Uncle Brad, Coming to America

My brother and his (apparently very) significant other, Marija, are officially coming stateside* this summer!  They will be en route to Croatia <insert jealous rampage here> and will stop in North Carolina for a few days.  Just in time for Brad to see both of his sisters stupendously hot, hormonal, and pregnant.  Win.

This will also be a rare chance for my kids to hang out with Uncle Brad.  In person.  To help convince them he's not just a face and voice on a computer screen but a live human being who comes bearing hugs and tickles and laughs for his favorite** niece and nephew. 

Uncle Brad on Skype... photo by Nathan

I don't remember Nathan taking this picture at all, but apparently he was showing Brad his new camera on Skype?  And had to take a picture of that conversation?  I asked him about it, but he finds nothing weird about it.  He's three, after all.

So excited to see Uncle Brad!!!! :)

*They live in St Croix.  For those who missed it the first four thousand times I explained how that came to be, this is how it all started.
**I can say that for five more months, til Brad has two more nieces or nephews to pick favorites from! ;)

A Happy Scene

Today is such a crazy mix of emotions.  Nervousness about some unusual uterine activity coupled with relief that it turns out to be not much to worry about, and Sprout is doing a-ok.  Nathan's tears of fear, followed by tears of pain, followed by tears of joy and hugs for a successful poop in the potty.  Happy memories of a decade of friendship as one of my favorite people turns twenty-nine, juxtaposed against today's horror: devastation in Japan that Hollywood couldn't even have dreamed up... yet it's real.

I don't even know what to write in light of all that.

But here's something that I never ever get tired of seeing: two kids, thumbs at the ready, unaware of the pain and fear in the world around them, content to hold each other's hands and be affectionate for no good reason at all.

And I hope that a happy image goes a little farther than usual today.

A Mommy Walks into a Bar...

A completely hypothetical (ahem) situation:

Say you're at the karaoke bar, drinking diet coke after diet coke like you do every week, following your normal one sip* rule with your best friend's beer (do not judge).  And say another person at the table gets up for a minute and while she's gone you order a shot for her.  And say the server gives a knowing wink and says, sure, sure, okay... but then five minutes later comes back with everyone else's drinks and laughingly says haha I would but your diet coke totally gave you away.  Um. Okay?

Why was the drink refused?  Because you're clearly pregnant, or because you're clearly too young to be ordering shots?

Note: there is only one correct answer.  Validate my youthfulness. Bitte.

*per drink. that's right, full disclosure is totally my thing. kind of.

Renovation, Days 5-7

As of the end of today, we're one week into this renovation!  More progress:

Old roof is coming off... our house is raining shingles!
(I'm pretty sure we needed a second truck in the yard anyway.)

Guest house flooring is coming up!
(Yes, the termite damage underneath is substantial... *sigh*)

Bowden tries out snuggle time in the new house. :)

Nathan pees off the deck (to mark his new territory?)...
and then takes a picture of it.*

We picked a color for our room!! **chorus of angels singing**
(photo by Nathan... impressed?  I am.)

We got the first coat up with some help from a local
up-and-coming artiste.

One week down, four or five more to go....

*Yep, we're that tacky.  Don't act so surprised.

Annie and Anneliese

This is Anneliese's friend, Annie Bop.  She and Anneliese went shopping today.  They had some things to  pick up, new outfits for spring and such.  Then they turned on their "ladies who lunch" genes and had a little pre-naptime nourishment at the mall.

Let's count the oddities in this picture, shall we?

1.) Normally these are two of the smilingest baby girls on the internet.  (True story.  The internet has it well documented.  They both have picture-crazy blogging mommies who like to show off baby girl grins.) 

2.) What has brought out their serious sides, you ask?  Food court pizza and pasta.  Um, whaaaa?  Don't they know how terrible/awesome food court treats are?  (They were both far more excited about apples and mandarin oranges than any unhealthy food court deliciousness.  Pssht.)

3.) Note which baby is eating directly from the germy table and which baby is contentedly using a "plate" like a civilized child.  Ahem.

