Wow - we don't know what is up with the Tooth Fairy these days, but she is really off her game! Annie lost a tooth three days ago and Annie still hadn't received anything for her tooth. We discussed it and decided that the Tooth Fairy is probably confused about which house Annie is sleeping in, and that maybe if we left a note on the door of the new house, it would clarify things for her.
Fortunately, it worked and Annie got 50 cents under her pillow this morning. Silly Tooth Fairy!!!
Since we had to paint all of the bedroom closets and baseboards, we figured it would be easier to just rent a paint sprayer from Home Depot. Eric had everything under control.
Umm, yeah. Everything's under control. The best part about using those paint sprayers is that you have to return them totally clean
But you probably shouldn't have stacked all of the carpet right in front of the only hose faucet in the back yard.
So we FINALLY finished "refinishing" the hardwood floors, and they look much, much better than they did before (if I do say so myself!) They are by no means perfect, we learned the hard way that even though it's tempting, you should always, always go with the grain when using a belt sander!
I have to say though, I think the hardest part (physically) was staining the floor - all that crawling around on your hands and knees and trying not to stain yourself into a corner - so fun!
Once we were done with the hardwoods, we moved onto ripping out all of the carpet and pad on the main and upper floors. It's not really the carpet removal that's bad, it's all those pesky staples and all of the dust that gets really annoying.
On Friday night, we were working at the house and both feeling a little overwhelmed, when our awesome friends the Hagens showed up with their kids around 10pm or so at our doorstep to say hi. They were on their way home from something and wanted to see how it was going.
Their visit totally cheered us up, and after they left to go home and put the kids to bed, Eric and I were talking about how grateful we are for the awesome friends and family we have (my Dad was home babysitting our kids so we could work late) and how we wanted to be better friends and family members.
About 15 minutes later, Sean was back on at our house with his work clothes on asking where he should start working! Mind you, Sean just had DOUBLE knee surgery 3 weeks ago and had no business doing this type of work, but it was pointless trying to stop him. And of course, Sean wouldn't leave until Eric did - that's just the kind of guy he is. We want to be like him when we grow up!
Unfortuneatly, the guys didn't find out until after midnight (Sean texted his friend in construction) that there's actually a special tool that carpenters use to just scrap all of this stuff out of the floor. But I'm sure they still had fun crawling around and ripping them out with pliers one-by-one. Good times!
Here are a few pictures of us getting started on our "little project" over the weekend. Once again, I think we may have bitten off more than we can chew - trying to refinish the hardwood floors, tear out all the old carpet, repaint the entire house including the garage floor all before we leave for Disneyland next Thursday (yeah, that's right, I said Thursday - SEPTEMBER 11th!!! Flying into LAX - pretty brave, huh? Or stupid????)
The conversation here, now that you're gone all day, is a little, ummm . . . lacking. Can anyone say "looney bin?"
Here are a few pictures from our weekend with the Smith side of the family. Eric's brother Josh married his wonderful girlfriend Kortny and Annie & Kate got to be flower girls. We all got to visit Linda's grave together on Saturday which was really special. What a great family we have!
Kate and Annie started first grade today, and let me just say that I've been a little emotional today - to say the least! I felt like my life was flashing before my eyes and that it all just came and went to fast (as if it's all over - my work is done, right?) I know I'm acting a little crazy, but I guess I'm just realizing how truly precious all of those little moments were that I took for granted.
"On Being Mom" by Anna Quindlen
If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the black-button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellow ringletsand the high piping voice. The sturdy toddler with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin.
All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.
Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past
Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories
What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations -- what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed onhis bellyso that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome.
To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing.Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow
I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons...What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.
The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.
It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.
So the other night it was Eric's turn to tell the girls a story before bed, and for whatever reason his story included the mention of some bad guys that were on "drugs." Of course, the girls had to jump in and ask him "Daddy, what are drugs?" So Eric, trying to be a resonsible Dad and use this as a teaching moment, tries to give them a simple explanation about how they are bad for you, they make you not want to stop taking them, they're all you think about, they will ruin your life, yadda, yadda, yadda.
So after he's given what he thought was a pretty great explanation and had hopefully scared them silly from ever even thinking about drugs, Kate sat there for a moment in deep thought, then raises her hand and asks "what if we just lick 'em?"
Can you tell that I've developed a little "blogging" addiction? I decided that I wanted to learn how to create my own page layouts and digital headers, and boy did I open up a can of worms! What was I thinking?
Right now I'm thinking I need to STOP with trying to create a design I like, and just start blogging, which was supposedly the reason I started doing this in the first place.
It's interesting to me how closely this process is resembling my life lately: diverting myself with trivial things to avoid talking about the things that really matter. I have so many thoughts in my head and so many experiences with my kids and my family that I should be writing down, and instead I'm sitting here trying to master "html code" and Photoshop design! Janice, Janice, Janice - when are you ever going to learn?
I promise from here on out to spend more time writing and less time designing and obsessing. Well, just as soon as I can get this one page just right - THEN I'll be good. I promise!!!
The other day the girls came running in from the park and asked me if I had some poster and a marker so they could make a sign. They said they needed a "pointer" sign for cars to see their lemonade stand. Since I wasn't aware of any lemonade stand being sponsored by our family that particular day, I asked them what they were talking about. Kate said "there's this "little" kid (her same age) who has a lemonade stand but nobody's buying lemonade so we're going to make a sign to help him sell his lemonade." So I figured the "little kid" knew about their generous offer and I helped them make the sign. As I watched them walk across the street with their sign and set it up in front of the lemonade stand, I hear them arguing with the "little kid."
Turns out the "little kid" had never met Annie and Kate before and had definitley not invited them to become "partners" in his little venture. But Kate convinced him that their sign would help him sell more lemonade and that he could have it if he would just give them some lemonade for free.
I've now got her working on some advertising trade deals with Nordstrom, Pottery Barn and Target - wish us luck!
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