It’s been the festival of Olive over here. She turned two on April 8th, but we’ve been celebrating for over a week! I want to share all the cute details of her super hero super birthday, but I haven’t uploaded pictures yet. Please enjoy the following video I found on youTube when I was searching for girl friendly superhero videos/theme songs.
It’s kind of depressing because uh, we haven’t really come a long way, baby.
I am sincerely sorry to leave you hanging like that. I am. Even deciding to start looking for a house is a rough process. We have to fix our roof before we can sell our house, and in order to fix our roof we have to get bids, in order to get bids we need to have some contractors call us back, and we also have to pick up the phone and get more bids. This sounds super easy, but when you have two wacky girls who looooove to scream whenever they see someone on the phone, it can be a titch difficult.
We went and had a half tour of our crushy house, and it is in worse shape than we thought. We weren’t even allowed to check out the basement as it is being rented at the moment. The house is in a nice area and would be totally loveable for about $70,000 less. So we are not in a race against time, except that I am SO over living in our current abode.
I am trying to not get depressed about the sluggish movement of the process. I mean, I would like ever so much to snap my fingers and have it all fall into place, but that is seemingly not going to happen. I am trying to keep my spirits high, I really am. I am sort of succeeding, but not completely. I have so much to be thankful for and that is pulling me through. Sadie has spent the last four nights in her own bed. This is the first time in her almost 5 years on the planet that she has done so. It is amazing! I haven’t been hit in the face in the middle of the night with a big giant plaster cast in FOUR nights. That is something to set your dimples on in, I tell you what.
Olive is a giant ball of energy who is delighting us all, but her obsession with “Barbie and the Three Musketeers” is totally frightening. It wasn’t until just last year that Barbies were even allowed in through the front door, so the fact that one of my daughters is so truly and madly in love with one does lead me to want to pull the covers up over my head. At least she is obsessed with a movie that at its core is all about grrrrrrl power. Barbie wants to be a musketeer but all the french dudes are like, “Hey! No girls allowed!” But then she and her lady friends save the prince and so Ha! in the faces of the patriarchy – girls can take names, kick ass and wear high heels. Its not as painful as Sadie sitting at her vanity and brushing her hair one hundred strokes, so I guess I can deal.
Part of my absence is because I am working on a redesign of my blog, and as my dear friend Tracy noted, “It sucks to write in an ugly blog.” Not that this is exactly ugly, but I kind of threw it up when I was sick of the old one, and I have never been happy with it. So yeah, look for that in the coming uh, well, in the coming year? I don’t know what life is gonna serve me next, but I will try to share it with you here. If I can come out from watching Melrose Place under the covers of my bed.
I know that I have discussed here about my never ending dying love for looking at houses online. I live in a home that was built in 1895. 1895! It is a lovely home, and for someone with time and interest, a total fixer upper into amazing-ville. It’s got warts though darling, things I won’t go into, but that make one who is trying to love it, well, a bit grumpy.
We have such a lovely kitchen and giant high ceilings, but this house just does not suit our needs. The girls are currently living in what should be the living room, because it is the only space to accommodate two beds and a whole mess’a toys.
So in perusing the local real estate websites, I ran across a gem a few months ago. I TOTALLY crushed out on it. It’s a midcentury number that hasn’t been touched and is just sweet as can be. The listing says it needs a total rehaul – which means that whoever buys it will probably gut all of the loveliness and replace it with stone tile and give it a decidedly beige and stainless makeover. I haven’t seen the inside of the house in person, but I’ve stalked it baby, I have stalked it.
They just reduced the price and it’s almost at the tippy toppy of our budget, almost. So, we discussed it, and we contacted our real estate agent! She’s coming over to help us decide how much we could realistically get for our current home. Who knows what will happen? Maybe the perfect house, if it even is that, will get away, but maybe not. Just the idea of moving into a space that actually suits our needs, instead of constantly trying to adapt to the needs of our house, it’s THRILLING. I can’t tell you how much I salivating at the thought of more square footage, a real work room, and separate bedrooms for the girls. I am light headed! How will I make it through? By daydreaming of course! The paint colors and the fabric and the furniture placement is enough to keep my mind spinning for months to come.
