Monsters

I've had to hide the raisins.

In our old house, though Violet could get into the pantry any time she wanted to, she didn't. It didn't really occur to her that there was food in there, even if she'd seen me pull stuff out to cook or use. So, it stands to reason that I might think she wouldn't be interested in the pantry in the new house, right?

Wrong. First I had to move the Nilla Wafers to a higher shelf. Then the instant oatmeal (she would rip open packets and try to cook it in her play kitchen for her babies -- cute, but crazy messy). And now I've had to hide the raisins because Violet helped herself to four boxes while I was sorting and cleaning and vacuuming the bedrooms this past Sunday.

Do you realize four mini-boxes of raisins is about 3 cups of grapes in real life? Yeah... Poor sitter had to deal with those diapers yesterday -- so sorry!

Other interesting things about our new house? Our new TV can be heard in the kids bedroom, so when Scott's not looking, I adjust the volume from 28 to about 12. Of course, when the kids aren't bouncing around us, we don't really need the TV at 28 to hear over them, so it's not terribly noticeable.

The liquor cabinet is very conveniently located within an arms reach of the fridge. It was at our old house, too, but if you were standing in the fridge, it was behind your back. Now, if your standing in the fridge, it's completely in your line of sight. Which makes it all too easy to add some Jamaican rum to my egg nog. And that's a darn tasty treat! It is, however, not consumed if I am the only adult in the house. One must always be prepared to drive on gravel roads to get a kid to the hospital or something if an emergency pops up. And if I'm the only one in the house who can see over the dashboard, I'm also going to be sober. But When Scott's around? Let's just say it's making creating baby #3 more fun...

Also, the kids are finding the holes in the wooden floors fun and tantalizing and scary all at once. The house was originally outfitted with a boiler and radiators, but through the years it has been retrofitted with forced air heat. The most recent incarnation is the geo-thermal heating installed by the previous owner. So there are radiator-pipe sized holes in the floor, the most obvious is outside my bathroom on the main level. Both kids have peered down the hole and they regularly step around it, though it is too small for either of them to get a foot caught. They look at it and wonder where something would go if it were dropped down there. Answer: the basement, of course. So Violet dropped a small white ball from the Hungry, Hungry Hippos game down there.

Milo was instantly alight and wanted to run downstairs immediately to find the ball. Unfortunately for me, the kids had picked the moment I'd chosen for a bathroom break to engage in this experiment, so they were hopping around in front of the open bathroom door as I was sitting on the toilet, begging them to let me pee in peace. After flushing, I assented and Milo and I tromped down the basement stairs. Violet is still wary of the basement and attic, so she stayed on the landing at the top of the stairs, clutching the wall as she peered into the basement.

Milo and I head to the back corner of the basement, avoiding the damp areas of the floor. I turn on the light and point to the hole in the ceiling and say, "Hey! I can see my bathroom, so this must be the hole!"

We look on the floor nearby for the hippo food, but don't see it. We look around the room in the basement for the small ball and don't see it. I can't, for the life of me, imagine that it bounced too far elsewhere, but we simply cannot find it. Milo's eyes get big and he says, "Maybe things that go into that hole never get found..."

I think I might let him believe that for a while as I'm not interested in playing "let's go to the basement to find my _____" repeatedly. Neither child has tried dropping anything else down there since then. I'm going to put a tall-sided Rubbermaid tub underneath the hole, just in case.

But these are the incidents that live on in a child's fantasy for years to come. I remember being convinced that the house that I grew up in had been used for the Underground Railroad because there was a hidden door in our basement. To this day, I get the willies in my mom's basement because I swear I feel two-hundred-years of emancipated slave ghosts whispering when I go down there. I was pretty young when I came up with this story -- maybe only a year older than Milo. He might have a nagging feeling about that hole for a long time. Or he might decided to test the theory a couple of more times before we get the hole plugged -- he is a curious little fellow.

And Violet? I'm think she's convinced that there's a monster in the basement and one in the attic. But I'm pretty sure that the only monster in the house is the gas monster she created when she ate four boxes of raisins in 15 minutes...

Moved into new house? Check!

