Well, Hello

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth. I don't know what I've done the last couple of weeks but let me assure you, it's been vitally important. Right. For the interest of my blog readers, one of whom I happened to meet the other day (Everyone say "Hi Dave!"), I will try to jump-start my feeble, medicated mind and update you on my oh-so-exciting life:

• Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur happened. Rosh Hashanah was fun, except for the stress and the staying up late and the hyper kids and the cranky relatives and the heat. But there were beans (black-eyed peas if you're being persnickety) and tongue (how has Tannaz not blogged about this?) and the little cousins were so cute together. Yom Kippur was also nice. Julia attended her first Kol Nidre, in the rain no less. Both of these facts completely traumatized her but she conceded later that it wasn't as bad as she expected. Last year, when I was lucid, I wrote a Yom Kippur post that sums it up well. Go back and read if you care. I've learned that when you attend services once or twice a year, that you tend to get a little more out of them. It's either that or the rabbis at Valley Beth Shalom are truly phenomenal. Or, as my husband says, they have the direct line to God. Any of those are possible.
• Things are going well at school. Ethan is so "inciting" when he gets to go and Julia loves it. I could not be happier. Well, I could if preschool weren't so expensive, but then it wouldn't be so good. At least, that's what I tell myself.
• My mind seems to be percolating along in its new chemically enhanced state. Some minor adjustments may be necessary, but there has been a huge improvement. I might even graduate from therapy soon, which only means that either my therapist is not very perceptive or that I put on a pretty good well-adjusted act.
• Progress is afoot on the home front. We have floors!!! And new counters!!!! And the island is no longer in the back yard, though the toilet is. Baby steps, people. Today I went to the bowels of the San Fernando Valley yet again, this time to shop for tile. Tomorrow I get to do the same thing locally. I can't wait to be done! Plus, how much do I love saying "afoot?"
  
• We are in the middle of annoying Southern California fall weather, which I hate. We have cold mornings and hot afternoons, which means that at some point during each day, my kids will look like the person who dressed them is a complete moron. While this may be true, I don't appreciate the daily opportunity to advertise it. Pretty soon I'm going to have to knuckle down and drag Ethan to the mall to buy some sneakers. I will pay $20 to whomever would like to accomplish this for me. I'm tempted to start shopping online. Hmmm....
  
• My sweet friend Lissa is closing down The Untamed Scrapper. My heart breaks over this because I know how much of her time, energy, money and soul she has put into it, but I also know that it's the best thing for her family and that is what's important. I know she'll be up to something else in no time and I can't wait to see what it is.
  
• My baby sister turned 30 and we had a fun celebration with all her friends. This is turning into an annual event! Her friends are lovely and now I can make fun of her for being old like me. Totally a win-win.
  

The Before Pictures

I think I've hesitated to post these pictures before now because they were just too devastating to face. Even though we've been living in this construction zone daily, the photos just make it hit home and bring back the whole ordeal of the night our pipe burst. Now that the repair work has started and we can see some progress, I thought I'd post some "before" photos to put the "after" pictures I'll post later into context.

The first picture is our office, under a layer of water, before the carpet was ripped out. The second is the kitchen, after they cut out a foot of drywall to prevent water from seeping up into the walls and causing mold to grow. I think the ripped up drywall has been the worst part of this, visually. It has felt like our home had giant gashes in it. Interestingly, Julia mentioned that she thought this was the most disgusting part of the mess. I see what she means. Fortunately, it was also the first thing to be repaired and we all felt better once we saw our house healing. We also have our new floors almost completed. I can't tell you how good it feels to see the light at the end of this dark tunnel. Hopefully I'll have more pictures to come soon!

It's A Wiggles World

It all started when Julia was a toddler and the Disney channel would play short clips of 4 Australian guys singing cheery songs in between shows. Little did we know that the Wiggles were on the cusp of world domination.

We bought her a Wiggles CD and joyously all sang along and laughed as she mispronounced all the words. Eventually, the CD got stolen out of my car, she outgrew the music and we became a full-fledged Thomas family. That's right, by this time Ethan had joined our family and as much as he liked an occasional Elmo or Blue's Clues, he was, and still remains, a Thomas fan through and through. That is, until a couple of months before his 4th birthday (the one he almost didn't get to have because boys who still wear diapers have to stay 3) when he suddenly fell in love with Greg, Murray, Anthony and Jeff and declared that he wanted a Wiggles birthday party. The stars aligned, I found a bunch of Wiggles party stuff on clearance and the party was a success.

