Sunday, May 31, 2009

Whiteout

I've heard before about the perils of choosing white paint, but that hasn't made it any easier now that I actually must choose for myself. We decided to paint the whole house one shade of very basic white before we move all our furniture in just to clean the place up a bit, create a blank canvas, cover up the fugly paneling in the dining room and playroom, and try to make the place our own. Our furniture is very brightly colored, so white seems like a better idea than making ourselves crazy trying to decide on bold wall colors right now with everything else going on. There are only about 12,472,295 shades of white out there people. I'm going blind trying to decide between blue whites and green whites and brown whites and yellow whites and whiter whites. UGH. Mike is, of course, little help because he's color blind (he may be using that as a convenient excuse). He says he's "bringin' the muscle" so this girly, choosing part isn't necessary for him to be involved with. If I were in charge of naming a white shade of paint, I've decided I would go with White Hot Pain in the Butt. Actually I think we've settled on a shade of Behr paint called Polar Bear. Rawr!

Friday, May 29, 2009

3 Steps Forward

Home Owners' Insurance Policy Finalized - check
Mortgage Finalized - check
Utilities Scheduled - check

18 days left until the house is officially ours!

Come to Mama

Here's the creepiest real estate photo I've seen in an actual ad so far. What's up with that doll?!

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Girls, Undercover(s)


Bed Bugs
Yes, Maggie has a big bruise on her cheek - a little monkey was jumping on my bed; she fell off and bumped her head...


Sharing


Silly Mommy


No Pictures, Please!


Our Position on Reading

I'm Packin' It In

Most people, when packing to move, get some stuff, wrap it in newspaper, stick it in a box, tape it up, and write "Kitchen" on it in sharpie marker. Easy. This is not the way I do it, no. This is what it looks like around here:

Pick up a teapot, wrap it in paper, and put it in a tub. Kate's crying. Feed Kate. Look for teapot lid, can't find it. Change Kate's poopy diaper. Find Maggie playing with the china teapot lid. Change Maggie's poopy diaper. Wrap lid in paper and pack in the tub. Maggie whines, "I want dooths in my cup" about a hundred thousand times, and I say NO an equal number of times. Wrap another teapot and put it in the tub. Give in to Maggie and give her some juice. Wrap two cups and put them in the tub. Change TV channel because Maggie doesn't like Winnie the Pooh today, she wants Mickey Mouse. Kate's crying; pick her up. Answer the phone. Try to pack teapots while holding Kate and almost break it. Put Kate down for a nap. Find Maggie unpacking teapots while the cats eat the newspaper. Give up. Decide to wait until Mike gets home from work, but later I'm too tired to mess with it so I sit on the couch and read Newsweek. Leave it for another day.

Another day - Fiddle around on my blog writing about packing instead of packing.
Score: Chaos - 17,341; Amanda - 0

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

"I'm Getting So Busy"

Maggie always says she's getting "busy" when she means "dizzy." Sometimes they do seem like interchangeable concepts. We spent our Memorial Day weekend perusing appliance sales and getting good deals on stuff we need for the new house. Wow, do we lead a crazy sexy life or what?! We got a new window air conditioner for the kitchen since we won't have central a/c (boo!) and we got some more plastic tubs for packing stuff up. Mike is most thoroughly excited, though, about our new washer and dryer (as mentioned in my last/first post). We're amazed by how HUGE they are inside. The dryer is like the freakin' Grand Canyon! They're all nice and energy efficient, and the dryer has a self shut off sensor and an anti-wrinkle fluff setting, both of which will be awesome since I routinely forget about stuff in the dryer and it will now be all the way down in the basement. Hey, you gotta learn to appreciate the small stuff in life.

We're slowly working on packing up the apartment, although we have loads of time since we don't close on the house until June 16th and won't move until the 27th. We'll be painting and cleaning in the meantime. We also need to get a dishwasher and have it installed, have some electrical work done, put up a few feet of fencing to close in the backyard completely, and have a contractor decide if it's worth removing some asbestos insulation around a pipe in the basement or if we should just leave it undisturbed for now. I'm sure a million more (expensive!) things will crop up in the next month as well. We'll just have to be zen about it and do what we can when we can. Let's pencil in "Lounge around our new backyard with the girls in a wading pool" just to make sure our To Do list doesn't get to be too much of a drag!

My Two Little Ladies


Maggie - 2.5 years
Kate - 5 months

Monday, May 25, 2009

Beginning at the Middle

This year I have had my second child and am currently in the process of buying my first house. In the olden days before the internets (when I was in college!), I would have berated myself for not keeping a journal of this momentous year, but since it's now the 21st century, I'm chastising myself for not having a blog. This means I'm probably already 5 years behind the times and ought to be twittering or some such, but I just can't bring myself to limit my natterings to 140 characters or less! Who wants to go back when they're 70 and read "tweets" anyway? Ah, the golden years of my life packaged in handy sound bites! I'm 33 and already a fossil. :)

Anyhoo, back to the middle... It's almost June, Kate is already 5 months old, the house hunting is done, and the new washer and dryer are bought and awaiting their prescheduled delivery date, so I'm not exactly beginning at the beginning. It's not really the middle either, unless is this is going to be a very short and terribly tragic story, so I guess this is the end of the beginning or the third chapter, or probably just another beautiful day in the neighborhood. It's a beautiful day for a neighbor; would you be mine?

PS - I watch a lot of children's tv these days, so you'll have to be forgiving when I break out inanely into songs about sharing and being friends. I'll try to be cool my babies and reference more indie music lyrics from here on out -- but I can't promise anything.