Well, we've moved. We're in the new house now, stumbling over boxes and odd piles of things. The kids are adjusting well, so well, in fact, that Milo asked to sleep in his own room tonight instead in Violet's room. We'll see if he brings it up again before bedtime tonight. Honestly, we don't have another lamp for him and he doesn't like to sleep in pitch darkness. I wasn't planning to transition him to his own room until after we'd painted it and made it "his," but kids grow on their own schedules, not on their parents' time lines.

Anyway, we began the final push on Thursday night as we gathered all of the things we wanted moved on Friday and as I cleaned and did laundry, knowing that the washer and dryer weren't going to be delivered until Monday. Expecting a family of four to avoid laundry for five days is really a stretch. I finished cleaning at about midnight, but slept very poorly that night because I was thinking of all of the things I needed to get done.

I took the kids to daycare and rounded back to the old house to pick up Scott for the stacked closings. We were early to both, finished early at both, and got back up to the houses, where I loaded up a few bags of freezer stuff into my already packed car and drove on up to the new house. I wasn't in the driveway long enough to get out of the car when the DirectTV guy showed up for the installation. We walked around the house and I stalled until Scott got there as he was wanting to put a pole in the front yard and I knew Scott wasn't going to go for that. He didn't.

I began unpacking the kitchen and worked until it was time to take Milo to preschool, I ran into town and delivered him to school, then back out to the house to keep working. Back into town to pick him up from school and take him back to daycare, then a few moments of loading at the old house and back to unpacking at the new one.

Because I knew that it would take the longest time to organize, started in the kitchen. I don't think I did too badly and, with a little thought, was able to transition our belongings in a way that makes sense to me ergonomically. I'm still unloading at least one box a day into the kitchen and I really wonder how I ended up with all of that crap in my kitchen before. Where did it all fit and do I still need it??

I flew back into town to pick up the kids and take them to the house. We met a sitter and were informed that the movers were on their way, so we cleared a path for the two strapping young gents to carry most of our furniture into the house. These were clearly college kids, but were pleasant and did a great job of moving lots of heavy stuff very quickly. I even gave them some pizza as I'd popped a couple of frozen pizzas into the oven for the sitter and kids. For those of you who want to know, yes, they were cute ;) Not that I noticed...

Poor Scott made another trip back to the house to get the kids' bedding and pillows, then we set up their beds and bundled them off to sleep, only an hour and a half late. Violet woke once that night and Milo got up to use the bathroom and wasn't freaked out being in a new house, so I count this as an unmitigated success, which was only improved upon when we realized that our dogs are both afraid to climb the steps and, therefore, have become first-level dogs only. Do I miss a happy tail thump in the morning as I'm stepping over my fur babies? Yes. Do I miss being awakened by a bored dog who thinks she needs to go out at 3AM? Nope, not at all. Will I miss hot dogs panting through a sweltering summer night? Nope, I don't think I will. Is this stoke of fate pretty much the best thing ever? Yep!

Saturday was a blur -- packing, moving, packing, moving, and begging Scott to come over when the kids said goodbye to the house. I was surprised by my sudden sentimentality, but I really felt like I needed all of us to be in the house together just once more before it wasn't ours. We all fell exhausted into bed Saturday night and all slept all night.

Sunday brought a trip to town for some necessities and more unpacking. And our first meal cooked in our new house, yay! I told Milo, "This is the first time we're sitting all together as a family eating food I made in our new house. How cool is that?" He blinked a couple of times and said, "It's just food, mom." Violet chirped, "dust food, mom!" in agreement. Scott shrugged. And I suddenly became that mom who thinks all things special need to be commemorated. Sigh...

In news of the funny, this morning Violet had an out-and-out fit because I wouldn't wear my "flop-flops" to work today. She'd followed me into my closet and pulled out a pair of turquoise flip-flips and, when she couldn't get them to stay on her feet, decided that I needed to wear them. In November. With grey pants and a burgundy sweater. To work. Sorry, babe, mama can't do that!