Of course by now Mr. Bunch had also joined our family and little did we know it but his little ears had been listening to all that Wiggles music all along. So much so that when he started saying Giggo Giggo and we all thought it was so cute, my MIL correctly deciphered it as actually his attempt to say Wiggles. All of a sudden our Tivo went into Wiggles overdrive. This kid whose attention span is shorter than a Lindsey Lohan stint in rehab (i.e. don't blink) will actually sit through a 25 minute episode of the Wiggles.

This was a really really good thing until we went from having three working televisions to one. As anyone knows, the youngest member of any family runs the household. So here we sit in our overheated master bedroom, watching episode after episode of Giggo Giggo. Though we have several episodes recorded, it's not uncommon to find us watching the same episode more than once a day. The little guy will not still sit for Sesame Street or, much to his older siblings' dismay, Wow Wow Wubzy or Spongebob Squarepants or anything else. Giggo it must be. And in the car, we get to watch and listen to Wiggles DVDs. This is what I mean by world domination.

Thankfully, I've always liked the Wiggles. Their songs are cheerful and catchy and they don't get on my nerves like they do several of my mommy friends'. I'd much rather listen to an endless loop of Hot Potato than one performance of insipid Barney, for example, singing I Love You, You Love Me. So our little Wiggles obsession could be much worse to tolerate than it is.

The funniest part of all this is that now Julia is a born-again Wiggles fan. She loves the shows, she likes the songs and she jumps out of her seat to dance along. She's even got the choreography down. She probably would prefer that her friends think she spends her days watching Hannah Montana, but the truth is much sweeter.

You might be tempted to post a comment about the perils of too much television for children. Don't bother. I have no floors; basically, no downstairs. If Giggo is going to get my kid to sit still while I feed him and save me from having macaroni and cheese smeared into my bedroom carpet, then bring it on. If three kids will sit down and be quiet and not ask me for one more thing for 25 minutes so I can figure out which fire to put out next, then thank the Lord. And if these Wiggles will distract my babies from the fact that their house is a disaster, their mom has lost her mind and their dad is a little broken, then it's a miracle indeed.

Pity Party

Despite my best efforts to find silver linings and bright sides to my current predicament, there are some things that I'm having a hard time overlooking:

• The sound of chisels, hammers, and even a jackhammer coming from downstairs, pretty much all day for the last two days. And we got an extra early start today.
• Having spent more money than we ever imagined we could on a nice big home, only to be holed up in one hot hot hot sweaty bedroom...half the time in the dark.
• The fact that all these fans and equipment running in the house are putting such a strain on our home's overloaded electrical equipment that I can hardly turn on a light, or a fan, or try to make toast for my kids without tripping a circuit. Taking a shower in pitch black is not a fun adventure.
• Our plumber telling us that in 13-14 years of work, he'd seen a "spontaneous burst" like ours (i.e. total fluke, no reason for it) only 4 times.
  
• Hearing my kids tell me that they no longer like their new house.
  
• That my poor little toddler has nowhere to toddle.
• The collective B.O. of 7 workers wafting up my stairwell.
• Being back at square one with so many aspects of moving, organizing, decorating.
• Not knowing when this will all be over. And just what the next catastrophe will be.
  

There, I feel a little better.

When It Rains, It Floods

Suffice it to say that this summer hasn't quite turned out exactly the way I was expecting.

It started back in June when my poor husband who was content to stay at his desk and work while his cohorts attended a golf tournament was pretty much ordered by his boss to go along. A misstep off the wet grass resulted in a dislocated knee and a long recovery which still isn't over. The knee problems led to very painful back problems which led to a hypersensitive nerve that causes even something like the sensation of his shirt on his skin to be uncomfortable.

