The good (have to start positive):
*Pippa’s enlarged spleen is no longer enlarged. Yea! I have cancelled the radiology appt. and we will now move forward with our lives until the next crisis (see below).
*we bought a new fridge (see below). Actually 3 fridges.
The bad:
*my refrigerator died on Monday night. Sometime in the dead of night it stopped doing it’s job. The thing was 10 years old. Is that a decent life span for a fridge? It was the first Major Appliance I ever bought. Richard and I got it when we moved into our first house — which was 10 years ago this June. The ice maker broke a few years back and one of the shelves broke about 6 years ago… Then about 6 weeks ago the freezer stopped working… and finally on Monday the motor whirred and whirred and whirred… and by Tuesday morning things were tepid in the fridge. Sigh.
*Pippa has the dreaded Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease. Unlike when Maddy had it, Pippa is still eating and also unlike Maddy who had the sores primarily in her mouth, Pippa has the sores on her hands / wrists, back of her knees and in the creases of her elbows.
The ugly:
*our house is still for sale. I am trying to remain calm.
*the summer heat & humidity is starting to set in.
*the new fridge was delivered yesterday and it was too big by 1/2″. The new new fridge we then wanted is ‘special order’ with a 2 week lead time. Oy vey. So, now we’re having yet another (the new new temporary fridge) delivered today. It’s temporary because it’s too small for the space and will look funny.
*my neighbours fertilized their yard with horse manure. HELLOOOO stinky!
This spring hasn’t been easy.
Self-inflicted stress.
And I realized that it needs to stop. All of the crazy-ness has got.to.end.
So, it did. Or, well, I ended it — the crazy-ness, that is.
Because I realized that life is not that hard.
It’s fairly basic: food, shelter, water.
Sure, you need a job to do the above… but still: it’s not that hard.
I really did want to sew Wendesday night. Really. And last night, too.
But on Wednesday we went to our friends’ home for dinner.
And someone made me a margarita.
And then it was well past the kids’ bedtime when we got home.
And the lunches weren’t made.
And the kitchen was a mess…
So, 10pm may have found me washing the last of dishes and wiping the countertops.
I only ate 2 mini-sized lemon bars to console myself.
I did not get to sew last night either.
Grey’s Anatomy was on.
There’s an open house scheduled for tomorrow and things need cleaning (like my kitchen floor).
Which means no sewing tonight either.
This irks me.
Also, we’re out of gin.
Things must be looking up a little bit because last night I baked. Alot. I haven’t baked in months… my family has been deprived! The kids’ lunches have been a collection of store-bought snacks. It’s a sad sad state of affairs.
I made “cheez-its”! (Go big or go home, I always say). Super easy. And the kids liked them. Which, I have to say, was not a given. Maddy LOVES cheez-its — the store-bought kind. And, as anyone knows as soon as you start messing with a kid’s favourite food things can go south fast. Like making homemade mac’n'cheese. Not always so appreciated. Hmph.
I made lemon bars.
I made 4-ingredient oat bars.
I made granola.
It was a flurry of flour in my kitchen!
9:30pm may have just found me sitting in front of the oven with a Gin Lime Rickey in my hand and a pile of unfolded laundry beside me as I waited for the oat bars to finish baking. Maybe. The oat bars baked; the laundry got folded; the glass was emptied.
Now that I have baking back on track… I’m going to start tackling the next project: summer hats for the girls. Thankfully it’s been a rainy spring so far, so my guilt hasn’t progressed to the unmanageable side of things.
There are some books from my childhood that have really stuck with me and lucky for me my mom kept some of the ones that we really liked.
One of those is Milli und der Zirkus by Attilo und Karen.
Who can’t just fall in love with that adorable smiling cow? Honestly what I love the most about this book are the illustrations. So, when my mom passed the book on to me last summer I was delighted to have it back! I always had a vision of scanning the images and framing them… but somehow I could never get it together.
Anyway, fast forward to earlier this week when Richard and I were trying to figure out how to decorate Pippa’s room with a big piece of affordable art. I said “Milli!” and Richard said “done!”.
