life, love & laundry
Whirlwind summer
Summer is so crazy – so much going on and yet it all goes by so quickly.
Its so funny that only a week has gone up since my Random thoughts post. Since then:
- I have done absolutely nothing in the gameroom. There are piles upon piles of games and books I need to sort through, organize and purge but I guess I have end-of-project lack of motivation. I just can’t find the energy to push through and finish. blah.
- We’ve been dealing with this weird viral rash that’s going through all of us. It seems to have a super long incubation period and essentially no symptoms other than the rash. I didn’t really sweat it…until I got it. It affected my arms and hands and made my fingers feel swollen and my joints in my fingers and wrists sore. Tony had the same symptoms. The bummer is that it seems to take awhile to work through our systems too so while I’m feeling better daily, I know I won’t be 100% for several more days. And while it essentially only affected my wrists and fingers, I think it also sort of wore me out everywhere else too. Weird, weird thing.
- I pulled out of Dalton’s virtual highschool entirely. They just weren’t set up to “teach” the way I needed (with, you know, six classes a day like a normal academic environment?!). So I’m back to doing 11th grade myself. I have the curriculum all picked out -I just hope we work it out together. 11th grade. yikes.
- Tony went to Vegas where he managed to win a lot and then lose it and break even. jealous. I am DYING for a vacation. I haven’t left town, other than our quick weekender in San Antonio, for years. But while he was gone he sent me both flowers and chocolate covered strawberries. Nothing makes a wife more suspicious than getting gift deliveries while her husband is in Vegas :) I don’t think I’ve ever, in my life, had deliveries of anything so this was a nice (albeit suspicious) surprise.
- Addy had a series of private swim lessons that essentially taught her nothing. Lame waste of money. Oh well.
- We had a “cool front” blow through where it was only in the 80s (not including the humidity)! So it was nice in the shade and occasionally slightly breezy. Addy got to go out and ride her bike for the first time in weeks. The kids played outside on and off.
- I’ve decided that taking pictures of my family needs to be a high priority again. I look back on the pictures I took the first part of this year and adore them so much. I am sad I didn’t keep it up once I started my business. I need to make it a priority once again so I’ve been taking a picture a day, again. Starting August 1, I’m going to do the color themes again. I’ve obviously failed the 365 project by taking so many months off but that’s ok. It is more about the daily goal than keeping a flawless 365 days at this point.
Early Onset Empty Nest Syndrome
Man I have been weepy lately. I cried my way through Mrs Broccoli Guy’s post. I cried my way through Toy Story 3. I have found myself repeatedly flipping through old photos on Flickr (since, you know, albums are so yesteryear!) and lamenting the loss of those times in my life. I have been putting off Driver’s Ed road practice, not only because I fear for my life :), but also because it it is just another step closer to adulthood for my kids. I am cutting way WAY back on everything, including things I truly love, so I can focus more on my kids since it has become increasingly obvious that they will not stop growing or aging while I get my sh*t together or pursue my own hobbies and interests.
To make matters worse, I have been blessed with this daughter who has, since we first met her, strives to age faster, do more, act older and accomplish beyond her years in any way possible. This includes, as formerly mentioned, her desire to lose teeth. Gag. And go off to school. She just wants to go go go.
And now, amongst all the rest of the things I lament, we can add “reader” to the list. My last baby is a reader.
I have done all I can to avoid this reality. It has been months since her last “reading lesson”, as she calls them (not because she finished the book but because we got busy and she stopped asking). I avoid drilling her on the spelling of words and I don’t even know if she knows all her letter sounds. Because she just turned 4. And she doesn’t need to know these things. She needs to play and have fun. She has the rest of her life for academics. But a funny thing happens to a kid who is ready to read. They read anyway. They don’t wait around for you to teach them. They keep developing and moving forward, in spite of you (or is it to spite you?! :)).
Back when Addy was learning to draw I recognized this familiar pattern with her. She’d draw and draw and draw and then…just stop. She wouldn’t really draw a thing for weeks and weeks. And when she’s pick up the chalk to draw again much later? Her skills had vastly improved. It was like she had to take a physical break to let the cognitive catch up. Same thing happened with reading. She was really into it for weeks and then just stopped. Didn’t write a word or spell a word or ask about letter sounds at all for months. Until suddenly she started again. And this time she was sounding out words and breaking apart all the words she ordinarily says into syllables and pointing out middle sounds and end sounds and rhyming words and all these things she never realized months ago.
So I finally picked up some little first reading books for Addy to tackle this fall. I gave them to her a few days ago, in the midst of this newly discovered love affair with words, and she read through the first two like she’s been practicing for weeks. It made my heart sing. And then broke it. But it will heal. I’m proud of my girl. But it is hard not to think about all the firsts that will never happen again.
No more diapers. I used to rejoice in this thought and then I read a friend’s blog about her diapering choices for her newborn baby and I felt a pang of jealousy. Jealous! Over diapers!
No more bottles or nursing. Ever.