This happened as I was congratulating myself for weaning my little guy and therefore, I thought, hastening the end to the months of hormonal flux that was causing me more than a little emotional discomfort of my own. It turns out my relief was short-lived and definitely premature. Last week when the waves of anxiety came back and brought back with them terrible fatigue, nausea, and other emotional and physical symptoms, I realized that this isn't anything I can try to handle on my own anymore and talked to my doctor again. My current theory is that this is post-partum depression that has been there all along, unacknowledged and untreated, waiting for a break in childcare, moving, etc. to show up and demand attention. So it's getting attention and I've been feeling hopeful that these days will pass and I'll be back to my old self again soon and feel better able to handle life and all its ups and downs.

I didn't realize that I'd get the opportunity to test myself so quickly. This morning, when Ray got up to take some medicine around 5, he head the sound of running water. When he went downstairs to investigate, he stepped off the bottom step into two inches of water.

A pipe had burst under our kitchen sink, and you can imagine the rest. Water everywhere. Everywhere. We spent the day in clean-up mode. Mold is a real threat. So our beautiful walls that we had painted before we moved in 4 months ago have had the baseboards ripped off and a foot of drywall cut out to prevent water from seeping up into them. Our gorgeous wood floors are now ripped up and our furniture is all over the place. The kids were out of sorts this morning as they tried to figure out why they couldn't watch TV or play with their toys. Julia has announced that she no longer likes our house. Hopefully she'll feel differently when this is all over. Who knows when that will be?

Of course there's a bright side to every calamity and ours is no different. This could've been much, much worse. Offers of support have come in from friends and family. My parents were here practically as soon as I called, taking care of my boys and me and everything all at once. Never mind that my mom has been nothing short of an angel for the past week, here practically every day, with the singular focus of helping me get better (and feeding me). We don't call her Saint Violet for nothing.

Throughout this crazy day, I only had one moment of sheer despair. That was when I realized that years worth of pictures, probably close to a thousand, meticulously organized and sitting in a giant canvas basket on the floor of my scrap room, had been subject to the water. Along with my awesome dad and husband, we were able to save just about every single photo, although I did lose some lovely memorabilia. I got very, very lucky. My pictures will never again be stored in anything that's not water-proof. Of all the things I ever thought would attack my photos and my home, a flood wasn't ever on the list. Now I know better. But it'll be OK and we'll get through this intact. I can't promise the same for my sanity.

Odds & Ends, Mostly Odds

So the summer is half over (sniff, sniff, sob, sob) and it's been a good one so far. The days have been sufficiently busy, with a little bit (not enough) down time here and there. Here are a few things that are going on:

• We finally got a desk ordered for Julia's room. I don't know which 6 year old begs and begs for a desk but mine did. We promised her she'd get one before second grade and it looks like the promise will not be broken. She'll need a chair, but that can be procured easily I'm hoping. The arrival of the desk will necessitate some rearranging in her room but more importantly, once it's here, I can start the project I've been dying to do for her room. I want to make a homemade version of a combination of Pottery Barn Kids' and Pottery Barn Teen's bulletin board systems. I recently found out that you can buy Dry Erase paint to make any surface a dry-erase board. How cool is that?! This was the last bit I couldn't figure out for this project and now I have. I can NOT wait to get started. It will be a big project (by my scale anyway) and I'll be amazed if I can pull it off and manage not to get divorced in the process. I can't wait to start shopping for fabric!

• If you like baking or baked goods or ice cream or eating or supporting a good cause, read this post from my sister's blog. She and her friends are organizing a local bake sale and could use contributions of either baked goods to sell or other items for a raffle. Feel free to spread the word to all your L.A. area friends. Or better yet, organize a bake sale in your own neighborhood.
  

• On Friday Ray took my big kids to the office with him. One of the people who work there is a nice lady by the name of Erica. Well, never having heard that name before, Ethan assumed it was America. And walked around all day calling her....."Miss America!"

• A while back I mentioned Julia's birthday cake and how I might post a picture if it turned out OK. Well it turned out OK, but not much better than OK. I was in the grocery store and found a packet of edible flowers in with the fresh herbs. I picked them up hoping to spruce up her birthday cake and here is the result. The assortment of flowers wasn't the greatest and by the time I got around to using them, they weren't so fresh. They would've probably looked much better on white frosting, but we're a chocolate family. I think next year I will strive to do better than a cake mix cake and store-bought frosting. I can do better than this, much better. However, the novelty of the flowers on the cake went a long way. No one was brave enough to actually eat one, however.

