Change

Aside from two recent(ish) reposts from a year ago, I haven't been doing too much writing, as you may have noticed.  Now that a few items have been crossed off my list, I hope to get back into it. 

What are those things I crossed off my list?  Glad you asked.

Minor item 1:  New house

We had a house under contract for six months, just waiting to sell our old one as we didn't want to have two mortgages at once.  As we found out later, someone else was going to make an offer on our new house, which we couldn't have matched, but they were a day late in getting it put together. 

Even though it's 150 years old, it's new to us!

Minor item 2:  The move

We were supposed to have 24 hours to move everything we owned from one house to the other.  Even though they are only 10 minutes apart at most, it still would've required a small miracle.  We ended up getting three days to move, though it was basically done in two.

Minor item 3:  The post move

Now that we're in, the original list of things we need to do has grown.  The structure of the house is solid, and we're trying as much as possible to keep the integrity of the house by not making sweeping renovations/updates, but there are so many items the previous owners just didn't keep up with.  Every day I find more things to put on my list.  At least I like lists!  The only thing we need to upgrade that we can't live without in the Midwest is air conditioning, so that will be added this spring.

See those houses way off in the background?  Those are some of our closest neighbors.

In case you're new to reading me, forgot about my history with a neighbor, or just wanted to reread it, please check out the posts here, here, and here to see why the caption above makes me so happy.

My to do list for outside work just got a little bigger as well.

Minor item 4:  Ruby

Less than two weeks after moving homes, Mama was hard at work moving Ruby from the womb to the real world.  Papa is proud to present his third little lady, Ruby Edith, being held by her very excited sisters.

One born on 1/3, two born on 2/3.  Should be easy to remember.

Even though she was the biggest baby we've had (yet), people think she looks so little when I hold her.  I have to remind them I am 25 times her size.  The girls are only three to four times her size. 

It is funny, though, that due to the long hours for everything, the stress of everything, and the lack of time available to eat, my weight has gone by the equivalent of two of her since she was born.

Hurray stress!

Christmas Confession

Here's another holiday repeat from last year.  Hope you enjoy it!

I would think it's safe to say that everyone who celebrates Christmas has Christmas memories.  Some are good, some are bad, but all are memories.  Thanks to This Daddy's Blog post for getting me thinking about the past and remembering what I am about to confess.

The jury is out on this one.

When I was young, I was sneaky.  If you've read any of my vacation posts, you've probably realized this is not the confession.  I need to build a little anticipation here, so I'll drag it out as long as I can. 

Back in the day I was one of those kids that went hunting through the house to find my presents.  I thought I knew all the hiding places my parents used.  Actually, I did know most of them at one point. 

I'm not sure if they got wise to my hunting skills, just started mixing it up on their own, or if they forgot where their hiding spots were, but at some point I stopped finding all of my presents early.  This is probably because they started wrapping the gifts as soon as they got them, which leads me to believe they were onto me. 

The only exception to this was the big gifts.  Those I almost always found, until they started hiding them at other people's houses.  Even at a young age I wasn't willing to risk a breaking and entering charge to find my presents, so they were off limits to me.

What is a mischievous kid supposed to do in that instance when all the fun of hunting is taken out of the holiday season? 

Here's what I did - I found ways to be alone with the presents. 

Sometimes I:

1 - faked an illness so I could stay home from school. 

2 - played upstairs by the tree while the rest of the family was downstairs. 

3 - came home early from a friend's house when I thought our house would be empty.

4 - grabbed a present and took it to the bathroom.

5 - grabbed a present, hid it in my room, and got up in the middle of the night to check it out.

Sounds like someone had to try to figure out what he was getting before Christmas morning, doesn't it?

I never tried to figure them out. 

I simply unwrapped them, saw what I was getting, rewrapped them ever so carefully (being sure the paper that pulled off with the tape went back exactly where it came from), and put them back under the tree.

My work was much better than this.  Amateur.

There's the confession.  I'm sure my mom and dad are going to love finding this little nugget out like this!

Why would I open presents early?  I have no idea. 

Maybe I wanted to string out Christmas over the course of a few weeks instead of just one morning.  Maybe I just had to know what I was getting so I could plan out my morning in advance.  Maybe, just maybe, I did it because I wasn't supposed to.

I'd put all my money on that last choice if I were you.

Success or failure?

Mama left this morning before getting the girls ready.  At the last minute, I had her lay out some outfits for them to wear. 

Unfortunately, the girls got to them before I did and I couldn't tell if the outfits they presented me were mismatched or not.

I had two options:

1 - Leave them in their pajamas with their hair flying everywhere and head out in public.

2 - Attempt to match the outfits properly, do something with their hair, and head out in public.

I chose option 2, and I'll let you be the judge as to whether or not I was successful or failed in each category.

