Moving-Part II

"My shoulder doesn't hurt very much, but my face does. Right here. Not here or here so much. Right here." --Tommy Boy

Matthew has fallen down the stairs 4 1/2 times in the last 4 1/2 days. He has never been willing to go down backwards, but sitting on his bum and scooting down one step at a time has served him very well in its place. Approximately 4 1/2 days ago, he decided he wanted to walk down, by himself, every time. Hence 4 1/2 falls in 4 1/2 days. But perhaps his latest tumble (down the front steps) will teach him something because cement is a whole lot harder than carpet.

And for those who wonder, the 1/2 occurred when Rachael was two steps below him and caught him before he took a spill.

Moving-Part I

Moving sucketh greatly. And having a huge freaking migraine/tension headache for the second half of moving day makes the entire adventure akin to what one might expect to experience in the Ninth Circle of Hell. End result? On the day after, my living room looks like a U-Haul threw up and the OCD is killing me. So what do I do? I blog, of course!

Gentlemen, Avert Your Eyes

The first ward Kev and I were in after we got married was mostly dead. Thirty-one funerals in a three month period kind of mostly dead. On our first Sunday, I spent the entire Relief Society hour listening to jokes about dying. Since I'd been married all of about five minutes, I didn't have nearly as cavalier an attitude about moving on and was immensely relieved to be called to serve with the young women (all three of them) a few weeks later.

My first week in my new ward was completely different. Instead of joking about dying, they were quipping about feminine hygiene products. It was in no way crude or irreverent, just a few chuckles shared with a group of women who are required to march down the Tampax aisle of the Walmart on a regular basis. If nothing else, it assures me that we are moving in to a ward filled with families who are at the same stage of life as we are.

And for any of my male readers who are slightly embarrassed about now, you can't say I didn't warn you.

Three Strikes

When Nathan came home this afternoon from playing with the kids next door, one side of his face was all covered with hives. He said that the neighbors' dog jumped up on him and licked his face. I would appear that Nathan is allergic to dogs. That makes us three for three. I wonder how many strikes it takes to get us kicked out of the allergy game because let me tell you, it is one game I would have absolutely no problem forfeiting.

Retail Lab Rat

IKEA is one of those places that always makes me feel like a lab rat: I’m dropped at the entrance, made to scurry through a maze in the hopes of finding a reward (the item I’m shopping for) during my mad dash to get to the prize (the exit), all in as little time as possible. Today’s trip was no exception. I arrived at 9:30 with my reward ($20 bar stools) firmly in mind. I was lucky enough to be one of the first ones in the door, which meant there was an employee standing there pointing out the way to my reward. Of course, pointing the way in IKEA means scooting you in the direction of the escalator and leaving you to wander on your own from there. I ventured into the maze and only got lost twice before finding the line for the ticket that would get me the reward. After standing in line for half an hour, I got my ticket and was prodded in another direction so I could redeem it for my actual reward. And so I wandered, Matthew firmly in tow, through the maze, down the stairs, got lost a couple more times, and finally stood in line again to get my reward. Once that was accomplished, I wandered for a few more minutes, discovered I was headed in the opposite direction of the prize and turned back around just in time to smell the sweet smell of victory (and cinnamon rolls). At least I didn’t have to wait in line to check out. All the other rats were still wandering so that portion was quick and easy. Another trip to IKEA successfully completed. And the bargain shopper in my head is screaming that enduring an experiment in animal cruelty is totally worth while in order to save $160 on bar stools.

Note To Self

Do up the buckles on the overalls before washing them lest they get caught in just the wrong spot in the dryer and end up looking like this:

Fifteen Things I Learned While Cleaning My New House

1. Four hands are better than two. Ten hands are even better.
2. A steam cleaner is an indispensable tool.
3. Two steam cleaners are even better because when you run out of water, you don’t have to stop what you are doing and wait for it to reheat.
4. Use your offspring for their intended purpose: as “go-fers.”
5. Soap scum is the enemy and should be treated as such from day one. Otherwise, after about seven years it will be so firmly entrenched in your glass shower that Soft Scrub, Lime-a-way, Kaboom, Scrub Free, Tilex and the steam cleaner barely even make a dent
6. You should clean the floor under your kitchen drawers from time to time lest you sell the house and the new owners find two bibs, 16 assorted ziplock bags, half a dozen randomly sized pieces of tin foil, several plastic packages left over from who knows what, a corn skewer, a refrigerator magnet, two inches of dust, and the instructions for your Pampered Chef garlic press.
7. A conveniently sized stool to sit on will prevent the hours of back pain that occur while cleaning the oven, lower cabinets, etc.
8. A metal scraper is super handy for prying off the dried blobs of who-in-the-heck-knows that appear in assorted places around the house.
9. Keep a couple of bandaids handy for when your two-year-old falls and gouges his hand on the exposed carpet tack strip. Keeping up on his shots is also advisable to that you don’t waste precious cleaning time having a panic attack about tetanus.
10. In your rush to pack before moving, don’t accidentally grab the instruction manual for the oven (which you are leaving) instead of the refrigerator (which you are taking) just because they have the same brand name on the cover. Knowing how the self-clean feature of the oven works won’t help when your ice maker is on the fritz and the new owners may be at a loss when it comes to removing the oven door.
11. Rubber gloves. Can’t clean without them. And buy the good ones so you don’t have to stop every two minutes to dry your hands off and get new gloves.
12. Take a sabbatical from saving the planet and use paper towels. Using 2 . . . or three . . . or five rolls will save you the trouble of having to wash a bunch of incredibly nasty rags when you are finally done.
13. There can never be too much 409. Or Clorox.
14. Clean the cabinets right next to the range before you start the self-clean cycle. Otherwise, you will be a sweat bomb as your contortions while reaching the back of the cabinets result in your ear being pressed against the oven door.
15. Be sure to thank your totally awesome mother-in-law for working by your side and cutting the total cleaning time down by days.