Peeking Out From Behind The Boxes To Say Hello

Well, it seems we've survived. We're here, surrounded by boxes and piles of stuff. Almost nothing is where it should be. It's pretty nuts. The first two nights we stayed up past 3 a.m. Thank God the pace seems to be slowing down a little. There's no end in sight to the unpacking, putting away and organizing. Plus we still have some stuff to clear out of the old house. It doesn't help that it's spring break and the kids are completely over being stuck in the house. I have a few little activities planned and hopefully I can also unpack a box or two a day. I hope to be back in full Internet swing soon, browsing and posting and commenting all over the place. Until then I'll be here in spurts...

Not Too Much Going On

The last couple of weeks have been pretty humdrum. Between packing, endless trips to the new house, taking care of the kids (school, activities, award ceremonies, play dates, even baths and meals), a birthday party, and not one but two nights of Passover to celebrate, I hardly noticed when our computer and Ray's car both died on the same morning.

Still, I feel like the end, or at least a major milestone, is in sight. The movers come Friday, ready or not...and the way things are looking, it'll be not. We're so excited to move, and even though the next 3 months will be spent unpacking, getting into a new routine and figuring it all out, we can't wait.

Tomorrow we celebrate Ethan's 4th birthday. It'll be (flourless) chocolate cake and Matzah, but our whole family will be together. He has grown up so much in the last few weeks. Now that potty training seems to be miraculously behind us, he seems so much more mellow and loving. I think over a year of stress was weighing down his little shoulders. I'm really proud of my little guy.

Internet service will be spotty for the next few days. I'll check email when possible but I have no idea when I'll get a chance to post here again. Be seeing you soon and happy Passover to those who are celebrating it!

April 6...

...is our moving day! The house is ready inside: rooms are painted, cabinets have been de-pinked, Container Store closet has been installed (and OMG it's just so cool!!!), we had a very productive weekend (props to Ray's mom who did major childcare) and it's time. The next 10 or so days will be hellish, but I can see the light at the end of the boxes. Wish us luck!

Progress

Potty Training-The Eagle Has Landed. REPEAT: The Eagle Has Landed!!!! Woo hoo. After much torture, whining, begging, crying, yelling, and discomfort (and not just on the part of the trainee) we seem to be getting somewhere. I'm not saying it's all perfect yet, but we're definitely making progress. THANK GOD. There wasn't a magic moment where it all came together, but I planted the seed by telling him that he couldn't have his 4th birthday party if things didn't improve, that he'd have to stay 3 until he was out of diapers. That got his brain working and I think he's decided that mom is much more fun and happy and his life is much easier when Mommy isn't changing poopy diapers. Here's to more success.

Moving-Although we're making headway, things, as usual, are moving way too slowly for my taste. 90% of the work inside the house is done. Now it's all about getting this house organized, packed, and moved. Life is definitely getting in the way of that; there's always a lot going on and it's impossible to devote big chunks of time to that stuff when 3 kids need your care and attention. Standards must be lowered and time lines extended. That's all there is to it. Otherwise the stress will go up while the productiveness doesn't and we all know that is a recipe for my head exploding.

The Notebook

If you've been in my house lately, OK, ever, you probably wouldn't peg me as a freak for organization. That particular gene never really entered my body, and I have all but given up trying to control kid clutter. It's pointless. They can make messes faster than I can clean them up, or yell at them to clean them up. However, there are a few things that I get kind of anal about. OK, very few.

After we closed on the house a couple of weeks ago, I decided that I need a central repository for ideas, information, phone numbers, catalogs, lists, lots of lists, lists of lists, etc. that would accompany the purchase, decorating, moving, and other processes. At the same time, I needed to use the above materials for a design team project at The Untamed Scrapper. So, voila, two birds have been killed with one batch of paint, paper and adhesive.

These days, you'll usually find the notebook not far from wherever I happen to be. I've gotten some funny looks from people (like the cute closet designer at The Container Store who looked like Mike the hunky plumber on Desperate Housewives, but was impressed by the accuracy of my closet measurements) and my darling husband openly makes fun of me. Mock away folks. I don't care.

I like my notebook. It makes feel like I have somewhat of a handle on at least one aspect of my totally chaotic life. I like carrying around something that I made myself, that no one else has. And I love what it represents: that after 8+ years of waiting, the 5 of us are finally creating our own little nest. One that is ours alone (um, along with the bank), that has plenty of room for us to live, play, relax, and grow in. One that we can paint and decorate however we like, where we'll be proud to host family and friends.