In news of the gross, I had to have an infected cyst removed from the back of my right leg. I don't know who hit me with the crazy illness stick, but c'mon! Give me a break! First ridiculous tonsillitis (February), then the stomach flu to end all stomach flus (March), then pneumonia (May). And the cold-that-turned-into-a-six-week-coughing-spell (September-October). And now this. I've been to the docs on Monday and Tuesday to have it drained, packed, and bandaged and go back on Thursday. I am so sore from the doctor's "manipulation" that sitting in my car causes shooting pains and uncontrollable gasping, followed by a few quick tears. Seriously -- does it have to hurt so much that I cry every time I sit down and involuntarily yelp (and cry) if my kids bump the wound? And then there's the whole having to go to the doctor when I'm not really sick and being exposed to an entire waiting room full of real germs. Yeah, I'm loving that. To top it all off, yesterday the doc didn't think the inch-deep hole was healing fast enough, so I got a burning shot of antibiotic in my bum, too. Bonus shot!! Not...

I'm not really complaining. After all, the phone guy was amazed that we got DSL all the way out where we live, the water softener guy swapped out the stinky unit with a non-stinky one, and my new washer and dryer are uber-cool, plus we have an extra 400 sq.ft. of living space and a full basement and walk-up attic. Really -- that attic is bigger than the first two apartments Scott and I shared, maybe even bigger than the two combined.

OK, yes, I am complaining. My leg hurts worse than my hoo-ha did after birthing Milo's bowling ball head. It hurts way worse than any dental work I've ever had done. It hurts worse than the worst sunburn I got after splashing tanning oil, not sunscreen, on my back at the pool for five hours when I was in eighth grade. It hurts a whole lot, but only if I poke at it or bump it, or my darling daughter kicks it when I'm holding her, or the dog's tail smacks it when wagging in excitement.

Alright, I'll agree to disagree with myself. I am thankful to be in the new house, but very unhappy about the sore leg thing. And hoping that it isn't MRSA, which would be an entire other can of worms that I don't wanna open.

Ovulation

Well, I haven't been told I'll never have children.

However, I do get a one month trial. One month to use an ovulation predictor kit to determine if I am, in fact, ovulating. And it was suggested, very politely, that I lose weight. Perfect timing on that -- no family gatherings in my near future or anything.

And so begins my war on carbohydrates. OK. It's going to have to begin on Monday. I'm not even attempting food control while in the middle of a move. There's no point. But come my Sunday grocery run, I will once again transform into No Carb Woman. Let's see how many pounds I can drop before I am able to use that ovulation predictor kit...

Here's the TMI part: I can't start using it yet because doc told me to start on cycle day 11. It's cycle day 14. However, I think I ovulate late in my cycle, so I picked one up today to start using, anyway. It was negative for today. So not surprised.

I feel like a wuss, whining my way into this situation. There are women who never get the chance to be pregnant and I have three times already. There are couples that will never hold a child of their own. I so get that. Am I being selfish for wanting another baby? I can't tell. It's not just me, though. Scottie's on board and all of our parents are thrilled that we want a third.

I am just hoping and hoping that we won't come to where I call the doctor back and say, "I never got the surge... I haven't ovulated." I know my body CAN ovulate. It's just not ovulating regularly.

The next step is the dreaded Clomid. Yes, fertility drugs. Hearing that pretty much stopped me dead in my tracks.

I do not know if I want to consider pharmaceutical means of reproduction. I worry that because my body can produce an egg, given a boost it will produce more than one egg. I'm not certain that I want four children -- particularly when having multiples would certainly mean me getting out of the workforce. Our finances can only handle two kids in daycare at once, not three (or more, shudder).

In other news, my kids are so darn sweet! They insisted on a "mommy bath" tonight, so I was in the tub with them. Violet sang and Milo clowned, but mostly both cuddled me. It's so good... We chatted about taking a bath in the new house on Friday or Saturday and what that would be like. We talked about how many days left we have to sleep in this house and what it would feel like sleeping at a new house.

We're doing the final walk-through tomorrow with the realtor. And we'll be getting the keys to the garage, so Scott will begin hauling stuff over there, stacking tubs and boxes for a smoother transition on Friday and Saturday. It's kind of crazy to think about it, but we'll be moving our stuff out the front door as they new owners will be moving in the back door. It's sort of surreal and a bit unbelievable, but it will be real soon enough. I'm standing on the edge of two deadlines...

If these walls could talk...

Eleven days until we close on both houses. Eleven days...

Yes, the selling part of selling a house without a realtor was actually pretty easy. Assembling the documents necessary for sale was not too taxing. Stressing about all of it has stunk like earthworms after a drenching rain.