Hair

I think I'll call this do "Waterfall"

 Clothes

I'm still not sure if this matches or not.  Maybe Mama set out two shirts and two pants that all go together. 

 Papa's pedicure

The girls didn't know Mama was going to get her toes done, but they asked for blue and purple toes...so I obliged to the best of my ability.  Not bad, for the first toe painting effort in my life.

So what do you think? 

New talents

I was speaking with my mother the other day and she asked if the girls were trying to climb out of bed yet.  I told her no, but they have been trying to climb into bed.  They have yet to be successful because of the way their cribs are built.

With Julia out of town last week, I prepared the new baby's room.  The crib we have for the new baby is not built the same.  I really didn't give it too much thought as I assumed the girls wouldn't mess with it.

I was in the room with them while they were picking up.  The buzzer on the oven went off, so I went to get my lunch out.  When I walked back in 30 seconds later, I was greeted by this.

They are quicker than I thought.

Actually, this was about five seconds later as I had to grab the camera.  What I saw when I entered the room was Brynne straddling the crossbar.  She said

"Please pull me up sister."

Hadley moved to help her just as she fell into the crib.

Looks like I'll have to turn the crib around or find some way to toddler proof it.

Funny girl

Brynne is starting to display her sense of humor and quick thinking.  Just wanted to share one example of each. 

Humor:

I keep a glass of water on the nightstand at night.  As I sat in the living room the other day, Brynne casually strolled up to me and asked

"Papa, where's your glass of water?"

I told her I didn't know, but I would go look for it.  She instantly started grinning from ear to ear.  As I walked into the bedroom, she trailed me, watching my every move.  The glass was not where it should have been.  Seeing as how it was at least half full about ten minutes earlier, I checked the floor for a trail of water drops.

There were none.

I went into the bathroom to see if she'd emptied it into the sink and left it on the counter as she often does.

This is somewhere between a giggle and full on laughter.  Makes me smile every time.

It was not there.  She giggled behind me.

I asked her where it was and she didn't reply.  She just giggled. 

Upon returning to the bedroom, I noticed the drawer of my nightstand was open slightly and immediately I had flashbacks.

As I walked to the drawer, her giggles became louder.  I sat on the bed and as I reached for the drawer, her giggles became full on laughter.

The drawer pulled open easily, and there was the cup.  It was empty, but the drawer was dry.  As I pulled the cup out and set it on the nightstand she stopped laughing long enough to say

"Papa found it.  Hooray!"

Then she starter to applaud me.  The sink had been dry, the drawer was as well, and the flower next to the nightstand was not newly moist.  Where, pray tell, had the water gone?

She peed about nine times over the next hour and a half.  Mystery solved.

Quick Thinking:

Normally, when we sit down to eat a meal, whatever we serve is their only option.  They don't get to ask for anything they want.

The other morning, I mixed things up a bit and asked them what they wanted for breakfast.  Last time I did this it worked out kinda marvelously, so I thought I'd try again.

Brynne took a few seconds and then said

"Yogurt!"

with quite a bit of enthusiasm.

Yogurt was not an option as we were running a bit short on that.  By "running a bit short" I mean we were out entirely.

I didn't want to tell her we were out of it as that would only make her want it more.  Thinking quickly myself, I told her

"We'll have yogurt for dinner.  What would you like for breakfast?"

It took her another few seconds to reply

"I want dinner."

We do love breakfast for dinner, but dinner for breakfast is a new concept we may need to explore.

Holiday Tips

This is a repeat from a post done last year.  I thought I'd put it out there in advance of the holidays to give people time to prepare themselves.

Ahhh! The holiday season is upon us once again.  In case you've forgotten from last year (and the year before, and the year before, etc.), it's the time of year we all go crazy.  Everything we do is done to excess.  Here are a few things you might want to pay a little more attention to this year - some of them may even save or make you money.

Food - meals

If you need a helmet to eat it's probably too much food.

In my experience, most every family has some sort of large meal on or around Thanksgiving and Christmas (or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or Festivus).  For most people, these two meals are the largest meals they will consume all year. 

As everyone knows, the best way to get your body to metabolize this gluttonous meal is to sit on the couch and nap.  Having the TV on will only make the process work that much better.  Carbs and starches magically disappear while sleeping, so if at all possible, do not attempt any form of physical exertion.

Since everyone else that comes to eat will be bringing food, don't bother making or buying anything.  Just show up and eat.  Nobody will know you didn't contribute as long as you don't mention it.  If someone asks, tell them you brought cookies and just dumped them on someone else's tray.

Before you leave, don't forget to take leftovers home with you.  Nobody gets tired of eating the same thing day after day after day.  You'll get to it at some point so don't worry about discovering it in the back of the fridge growing mold in a month.  By all means, load up and save on groceries for January.

