fun. I'll have him scrubbing toilets by Christmastime.

I often like to look at pictures of Malcolm when he was a newborn and marvel at how much he has changed. Here's a picture of him when he's about 4 weeks old:

And Here is My Underbelly

*the landscape pictures are not showing fully due to the new format of my blog. LAME.

There has been something that has been weighing on me heavily and it continues to get worse. Aunt Sally, if you're reading this, you may want to stop now.

I have something to admit. I have a clutter problem and it seems to be getting worse. Today, I will be showing you my bedroom. Why I am doing this? I'm hoping that by doing this I will be embarrassed enough to actually do something about it.
Here is my side of the room:

*hangs head in shame*
clutter I hide behind the mirror:

Old tape cassettes that I'm not sure what to do with, a ribbon from a gift, a gift bag Mal pulled from the closet and other crap:

Mal's old clothes that need to be sorted and the co-sleeper that I'm not sure where to store long-term:

On top of the dresser (with a nice layer of dust):

This stuff used to be in a bag until Mal pulled it out to play with. Still, I was hiding it in a bag beside the dresser:


I could blame this on being a mom to a toddler, but the truth is is that I've always had a slight clutter problem. And I've always hated it. I have the Hanna gene that is getting severely ignored. I need to figure out how to tend to my need to clean.

Constant Mess

I spend a lot of my day picking up after Malcolm. Above is just a sample of the mess on the floor after a typical meal. It's a good thing that I don't mind cleaning so much. If I were working outside of the home, I'd likely hire someone to come in and clean every couple of weeks. It's seriously a full-time job taking care of the kid and the house and the house is rarely in the condition I would like it to be.

As Local As It Gets

I am seriously enjoying our little urban garden. We were a little late in planting things so pretty much the only things we've harvested are peas, lettuce, chard and collards. Our tomatoes have started to turn red which is so exciting to us. I had to thin out the chard and kale because it was too crowded. We also lost our pea plants for some reason.

Today, I thought to myself, "I need to eat some veggies for lunch" (we have minimal produce since I missed the Farmer's Market last week). So, I went out and cut enough collard greens for my meal. I didn't have to figure out what to do with a whole bunch; I could just get what I needed. Love it!

So Unpredictable

Thursday night: up every two hours and then up for the day around 6 AM. Ugh. Yes, I was sleep deprived yesterday.
Friday night: we met up with a few of the other PEPS families at a kid-friendly bar in Madrona (what? yes - you heard me right) for dinner and beer. They have toys and a play area in the place along with a wall of sippy cups behind the bar. Since we got home shortly before 8, I skipped giving Malcolm a bath. He didn't go to bed until 10 PM. The boy is set in his routine! He woke up around 10:45 and we were able to get him back to sleep pretty quickly. He woke up around 2:30 and then around 6. I brought him to bed with me at 6 because I wanted to avoid a repeat of Friday morning and it worked. He didn't wake up for the day until around 8:30.

Tonight is a dinner party at Chris' house so it will be another night out of his routine. I'm looking forward to hanging out with our friends - both Tony and I miss them a lot. I'm hoping that the little guy will fall asleep around his normal time (8pm) and that he'll sleep happily in his car seat until we get home.

I finally got around to filing our taxes and we actually get a refund this year which is nice. We're going to use a bit of it as 'fun money' but the majority of it is going into our savings account to replace the $$ we took out while Tony was out of work. The money that we'll be receiving in May from the government will be going back into the economy. We're going to do as this administration wishes and buy stuff with it. There is a long list of things for the house that we'd like including proper window treatments. We've been in this house for almost a year and a half and still have the temporary window treatments up on many of the windows. I hate it! It's going to be so nice to have quality window treatments; it's really going to help finish off the look of many of the rooms.

My book is calling out to me - I have to take advantage of Mal's naptime while I can!

The Nursery in Progress

My energy is back up - I think it was the anemia kicking my ass. I ran out of iron supplements and went about a week w/o. Now I know better! I took some time last night to finish cleaning the crib and put it in place. Here's what the nursery looks like so far:

This is the west wall.

The crib that we scored off of Freecycle.

The north wall with the hide-a-bed.

This room will still be serving as our guest room for awhile. We'll be cosleeping with bean for at least 6 months and can just roll the crib into our bedroom after that when we have guests. I still need to pick up the footstool and the bookshelf.

That 'New House' Smell

We've lived in our house for 6 months now and moved in right after construction was (almost) complete. This past weekend, we had family come in from out of town and stay with us. We received the comment multiple times that our house still smells 'new'. What is that new house smell? I'll tell you what it is: the chemicals and crap used to build the house are still giving off fumes. Tony & I no longer notice it but it's apparently still there. The paint, carpet, glue, treated wood, etc, will be giving off fumes for who knows how long. It makes me sad.

The thing that was even worse? My dad thinks he might have been suffering from an allergic reaction from all of it. He couldn't stay in the house for very long before feeling sick. LAMENESS.

Who me? Rest? Never!

Whew! I am pooped!

The next few weeks will be busy; I started off hitting the ground running. This weekend, I painted the downstairs room in preparation of moving the office down there so we can start setting up the nursery upstairs. I will post before & after pictures once it's all situated. This was the first time I have ever painted a place where I have lived. I could never paint the walls in any of my rental apartments for all of these years. It was great fun! I'm taking a break while the second coat dries and am a bit nervous about taking off the tape - that's when you notice all of your mistakes. Per recommendation, I used American Pride paint and am quite pleased with it. The color is called Almondine and Cory described it as a pale avocado. I wanted something light since the room is so small. We'll be busy moving the office down there the rest of this week before heading to Atlanta on Thursday.

I'm still waiting on my grade for Business Ethics. I have no idea what I got on my last two projects, but I think I did well. Final grades are due this Thursday.

Urge to spend money

It doesn't happen very often, but once in a while I actually get the urge to go shopping. I have that urge RIGHT NOW. Here's a list of things I would like to procure:

- bookcase for our living room
- maternity clothes
- vase & something to go in them for our fireplace mantel
- window coverings
- jeans for Tony
- barstools
- bedroom suite

The bedroom suite, barstools and window coverings are unlikely ATM. I have my eye on a bookcase at Ikea that's $80. I know I can find the mantel solution at Michael's for less than $30. However, I would feel guilty for spending money on any of the above things because they are wants and not needs. But, then again, Tony just spent a good chunk of change yesterday on snowboarding which was definitely a want. Why do I have such a hard time spending money? Although we are in debt, we aren't poor.

Too ambitious?

As we work on decorating our house, we're not finding any curtains/drapes that appeal to us for our living room. I have this idea that maybe I should sew them myself. I haven't broken out my sewing machine since moving to Seattle. Is it too ambitious? Am I willing to risk spending money on fabric and then the curtains turn out poorly? What I think may be a good idea may indeed be a bad one.

I didn't get through my feat list. That was too ambitious. However, I am confident that I will get through the list this week. I dyed Tony's hair yesterday and now there is dye all in my clean tub. So disappointing :(

Amanda - I have been known to clean people's houses when I visit them. Especially if they have to work and I am carless. Just ask Betsy!