Renovation, Days 2-4

Yep, another post about the new house already.  Because... I have nothing else to write about.  We have basically dealt with nothing besides the new house for the last week, especially the last five days since we've been in.

We spent pretty much all weekend painting.  Since the kids have been at Grandma's, and we had helpers available and crazy enough willing to paint, we just bucked down and worked our tails off.  Save the few rooms which are still under construction, the trim throughout which will be a huge project in and of itself, and the master bedroom (for which a paint color decision has become my Everest), it's all pretty close to done.  I'm proud of us!

Tight quarters in the upstairs bathroom.

Another Nathan finishing up Nathan's bedroom.

Nick and Barbara working on the living room.
(I might or might not be just pretending.)

Mark, "supervising" our work.
(He did a lot more painting than this picture indicates. Swear.)

Yep, there are *seven* color samples on our bedroom wall.

Another Nathan -- our most tireless helper --
after day three of painting, we finally wore him out!

(Or did we?)

Anneliese is back home and ready to help in her room!

Ignore the blurriness, just validate my color choices.

I must say, this place is starting to look a lot less like a foreclosure. Also, we have the most helpful and most awesome friends and family ever.  Just sayin'.

Kiddie Vacay with Grandma

Nathan and Anneliese spent the weekend at Grandma's house in Huntersville.  She's been wanting them to come visit for a while, and Mark and I have been wanting a weekend alone for a while (hott hott hott), so...

Just kidding.  We spent all weekend working at the new house.  All weekend. 

And despite mild colds, it looks like both babies loved Grandma's as much as ever!

Happy at Grandma's

Pizza, my favorite shirt, tons of toys and my own chair...
what else could a kid want?

Yep, Hattie came to Grandma's too.

Two of a kind.

We love Lucy and Lily!

Okay Grandma, no more pictures.

Look how much fun my kiddies were having!  How relaxed!  Someone tell me it's okay that we used all these days and hours of non-parenting for productive purposes instead of relaxing romantic ones.  Please.

Thanks for the visit, Grandma! :)

Renovation, Day 1

So now that we are the proud owners of another home, two new battles just became very very real:

1.) We now have two mortgage statements.  Someone please buy our other house.  No, for real.

2.) We are looking uphill at a fairly extensive renovation project.  Remember how I don't so much love home improvement?  Yeah. Someone say a prayer for my sanity as I "oversee" (who am I??) builders and contractors and pool renovators over the next month (or more) (but hopefully not much more).

So it's day one of our renovation and our new house is already a legitimate construction zone.  I promise I won't do this every day, but here's a glimpse of what's going on in these parts:

Good thing we like having trucks around.

Paint samples in Sprout's nursery.
(We chose neither of these yellows.)

Wait, there's a hole in my new house!

Ripping out termite damage in the bonus room.

Is my indecision on paint colors becoming apparent yet?

And so it begins...

Booger

[Note 3/7: I have barely been around my computer for the last five days.  We closed on the new house (finally!!!) and then hit the ground running with renovations.  Now sitting on my new back deck, listening to the sound of hammering, and hitting publish on a few started-but-not-finished posts.  Win.]

For the last two months, one day, and sixish hours, I have been about to burst with the following little tidbit of super fantastic awesome news:

My sister is having a baby!!!!!!!!

Meet Booger, my niece- or nephew-to-be.  My children's future cousin.  The child that will finally make Ashley the mommy she's kind of already always been.

I might or might not be as excited (or more!) about this pregnancy than my own.  And if you know how excited I am about Sprout, that's saying something.  A lot.  The fact that it's finally finally ok to shout this news from the mountaintops (read: to the internet) is maybe even better than the house we finally bought this morning.

I am so excited for Ashley and John.  So excited to watch our babies grow up together. So excited to spend the next six months torturing our family with even more than the usual Erin-and-Ashley crazies -- now new and improved, with pregnancy hormones! 

Everything about this is so miraculous and awesome.  Really.  For real really.

No, Really. It's Always Something.