No more first toddles. We have a lot of little friends with 1 year old siblings taking their first steps these days and every time I see those videos on Facebook, a stab of envy jolts through my heart.
No more first words. First little sentences. First little songs. First time saying “I love you”.
No more first little stick figure drawing. Or first time pedaling a bike. Or first time putting on shoes. Or drinking out of a cup.
Or drifting off to sleep in my arms.
There are a million and one firsts that will never be a part of my life again.
And I guess I’m just incredibly selfish. Because I know that there are plenty of firsts ahead for me. But honestly? I am not looking forward to the first time my kids tell someone else “I love you”. I mean, I want that for THEM. But it will just be further proof that they are breaking away and growing up. And there is plenty of proof of that all over the place. I don’t need more.
Louis C.K. has his new show on FX that is supposed to be funny but I just find it incredibly depressing. In a recent episode, he and Pamela Adlon (whom I also love and who is always hilarious) confess the most horrible thought they ever thought about their children. Louie admits that his horrible thought is that he wants to kill himself when his youngest child turns 18 (see? Not funny). While I don’t have plans to off myself just because I have no more children to raise, I understand the sentiment. No way I can turn back the hands of time but it is just as useless to lament the loss of the past, right? Better to use that passion to live in the present and really enjoy it as much as humanly possible because if I don’t, when my kids do turn 18 I am definitely going to wonder what the hell I wasted all my time on while they got older without me.
Scattered thoughts
Don’t you hate it when you have so many thoughts going through your head that you wake up at all hours of the night unable to do anything but let the thoughts cycle through your brain? The irony is that the more sleep I lose, the less energy I have to get stuff done which means the more stuff gets piled up in my brain. Enter vicious cycle.
In my thoughts these days:
- Operation Game Room sucks. This is a way way worse job than Operation Flooring or Operation Paint Job. I hate this job. I hate clutter. I feel like I am going to stroke out whenever I walk upstairs and have to look at it.
- We went with Ikea because we can’t afford real furniture. But it’s a step up from what we have in there now and it will match. What is wrong with Ikea that they put numbers on exactly 75% of their boards and intentionally left the other 25% blank? Is that supposed to be funny? It isn’t funny.
- Addison is obsessed with the two things I dislike most: teeth and school. WHY?!?! What did I do to deserve this? She cannot stop talking about how she can’t wait to lose a tooth. She cannot stop wiggling her damned teeth. This has been going on for months. Now she’s added school to the things she obsesses over. When can she go to Kindergarten? How much longer? She can’t wait to make a whole bunch of friends! It will be SO FUN! Just stab me in the heart, why doncha. I am literally sick over this. But, lucky me, I get to hear about it for another full year!
- Dalton’s highschool sucks. They are crappy and evil and epitomize everything I dislike about school. Never mind that their sales people flat out lie in order to get you to sign up and then the counselors lie when called on those lies. Now that I finally squared away every last detail with the school, I can finally have access to the courses and I think the course content is probably pretty good but the teachers? Suck. One teacher actually says that additional outside research is expressly prohibited and any knowledge gained or shared during the course will be assumed plagiarism if it wasn’t taken directly from the course. I think it’s pretty obvious that this is just one lazy teacher who doesn’t want to be bothered to encourage his students to excel or exceed beyond the narrowly defined scope of the course because it would mean that he, too, would have to do extra work to check the facts. Awesome learning model there.
- Addison left a surprise word on my computer screen: “Adsin”. She’s known how to spell Addy for years but never asked how to spell Addison. She’s so proud of herself for sounding it out. I can’t bring myself to correct her.
- I took the most amazing family picture while Paige was here. It was really, by far, the best family portrait I have ever taken of my crew of wild ones. Every single kid was looking at the camera and smiling naturally that full body smile kids do when they are actually happy. It was awesome. And then I formatted my card. I lost it. I am devastated and heartbroken. I actually formatted and then shot and entire shoot over it so there isn’t really even a small probability that I could restore the data since its been written over.
- I got a cut and highlights. I haven’t had highlights in 2 years and missed them. I’m pretty much not picky. I could have any color highlights and be thrilled. So I like them. And I LOVE the cut. It pays to bring lots of pictures, I guess. Now I really want to get my hair straightened either with Japanese straightening or a keratin treatment. If only money were unlimited…
- AT&T sucks. We unplugged the router for 5minutes last night to move furniture around it and then nothing works – no internet, phone or tv. AT&T insisted they needed to come out personally to fix it and would need to do that every time we unplugged it. What.the.holy.hell. I was soo pissed but not as pissed as my husband who required functional internet to do his job. AT&T, of course, couldn’t come out for 24 hours. Guess what? It fixed itself 2 hours later. AT&T kills me.
- Also what kills me is the iPhone 4. It blows. In case you haven’t heard. My husband just HAD to have one two when they came out and I was willing since my phone was pretty defunct. But this phone is worse. The proximity sensor doesn’t work at all and I randomly put calls on speakerphone, mute, hang-up and redial random contacts over and over every time I try to talk to anyone. My poor (patient) friends and family!! It is SO annoying and frustrating. And the sound quality is like a tin can. And the reception blows. I miss my old defunct phone!!