Food - snacking

Not only do we gorge ourselves at mealtime, but we are constantly eating between meals.  Here are a few tips to keep in mind. 

1 - Chocolate aids in the digestive process of all other foods, especially those high in fat and cholesterol.  Be health conscious and load up on these. 

2 - Make sure you grab a handful (or two) of whatever salty snack is sitting out all month long every time you walk by the bowl.  Salt is good for you!  It can raise your blood pressure, which makes your heart have to work that much harder, which means your heart is getting stronger.  This additional labor can only continue as long as you feed calories into your body, so keep on cramming food into your gullet.  The only time you should stop is when you lose consciousness fall asleep.

If you find a bowl of something sitting out with no salt, don't immediately blame your host.  Nobody in their right mind buys unsalted foods at this time of year.  The simple explanation is this:  some child got hold of the snack and sucked off all the salt.  They are learning good nutritional habits at a young age, so don't chastise them.  Just grab a salt shaker and reapply.  If you've discovered the problem in time, the treat may still be moist enough to allow the new salt to stick.  Bonus!

3 - Doctors recommend drinking a lot of water, but water has no nutritional value.  Soda (aka pop, coke, soft drinks, colas, soda pops) is made from water - and has other added nutrients.  Don't waste precious cargo space on just water alone, make sure you have some additional artificially-occurring substance blended in with it.  And don't do the diet drinks; everyone knows the sweeteners used to make them cause cancer.

It still counts as one glass in my book

4 - In the spirit of combining things, make sure your soda has plenty of booze in it.  If you're not a booze person, do what you like.  Red wine is actually good for you.  If one glass is good, two has to be better.  The theory holds true - as long as you can hold your wine down.

Americans make or buy more treats during December than the other 11 months combined!  (I made that up, but it sounds good). 

Financials

Feel free to run up your credit card debt to buy as much stuff as possible.  Since housing prices always go up and mortgage rates always go down, you can always roll your credit card debt into a new mortgage and get a lower rate.  A win-win scenario! 

Once you discover all the crap you bought is no longer being used, typically within two weeks, you can start preparing for a garage sale.  No self-respecting garage sale shopper will try to haggle you down on pricing and most will pay more than face value for a semi-used toy with missing parts.  In effect, you have turned a profit on the holiday and can use those funds to buy more decorations as they should now be on sale! 

Win-win-win for team Griswold!

To quote my wife, "Looks like Christmas threw up on their house".

While we're on shopping, don't buy on-line.  Make sure you go stand in lines for hours on end to save the extra $1.47 you would have spent at an e-tailer.  Everything related to the Internet is a scam.  All those sites are doing is getting your credit card information and planning on stealing your money.  While you're at it, better cancel all credit cards, just to be safe.  Take your money out of the bank and only use cash.

Better safe than sorry.

If you're not much of a shopper, just get gift cards.  Everyone appreciates a $20 card to somewhere they'd never eat or to a regional store that doesn't exist where they live.  Nothing says "I cherish our relationship so much that I spent 12 seconds thinking about what to get you this year" quite like a prepaid Visa card.  And don't bother with wrapping it.  Any old envelope will do.  The best are reply envelopes which are typically enclosed in credit card offers.  Even though you won't be getting a credit card, you can still use the envelope and save some more cash.
 
Scheduling

You can make anything work if you try.  Visiting three different locations in one day is easy.  Not only do you get to buy gifts for three sets of people (and therefore get three sets in return to resell), you get to eat three times the amount of food and take home three times the amount of leftovers! 

Aside from family gatherings you can also plan on attending office parties, fundraisers, children's performances, get togethers with friends, and any other number of events you can either get invited to or invite yourself to.  Make sure you go to everything!  You simply cannot miss anything. 

You have the rest of the year to just hang out with your own family and enjoy them, so go ahead and sacrifice now.  You'll be thanking me for it later.

I hope this helps!  I look forward to hearing your success stories in the weeks and months to come!

I can't hear you, or anything else

Hadley usually does a good job of keeping her voice to a reasonable level.  In the middle of the night she'll whisper.  During the day she's at the normal level, unless she's trying to be heard over her sister.

Brynne, on the other hand, only seems to have one level.

Like Spinal Tap, Brynne turns it to 11, but she keeps it there.

She can walk up to me and request the most mundane thing.  If she happens to be right in front of me when she speaks I feel as though my hair is being blown back.

We very nearly lost a 50 year old oak tree when Brynne spoke at it.

I wasn't surprised the other day when she informed me about something she had just done.

"Me went poop on the potty!"

It just might have been more appropriate to use her quiet voice at this particular point - seeing as wee had about a dozen people over at the time and I was standing in the middle of them.

Oh well.  At least she wasn't cursing.