Happy March!!  Guess what?!  We're not buying a house today.  AGAIN.

Yes, it is possible to be jerked around even more (told you so).  Yes, it is possible to be even more livid with our lender and the banks and The System in general.  Yes, it is possible to cry angry tears for hours and hours and hours. They just keep coming.

Yesterday morning we woke up to an email saying that everything with the renovation loan wasn't cleared on Friday after all, even though they said it was.  Several frustrated emails were fired off in response.

A couple hours later, we heard that the loan is officially and finally cleared, and "we're good. nothing to worry about."  We celebrated.  Breathed huge signs of relief.  Called off the homicidal rampage.

But just before the close of business, they clarified what the delay in our loan finalization meant: yet another day before we can close, so that the seller (the government, Freddie Mac) has an extra one-day cushion to review the hud on their time since they don't come to these types of closings.  Um, excuse me? How was that not the first thing out of your mouths, the most important bit of information to communicate?  So basically you could have (should have) told us this on Friday, as soon as you realized it wasn't going to be cleared til Monday at the earliest?  And I wouldn't have spent all weekend working on our contingency plan for closing childcare, painting, appointments for the week, delayed start to reconstruction, rescheduling utilities, finalizing our trailerload of stuff coming up to the new house from Charlotte?  Why did I go through all that when you could have told us on Friday?  And then to string it along all day today too?  Oh no.  Oh no. 

I couldn't even see straight, I was so angry.  Smoke coming out the ears, spitting fire, the whole nine. Several angry horrified (downright b!tchy) emails were fired off in response to that.

So yeah.  It was a bad day yesterday.  And that was before my car broke down in the middle of a huge rainstorm on the way home from church while Mark was on night shift and didn't have the time to rescue me or even talk to me* about it.  Before I spent the bulk of the night battling alternatingly tearful children.  Before I found myself on the phone sobbing frantically with friends because I just couldn't get. it. together.  Frankly, yesterday kicked my ass.  No other way around it.

Yesterday when I was beyond angry, a friend** chided me with a reminder that it doesn't always have to be about my timing, and that even though I hate it, it's ok for me to not be in control of everything, and it always works out all right even when I'm convinced it has to be my way or it will completely fall apart.  It could have been encouraging but honestly, I just didn't want to hear that yesterday.  It probably made me madder.  Even Mark didn't agree.  (And he's always on the side of whoever's calling me a control freak.)

But this morning when I woke up feeling defeated and numb, I realized there's nothing I can do to change anything anyway, and my control freakness really is sort of useless at this point.  I was watching Nathan drag Anneliese around the floor on my robe, and listening to them both laughing hysterically about it, and I decided that today will be okay.  Even though I'm not buying a house. I'm really trying to convince myself of that. So I'm just trying not to let this stuff get the better of my emotional state again today.

All together now: it will be okay.

UPDATE: About ten minutes after I first posted this, I got a burst of emails and phone calls all at once.  The seller has approved the hud, everything (everything!) is approved and cleared.  And it's all going to be finalized tomorrow morning.  Maybe really!

Oh and the best part - due to a meeting (which I grudgingly admit wouldn't have happened if we'd closed Friday, or even today per the first contingency plan), someone somewhere has approved the waiver of some fees and some point reductions and found some interest credit loopholes, resulting in a much much lower closing cost than we originally planned for.  Like, much less.  And if one extra day means enough extra cash for a well-finished pool in time for this summer, or refinished floors, or a million of the other things we weren't counting on, then I am going to call it a win.***  (If it really does happen tomorrow.)

*Don't read this as a criticism of Mark, I'm not mad at him, he was dealing with legitimate lightning problems and storm-related safety issues at work.  It sucked to feel rejected, but it's not his fault I had a crisis at the same time as a work emergency.

**Ok I'll call him out, Another Nathan.

***Even though it pains me, pains me, to prove those comments about my control-freak-everything-in-my-timing nature correct. But like a good sport, he didn't even hint at an I told you so until I said it first.  He's mature like that.