He scanned the images, fixed them up, arranged them in one of those drawing program thingies… and then printed it out on the plotter at his office (*perk of being married to an architect!*).
Voila. A bright, cheerful piece of art perfect for a child’s room.
hello! back from the hiatus.
In the past months (!!) we’ve registered Maddy for kindergarten.
Katia got sick for weeks. And then better. And sick again.
We’ve played host to the strep virus. Twice.
Maja turned 7!
Richard traveled for work.
Richard is studying for his LEED certification.
We bought a new house.
We’re trying to sell the current house. Anyone want to buy a fantastic house on a fantastic block in a fantastic neighborhood (UCity woot!) in the Penn Alexander catchment? Hello?
Phew.
But seriously, it’s been a whirlwind. Add to all of that the daily routine and the weekend activities (ballet & swimming)… well, it’s all been a little much. Too much.
And I miss my blog. So, here I am.
Apparently it snowed here in the Philadelphia area yesterday morning… or, at least it snowed on my street, but as I was walking to work a whole 8 blocks away I saw no snow.
I like snow.
I would have appreciated the few little flurries.
So, instead of getting the real thing the girls and I did a snowflake craft last night after school while I was botching dinner*. The idea came from How About Orange and here’s our take on it:
I had a vision of making a snowflake mobile or garland… all we managed to accomplish was two of these snowflakes. Oh well. It’s pretty, no?
Wow. 2012.
Let’s all take a moment right now to realize that last year was an odd-numbered year and I DIDN’T HAVE A BABY! Yes yes I know, my “baby” is now 2 and yes yes, I’m still celebrating the fact that I am not pregnant again. Phew.
2012 is going to be awesome. It deserves a list:
1. Maddy will be done with daycare in 6 months.
2. Maddy will be going to summer camp for the first time.
3. Maddy will be entering kindergarten. My daycare cost will go down by 50%. YES.
4. Pippa will go through some huge developmental stages as she progresses from the age of 2 to 3. Her language skills are going to skyrocket. She will gain some more independence.
5. Maybe, maybe, MAYBE Pippa will get potty trained?!? No more daytime diapers?!? I’m not sure if I can handle that, having been in full-time diaper mode now for nearly 7 years.
6. Maja will finally lose her first tooth… she’s had one loose for a few weeks now and it’s just taking it’s sweet old time coming out.
And of course I have my own laundry list of things that I’d like to accomplish (not resolutions!):
- go out for dinner once a month
- start riding my bike again and getting some exercise
- decorate the master bedroom (we just kind of shoved the furniture in there when we moved in… although I did put up some curtains last year)
- laugh more
Resolutions… to make them or not?
I make resolutions.
Mind you, they’re not earth shattering.
Actually, they’re practically the same resolutions every year. I suppose that makes them more like reminders. Either that, or I just can not be improved upon. I’m a hopeless case.
So, just to remind you what my annual resolutions are:
1. stay more on top of the finances. Generally I’ve been doing ok — I started using Quicken this year and it’s helped a lot. It would probably be more useful if I logged on more then 1x a month. So, yes, there’s room for improvement there.
2. do a better job of creating a ‘menu’ for the week. Admittedly, some weeks are better then others…It’s purely a matter of planning.
3. fold and put away my clothes. Um… this may come as a suprise to some of you, but I’m a bit of a slob. I rarely fold my clothes and put them away in drawers. Usually I just kind of toss shove things in the drawers … it’s one of my weak points. I admit it. It drove my sister nuts when we were sharing a room — my pile of clothes on the chair a mile high. I’ve always been this way and really, I don’t think I’ll ever change. But what the hell, there’s always hope.
That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.
I’d love to hear about your resolutions and whether you stick to them or not… if you wrote a resolution post then link to it in the comments!
Happy 2012!
Katia: we should do a Fake Christmas.
Richard: ????
Katia: presents, candles on the tree, I can make a turkey dinner… we’ll just do it the 17th instead of the 25th. You know, Fake Christmas.
Richard: how are you going to explain Santa coming early?
Katia: he’s in the neighbourhood doing the party circuit. We’ll lure him in with cookies. It’ll be awesome.
And awesome it was.
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