I'm somewhat torn as the couple who has bought our house seems lovely, yet completely handy-man-helpless. As a result, we've had to make some last minute repairs and they now want to inspect the repairs. As if they would really know what was different... Some of the stuff was pretty minor -- like replacing a pane of glass in a window. They wanted to know if we'd had an estimate done to fix it. Umm... nope. The estimate is $15.00 for a sheet of glass and about an hour of Scott's time to replace the glass, re-glaze, and put a couple of coats of paint on it. Woo-hoo... But we did it as we were concerned that they would try to extract money for a $300.00 repair or something from the price of the house.

That's the part that has me a little stressed. We're not anonymous to the buyers. In fact, they know where our new house is as they, too, looked at it. Their adorable little daughters will be in school with our kids and we're bound to run into them here and there around town.

Are they gonna talk smack about us if, five years down the road one of our repairs goes bad? Are we forever going to feel like we need to hold our breaths lest a completely normal conversation contain the words, "So the deck fell in last night..." Even though the deck is actually in better shape than it was when we moved in, that kind of anxiety. We didn't sell them a lemon. We disclosed everything that we knew about the property, and then some. We completed all five of their requested repairs. We're ready to move onward and upward and north of town to our new home.

I'm sure there will be a moment of sadness as we close the door for the last time, knowing that we brought our babies home there and that our first memories as a family were created there. Thank goodness for photos! Thousands of photos documenting every step as we redid the house, scraping lath and plaster from the walls, re-wiring, re-plumbing, re-everything-ing. Images of my kids in the yard, sleeping in their beds, bathing in the tub... Snapshots of holidays and birthdays and just the joy of day-to-day life... These will always live on in my heart.

But it's time for a new family to grow in the house. And I'm not sure that the sole factor of owning the same house ties us an any way to the new family, much as they try to invite us for dinner and chit-chat as if we were friends. Maybe we will be some day? Who knows? Maybe Violet won't remember living there when she's invited over for a birthday party... I don't know. I do worry that we might get a panicked call some day, "Help! There XYZ happening and we don't have so much as a hammer! What do we do?" Will we be tied to the house as a retained handyman? Offered dinner to "Please come fix ABC!" How bizarre is it to step into a place that holds so many cherished memories, to reach for a glass and open the cabinets to find someone else's stuff? To sigh over wallpaper they stripped, not knowing how arduous the task of hanging it was -- to feel like a stranger in one's old home.

Truth be told, we never expected to be in the house for almost nine years. It is a starter home and we weren't planning to stick around the area for a decade. Our plan was to get Scott some teaching experience, then move to a larger university. But the rigors of working at a larger school, the academic pressures required to gain tenure seemed detrimental to what we wanted in life and with our family. And now we're staying put, just as surely as we thought we'd be leaving in 2005, 2006, 2007... We never intended to move back to Iowa, and now, it appears, we never intend to leave.

Sometimes I feel like I am shoehorned into a life I wasn't intended to live -- that my psychic twin is living on a coast, dining daily on sushi and living in a yoga studio and the I am the imagined twin planting my roots back into the Iowa soil where I was raised. I daydream about the places I'd like to go and the things I'd like to see and know that, for now, it's going to be a while before we can afford to travel the globe.

But then I take Milo to preschool and one of his classmates squeals, "It's Milo! Hi, Milo!" and he lights up, thrilled that his friend is glad to see him and I know that we are making the right choice for our family by living in a place that has soil rich enough to sustain our needs. Mount Vernon isn't a bad place -- it's an affluent, liberal, artsy community. I believe that it is safe, it has good schools, and we can reach nearly everything we need by driving a short distance to Iowa City or Cedar Rapids. Our community is growing, and if we were to get involved more deeply, we could have a large impact on the direction it takes as it grows. This is not a bad place to take root.

And so, little house in town, we're leaving you for a larger house on the prairie. I hope that you bring your new family as much fortune as we had while living there. Adieu...

The Rest of the Lost Month

I keeping with my whole "Lost Month" theme, mucho has been happening on the old home front. As in the current home front will not be our home front in, oh, about a month.

That's right, folks, not even two months after the ink dried on our mortgage refinance, we're going to be buying a new home. We walked through said home on September 17th. Considered it all weekend, put in an offer on the home on Monday September 21. Offer accepted by 6:00 that night.