Seriously though, wish me luck with my crush. I totally think she’s perfect for us. I really do.
I swear to myself, every year, this will be the funkless year. Oh! Not a year without the good kinda funk, the one ya’ gotta have. No the bad kinda funk, “the mean reds” to quote Holly Golightly, the days of the spaced out stare and unwashed hair. I usually hit it sometime in December, but I guess I missed it having been on vacation or something. My funk caught up with me in a BIG way after Sadie broke her arm.
Part of it is that both girls are going through some MAJOR brain growth. MAJOR brain growth means awesome new skills, but while their sweet little cortexes are growing new synapses, the higher brain functions are busy and they operate on their emotional brain alone. Which means we have a few holy terrors in our house. It’s bad enough when one of them does it, but DUDE! Two ladies operating without reason, judgment, and impulse control + a mama in a funk= CRAZY TIMES! Poor Brett, right? He is helping us all, but he is stuck in a depression that can only be healed by universal healthcare with a public option, so we are all royally screwed.
The fact that I can sit and write this means I am coming out of the funky stuff. Let me be clear, this isn’t the kind of blues where I sit under the covers in bed. I am a high functioning funky lady. My house has been cleaner than ever, I have been playing with the kids, I just have felt off. The girls are still wacky, but Olive’s vocabulary has exploded. Every morning we wake up to find she has acquired at least five new words to express herself. Sadie is reading! READING! So the brain development is excellent, it’s just the hell we have to go through to get there.
Maybe my funk is just the storm before the growth spurt! Maybe I will have a break through any moment? I will be sure to let you know if that happens.
Last Friday night I spent my time running between the bathroom and the couch. The girls had been sleeping on me and I had been getting those gross hot and cold spells that signal something is just not right. How could I know that my constant puking would be a high point in the week? I couldn’t have.
This week everyone in this household felt gross and lethargic.
exhibit 1:
exhibit 2:
So as the weekend rolled around we were all pretty excited to spend it just sitting around and feeling gross. The last part of our week is Sadie’s dance class at a local “little gym.” We like it because while she gets to learn tap and ballet, she also gets to work on her coordination and strength in the gym. About ten minutes before the end of class, Sadie and her friends were all running in a giant circle pretending to be airplanes. Sadie took a spill, but she let out a very loud cry.
This is notable because unless she is really in pain, Sadie doesn’t really cry if she gets hurt. I once saw her toppled by a speeding tricycle at school. All of the adults on the playground braced for a scream appropriate for such a collision. Instead, Sadie brushed herself off, got up, and ran off to play. So when she let out a giant wail, I knew something wasn’t right. I entered the gym and took one look at her arm and I knew something was very wrong. It was hanging down in a bend where it should have been straight. My mom and my Bubbe were hanging out with us during class, and they helped collect Sadie’s things and wrangle Olive to the car while I slung Sadie over my shoulder and whisked her away to the car.
We drove directly to the emergency room of the local children’s hospital which was just down the street from Sadie’s class. Brett met us there and they admitted her very quickly and began to prep her to X-ray her arm. Part of the procedure was to give her a shot of morphine in order to move her arm around while they X-rayed it. A doctor kind of prodded and poked Sadie’s arm, and he kept asking her if it hurt. In typical Sadie fashion, she just kept saying no. It got to the point that the Doctor had the nurses stop prepping the shot, and he told us he thought that perhaps she had just bent her bone instead of breaking it. I was pretty skeptical. Both Brett and I mentioned how just this morning her arm didn’t bend that way, but they were pretty sure a kid would be screaming bloody murder if her arm were broken. Ha.
The X-rays showed that she had broken both the bones in her forearm. They gave her some lortab and reset the bones. That was when Sadie was most upset and said, “This realllllly hurts!” I guess the normal reaction is much more violent as they asked Brett and I to sit down so we wouldn’t pass out watching the process.