- To end on a more positive note…I am MUCH more happy with our new virtual academy than the one we tried two years ago. I’m actually excited about it. They are efficient and organized and have amazing planning and scheduling tools. Right now, in this state of chaos, that’s all it takes to make me happy.
Operation Flooring 2010
This wasn’t just operation flooring but more like “operation realize Nicki’s vision”. When we moved into this house I immediately wanted the carpet gone and replaced with hardwood or laminate. I hated that crappy carpet. I don’t even hate carpet overall – just this carpet. I missed the plush, awesome carpet from the house we left in Michigan. This carpet sucks. Plus it was put in all rag-tag and the transitions between tile and carpet were never put down so we spent the last 3 years stepping on carpet tacks every time we stepped on the entrances into the dining or living room.
So it has been a long time coming. I think we didn’t expect to live here this long. This was supposed to be a “transition house” to something we would be happier in. We signed the lease basically sight unseen and this house? Sucks. It’s dark, has no closets, the layout is awful, it has no pantry or utility room or office (and when two of us work from home, at least one office is pretty essential), the kitchen is the size of an apartment kitchen. I really do not love this house. But the kids love their friends and that’s more important to me than the house. So we re-upped for another 2 years here at which point I was totally happy to throw down some cash to make it feel more like a home and less like someone else’s house that I hate.
When we moved in, the walls were all this color:
Not awful – at least it wasn’t “apartment white”. But it is drab and lifeless – neither soothing nor cheery. And the ceiling has that popcorn spray stuff all over it that I *hate* but not much we can do about that.
Here’s a picture of the carpet up against the paint (and a teeny tiny A-M!!). Other than the kitchen and family room, the entire house is this nasty carpet and paint:
Then we painted just this one wall red:
It was better but I pretty much immediately started wishing we could paint the entire room blue instead. I know, I know….so indecisive.
Three years later…I found the perfect blue, ordered up some flooring and commenced Operation Realize Nicki’s Vision. Ahhh – it felt so good to actually be making real visible change in our dank, dark, boring house.
Here’s the room after the blue paint and right after we ripped out all that nasty carpet (iphone – sorry!).
And the complete project, more or less.
The bookshelves need to be reorganized, need new baskets and I should get the vacuum cord out of the picture. None of the pictures have been hung either. Oh and the cable cord runs along the left side of the room until we can get AT&T out to install a new outlet. Also you can’t really appreciate the area rug, which pulls the room together nicely with flecks of light and dark blue. But I am too lazy to get out my camera, so I’m relying on the iphone. Also we’re replacing the sofa soon with something less green. I love that sofa, though, so it will rotate to another room where it is more needed. Wow – that makes it sound like it isn’t even close to being done! ha! It’s a work in progress.
And Dalton apparently needs new socks :)
But most of all? You would never look at this room and think “Wow, they live in a dark den”, right? Look how light and bright it looks! I love it!!
I have to say, one of the surprising perks of this project was working with my hubby for 3 straight days. In the past we would have killed each other over a project like this but we worked surprisingly well together and it was actually a ton of fun! I got a bit testy today when we Tony cut and nailed all the quarter-round molding but I blame my complete lack of sleep last night. I seriously got about 3 hours and that, combined with my exhausted and sore muscles, made me really irritable. Tony wasn’t the only victim. Plus also we just pretty much suck at molding. We did a pretty awesome job laying the laminate but the molding is definitely imperfect. And yet? Better than any of the other crappy jobs that were done in this house prior to our move-in.
Now onto the big game room make-over. It will be a ton of work but nothing technical so at least there won’t be much to screw up :) I will definitely do before and after shots. You will wonder how we even functioned in that pit of a room up until now. All I can say is that we crammed a LOT of stuff into a VERY small space pretty much unsuccessfully for way too long.
AddyWear Studio News
12 October 2009 | 2:13 am
I almost forgot I had this awesome pattern, after searching high and low for some great, super cute winter top patterns. I absolutely adore it. It can be made short or long-sleeved and as a dress or shirt. The obi is removable so the fit is pretty custom. I will be making several more of [...]
The top 5 tools I can not live without
8 September 2009 | 5:08 pm
Recently my yardstick ruler broke* and I started really thinking about how sad I am without it. I still HAVE it, technically, because a) I don’t have the extra cash to replace it right now and b) I can still USE it – just not for a full yard measurement. My cutting mat. It, too, [...]
Homeschool Curric. Reviews
Today is our first day back in official “school mode”. The anticipation, though, has been heavy in the air for the last two weeks since our local schools were back in session. For one child, there was dread. For another, excitement. My 2nd grader was pretty unengaged until this morning when he bounded down the [...]
It’s (Not) Back To School Time!
Is your family actively planning your 2009-2010 school year? Even for those who school all year long, many of us feel that annual fall pull to reorganize, reevaluate and renew our plans around this time of year. We had such a great school year last year, all things considered. We learned a lot about our [...]
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