Then... PANIC! Made a list of all of the things we needed to get done to put the house on the market. Panicked some more. On Tuesday, September 22 I secured a storage garage around the corner and started taking inventory of all of the stuff that needed to go there.

Wednesday, September 23. Emailed my brother for his birthday. Started spreading the word that our house was going to go on the market. Started boxing up stuff we don't use frequently.

Thursday, September 24. Took Milo for another X-ray. His arm is healing well, yay! He was a little disappointed that he wasn't getting a new cast, but didn't cry too long about it. The one he has now is holding up remarkably well and not stinky at all, which is surprising. On a whim, I was proctoring a practice MCAT and took the exam myself. I did respectably, particularly considering I haven't had a science class in 18 years... I got a 14 of 15 on the verbal reasoning section (not surprising), 6 on biological sciences (did particularly well on anatomy and reproduction), and a 4 on physical sciences (bombed organic chemistry -- I've never taken organic chemistry, so that's not unexpected, but I did do well on the physics portion, go figure). More organizing at home that night.

Friday, September 25. Emailed my other brother for his birthday. Took the afternoon off to organize closet after closet. Scott started moving stuff to storage.

Saturday, September 26. Arts festival in Mount Vernon, so I wanted FSBO signs up. Scott and all of his brothers finished recovering the deck. His dad put more brick mold around our back window. I pulled weeds, trimmed trees, and carried brush to the brush pile for about 6 hours. Took pictures for flyers. We rested that night :)

Sunday, September 27. Scrubbed upstairs bathroom, kids room, all baseboards. Scrubbed and polished dining room floor, shampooed carpet upstairs. Printed and put out flyers. About 8 picked up that day!

Monday, September 28. More cleaning in the PM -- scrubbed kitchen and bathroom floors. I've been scrubbing so much I have a blister on my knee from crawling around! Makes me think I need to do some more deep cleaning more often...

Tuesday, September 29. Placed ads online.

Wednesday, September 30. Ads went live. Link to Yahoo quite busy, yay!

Thursday, October 1. Ad runs in Cedar Rapids and Mount Vernon papers. Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning! In the midst of cleaning when a woman taps on the window and wants to see the house. Seriously? An ad for a open house on Sunday from 12-2 means stop by my home during supper on a Thursday night... Sheesh! She did love the house, though. Put up Open House signs.

Friday, October 2. Took part of the afternoon off to scrub and polish the parlor floor. Scott rounded up the last remaining stuff to be moved out of the basement and moved it out. Put up more Open House signs.

Saturday, October 3. Last minute cleaning and tidying. Kitchen, re-dusting almost everything. Did some staging and made notes about what needed to go where and when it needed to go there. Washed all of the lamp globes. Suddenly, it's brighter in the house!

Sunday, October 4. Scott took the kids and dogs to his parents. I showered, did some last minute staging, answered several questions about the house from callers. Lit candles, took a deep breath and waited for people to come over. First group arrived about 12:25. Last group left at 5:00. Six families through, four who were doing more than "just checking it out". TWO offers. TWO. One our full asking price, but dependent on sale of her home. One for $1,000.00 less than our asking price, but we contribute $2000.00 towards closing -- no other home to sell. Exhausted, we went out to Scott's parent's to get the kids and had supper.

Monday, October 5. Decompressing and waiting to see if any other offers come in. I showed the house one more time to a woman and her sister, they, too loved it. In fact, there wasn't anyone who came through the house that didn't love the work we've done on it. It is in so much better shape than before...

Tuesday, October 6. Called the people who made the second offer and told them we've accepted. They came to the house and we signed the paperwork.

Wednesday, October 7. Contacted banker, the real estate agent who is selling our new house, took abstract to title service. Arranged to have our house inspected on Monday morning. Hope to complete assessment on both houses soon.

Someone once told us, "Boy, when you make up your mind to do something, you don't waste any time!" I think that seems pretty true, LOL! In 26 days we went from walking into an empty farmhouse to selling our own home. I know they say it's a buyers market right now, but I guess that isn't necessarily true when you're selling a completely renovated starter home in a desirable community. I had the feeling that we'd be able to capitalize on the first-time home buyer's tax credit and that our house wouldn't be on the market long. I'm guessing one day isn't considered long at all...

Oh, and we're closing on November 6th. We'll be home for the holidays!