Home Sweet MY Home

It’s official. Someone finally sold us a house . . . second bathroom included. For those of you who haven’t heard all the sordid details, here is the sweetened (no swearing) condensed (not five months long) version.

We began looking for a house in October. In the time since then, we have looked at over fifty homes and submitted five offers. Offers #1 and #3 were submitted after someone else had already offered for the same property. On offer #2, the bank selling the house wanted more than we were willing to pay considering the enormous amount of work the house needed.

After offer #4 was submitted we waited for a month, during which time (and unbeknownst to us, of course) the bank was collecting numerous offers on the same house. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, they counter-offered all the offers at the same time at a price that was $60,000 above the list price. Apparently they never had any intention of selling the house anywhere near the list price and had just listed it there to get some action on the property. Anyway, as we considered a counter-offer, we were told there were already other people that had countered at a price which was higher than we could afford.

As we were preparing offer #5, the selling agent (unfortunately for us, the same one handling the property in offer #4) essentially said, “Oh and by the way, all the other offers on the last house fell through” and now the bank would accept an offer that was exactly what we had planned to counter with. So we spent twelve hours deciding which house we liked better and opted to continue with the submission of offer #5. A week after offer #5 was submitted, we were told the bank would accept the offer, with the exception that they would only pay $4500 in closing costs instead of the $6000 we had asked for. We did a happy dance and asked where to sign. They said they would have something for us on Monday (it was Thursday at the time). Two and a half weeks later, they finally got back to us and said they were just kidding, they wanted $10,000 more than we had offered. In the month that had passed since we first offered on the house, the interest rate had gone back up and we no longer had any wiggle room in what we could pay for the house. We couldn’t pay what they were asking and we most certainly didn’t want to start pursuing offer #6, so we spent the week trying to decide what to do. After a week of silence from us, they finally put out the white flag and agreed to sell us the house at the originally agreed upon price. They sent our agent a paper saying so, but as it was not the official addendum needed, we decided to proceed with caution. We started getting all the inspections in order and kept our fingers crossed.

We signed all of our closing documents last Friday and in the midst of that discovered that instead of preparing the addendum with the change in closing costs, they had just signed the original sale offer, the one that gave us $6000 in closing costs. It would appear that after everything they put us through, their lack of organization actually worked in our favor.

So there you have it (those of you who actually read all the preceeding garbage). I have a house. And a second bathroom. And a big freakin’ tub that is all mine.

Happy dance! Happy, happy dance!

(And by the way, anyone willing to lend us your muscle and/or your expertise as we get the house ready and move will reap extra points in Heaven. And very possibly baked goods in this mortal life.)

Who Needs A Cell Phone?

Yesterday Nathan and Jacob discovered that they can talk to each other by yelling through the heater vent. I'm enormously glad they didn't clue in to this method of communication four years ago.

Ready Or Not, Here Two Comes!

Since Matthew has been infected with the terrible two’s pretty much since the moment he was born, I’m really hoping the occurrence of the actual birthday doesn’t make things any more colorful. But whether or not I feel prepared, he has definitely entered the land of the toddlers. Luckily for me, in spite of all his stubborn and temperamental behaviors Matthew can be a charming little guy . . . when he wants to be.

This year we scheduled Matthew’s birthday celebrations around the flu and the pneumonia. His actual birthday occurred on the one day he felt really well in between his two most recent afflictions. He was able to help me “cook” the cupcakes (cooking being one of his passions right now) and loved blowing out the candles. He has been practicing with his brothers and cousins all year and knew exactly when and how to get those candles out! He enjoyed it so much in fact, that we had to re-light them so he could blow them out a second time before he would eat his cake. He was gifted with a farm set (he knew exactly what to do with it), a small stuffed Elmo (who gets equal crib time with Kermit), and some tiny Tonka trucks (which he absolutely adores). Grandpa and Grandma were able to join us for our little party and we had a lovely time.


(For those of you who don’t speak Matthewese, he is “cooking.”)

Our celebration at Poppa’s house was two weeks after that. Matthew and I made the cake on Saturday and then he cried because we wouldn’t let him eat the Kermit cake before he went to bed. On Sunday, once the song was sung and the candles were blown, he ate his cake with great gusto!