Sadie was most concerned with a school party that was being held Friday evening. She had picked out an outfit, including a wig, and she was dead set on going. In fact, the most tears in the ER came from the fact that she might miss the party.
So an hour after we were discharged from the ER we were at an 80′s themed dance party. The sling they gave us was too big for her arm, so I made Sadie a fancy new one before we left for the party.
On Wednesday we will be heading to back to the hospital to get Sadie’s splint off and a plaster cast put on for 4-6 weeks. She is keeping herself busy by trying to decide what color of cast to get. In the hospital they gave Sadie and Olive both these little dolls called “Hospital Buddies.
Fell of the bandwagon there for a minute, or couple of days, whatever.
I’ve been posting my daily pictures over on flickr, but I wanted to say a little more about them. Then I got super busy and well… whatever, I’m here now, right?
So where were we?
16/365
We had our last holiday party on Sunday the 17th. I do not recommend stringing out your holidays for over a month. It is a little overwhelming. Here you see Sadie and Brett on Saturday making cookies to give to relatives. I was in the backroom most of the day putting the finishing touches on presents. Yeah. I’m glad it’s over.
17/365
This was taken right after our holiday party. We had so much fun, but we were all tiiiiiirrrred.
18/365
I had a chance to clean off my desk on Monday. It was amazing! It went from a giant pile of paper to this. I could actually see all my tchotchkes and clutter I MEANT to be on my desk. Here you see a sweet Jen Corace print that illustrates how I feel most days, I like to imagine that you could zoom out and see that this little swimmer is actually on someone’s head. Then there is a sweet little friend my sweet little friend gave me. Pinocchio there can hold notes in his flower. I like being surrounded by cute stuff when I work.
19/365
Which leads me to this, which is just a capture from my webcam of me working on the computer. We had attended a meeting about kindergarten programs in our district and my head was hurting with all of the thinking and what not. I am currently designing a few web projects, but I was probably just looking on stupid gossip websites or facebook when I took this pic. So yeah, I was “working.”
20/365
This is a secret present for some friends of ours, who I don’t think read this here blog, but I won’t go into any more detail in case they do. I was working well into the night on it, so I just caught a quick pic before the clock struck midnight.
More catch up to come!
I have some catch up pictures to share with you, but instead, I have to share a momentous event. Sadie is 4 and a half years old, and we have never ever cut her hair. Well, the poor mop was dried out and frizzy to the max. If you walked by it would literally grab you and beg BEG to be put out of its misery. So today, before school, we visited Sadie’s aunt Emmaly and she got her hair did.
I will let the pictures speak for themselves:
I had suggested we just get a few inches cut off, Sadie wanted it even shorter, but this was the compromise. If the rays of her smile aren’t blinding you, you can tell that she loves it. We stopped to get coffee after this photo, and she made a point of telling the barista about her haircut. Then she flipped it one majillion times as everyone at school told her how cute it is. I thought I’d be more sad to see her baby hair go, but thanks to the horrors of that show Hoarders, I am allllllll about letting things go. Though I did save one lock of it though, shhhhhhh.
Sadie has been taking dance classes at our local “little gym.” It’s been a great chance for her to learn things like balance and not falling over. On Friday she had a little recital, it was hilarious. Sadie couldn’t remember her moves, but she had a blast, and her family was there to cheer her on. You can too, check it out!
You can see Olive’s pigtails in the tap movie.
Lunch before the recital:
The dance recital:
and of course, the picture of the day:
The 21 month old knows how to get out the ipod, turn it on, play a few games, and then pick out her own show to watch. Who says neglectful parenting doesn’t pay off?
So for the next 16 weeks Sadie and her classmates will each be lucky enough to be star of the week in their classroom. On the last day of school of the week each child must write what they like about the star of the week. For this first week the star was Beatty. Beatty is a boy Sadie used to talk a lot about. I think she is over her initial crush, but man, she used to blush when she would see him before school. Her favorite thing to say was, “That Beatty, he is soooooo silly.” She used to say that, but she doesn’t really talk about him much anymore. Now, now Beatty is just funny. Sadie added a picture of herself and a “party” around her thoughts about the boy.