As the notebook gets filled, it's becoming a document of our little process. It'll showcase our tastes and desires. The things we spend money on and those we can't. It will be a reference for when I need someone's phone number, or a paint color , or a receipt.

Each day, our lives are becoming more crazy as we get ready to move. But as I enter each photo, each telephone number (and each invoice) into my little notebook, it holds the craziness at bay for just one second. And some days, that one second is about as good as it's going to get.

In a Fog...In the Middle of a Hurricane

Maybe I'm whining, maybe I'm being a baby, but I have SO MUCH going on that it's making my head spin.

The house has been bought and closed on. We are in the middle of getting some stuff done inside which requires meeting contractors, coordinating times, supplies, prices, etc. We need some furniture. We need to figure out what colors to paint. We need to move 10 rooms and a cluttered garage full of stuff and haven't even started the process. All this costs money. Although we're excited about it all, we're not excited about the cost, and less so about the prospect of credit card debt on top of our brand spanking new mortgage.

I got sick. Getting better, got some meds, but it took its toll for a few days.

I've got a baby with a first birthday coming up. A party is required and will be thrown. In the middle of a move. Just because he's the 3rd and we're moving doesn't mean he doesn't get his first birthday party.

I've got 3 kids, with only 1 in school every day. Every single thing that needs to be done is made harder by the logistical challenge of either figuring out where to stash them or dealing with their boredom, whining, tantrums, destructiveness, etc. if we have them with us. Someone who shall remain nameless has made it his business to grab his father's screwdriver and unscrew the plates off the electrical outlets in the new house. Boredom is a dangerous thing.

Not to mention the normal busy-ness that goes along with school, friends, activities. Who has time for all this?

Still, I'm happy, I'm excited....and I'm sleepy.

Loan Owners Once Again

You know when you want something for so bad for so long that when it happens it doesn't even seem real? That's been the case with our desire to buy a house since we landed back in southern California 8 years ago. With the crazy market and home prices more than doubling in just a few years, we felt completely shut out of the market. We were lucky enough to be able to rent a decent house in a decent neighborhood (in a great school district) from our more-than-generous landlords, aka Mom and Dad. Still, the house wasn't ours, it didn't fit us, and we finally outgrew it.

Late last year we decided that it was time for us to start looking again. A lot of angst followed as the husband fell in love with every house we saw and I couldn't bring myself to pull Julia out of her beloved elementary school to move into any of them. Childhood scars take a long time to heal. I just couldn't picture our family in any of the ones we saw. Finally we found one, and it had been sitting under our noses since before we started looking. Once we realized that any house we could afford in the neighborhood we like would need at least $100,000 in remodeling, it became apparent that this one, right around the corner, in the neighborhood we maligned and hated for 8 years was the one. The remodeling has been done, the kitchen has been updated, the kids love the pool and the backyard (no more having to listen to "Mommy, why can't we have a pool, too?"), and it looks like everything is going smoothly for us to close escrow on it in a couple of weeks. We'll be in the same neighborhood, but at least we're moving a couple of streets away from the crazy people who surround us now. And I don't mean crazy in the let's-have-a-couple-of-drinks-and-have-a-roaring-good-fun sense. I mean crazy in the damn-the-cops-are-here-again-and-I-wonder-whose-house-they-are-
going-to-this-time sense.

So now we will owe more money than we can conceive of to the bank. My days of carefree recreational shopping are over. We will be spending hand over fist to make this house our home. And we don't care. Of course, stress abounds. I have no clue how I'll get our house packed and moved. A Dumpster will need to be dispatched. Babysitters will need to be hired (wouldn't it figure that our on-call babysitter, Grandma Goob, will be moving into her own mansion in a couple of weeks and will more than have her hands full). It will get done somehow.

Once we're in, you're all invited over. At some point, there will be a giant table for scrapping and I hope to see the pool full of kids and friends all summer. Beth & Kim, you're invited to help decorate and do projects. I'll provided the margaritas. We need lots of great decorating ideas and help picking out paint colors, etc. The rest of you, just pray we all survive the stress and the move. And if we all survive, see you soon in our new house!!!!