It’s been a busy long weekend here. The kids have been alternating between very well behaved and complete heathens. Not always at the same time. That’s been fun. William has enjoyed (or not) many time-outs and Anna has been threatened with time-out several times. Thankfully, threatening is all I usually have to do with her…it works, at least temporarily. The other thing that’s suddenly working for her is counting. I have officially turned into my mother with this one. “Anna! ONE…” (She gives me a mischievous look), “TWO…” (She usually starts doing whatever she’s been asked to do). If I actually get to three and take a step toward her she scrambles to do whatever she’s supposed to be doing. Why does this work? I don’t actually threaten her with any sort of punishment. I don’t say, “if I get to three you’re going to time out” or anything…she just somehow instinctively knows that if I’m counting I must mean business. What the heck?! Kids are weird.
William couldn’t care less whether I’m counting or not…maybe he’ll catch on to that eventually. I hope so because it’s almost kind of magic. Much easier than listening to him scream through a timeout…he hasn’t caught on to that totally yet either. There has been A LOT of, “William don’t throw that. William! DO. NOT. THROW. THAT! William! If you throw that you’re going to time out.” He throws whatever it is about 75% of the time. I guess 75% is progress from 100%, right? Yesterday he pulled a whole handful of Anna’s hair out of her head. I left the room, Anna started screaming, I run back in and her ponytail was all skewed on her head. William had a big handful of hair and Anna was (rightfully) upset. He went to timeout. She got her ponytail re-done and after a little soothing from me she was ok. Argh! William is a terror lately.
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A quick recap of our weekend…Friday Anna had her last swimming lesson. She loved getting a little pool time 4 afternoons as week. She was already really comfortable with the water, so she didn’t need much (any) help with that. She learned to paddle around using either a pool noodle type thing or a floaty ring. By the last few days of lessons she was paddling around the pool (with one of the above floatation devices) without the instructor holding on to her at all. She seemed a little resistant to the instructor letting go of her at first, but by the end she seemed to like it.
Saturday was a day of cleaning, grocery shopping and yard work. Saturday night Mark and I had a date night. We had a really good dinner at The Opera House and then a few drinks at The American Legion (OMG we miss The Pub!). We were home by 10:30 and in bed not much later. Man, we’re getting old!
Sunday we did more yard work and more housework. We had some friends over for a little cookout. The kids stayed up a little later than usual because our friends brought their daughter who is just a few weeks older than William. They played in the sprinkler and had a good time. We put William to bed an hour or so later than usual, but kept Anna up to watch some fireworks. She was NOT a fan of the noise. We were pretty surprised how freaked out she was by it…usually she’s so fearless. Mark shot off a couple of things, but it was clear that Anna was just not having it, so we went ahead and put her to bed as well…about 2 hours later than usual. She was ready to go. We stayed up and sat around on the porch talking until 11ish before calling it a night ourselves. We did a few more fireworks, but nothing spectacular.
Today Mark got up with the kids & I got to sleep in a little. We did a little sidewalk chalk, we played briefly in the backyard, then the kids had snacks and went down for their naps. Anna gave me a pretty hard time about naptime, but she went down eventually. Mark and I rushed to the garden to do a little weeding & tie up the tomato plants that had started to sprawl everywhere. We got most of it done…still some weeding left to do, but it was about to rain & we were hearing lots of thunder in the distance. Mark managed to squeeze in a little more mowing & threw some fertilizer on the garden just before it started to rain. The garden looks as good as it has ever looked. Our corn probably get the award for most improved…we’ve never had much luck with it before, but it’s looking really nice this year. We have 4 cantaloupes about the size of softballs, so maybe they’ll be ready in a couple weeks. We (finally) have tomatoes on our tomato plants, but they are still small and green. I’m hoping we have better luck with those this year too…We never have much luck with our tomato plants for some reason. We’ve gotten a few zucchini, one squash (just yesterday), a few jalapenos, maybe 1 poblano pepper and a TON of cucumbers. Mark has made at least one batch of pickles. We’re still waiting for the green beans and the watermelons.
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We’re in the process of preparing for a rather large renovation project. It has needed done for a very long time, but it’s kind of involved and I think Mark just wasn’t ready to tackle it until now. I’ll post some after pictures once it’s complete, here are the before pics (excuse the mess on the indoor ones…this room has become kind of a catchall):
This is the back (or really the side) of our house. That’s the main door that we use to come and go…

Facing the dining room…the interior window (why is that necessary?) to the right goes into Anna’s room:

The crappy door and windows (note the plastic sheeting over the windows and the exposed insulation that’s been stuffed next to the door – stylish, yes?):

The closed door here is William’s room. See the square of wood screwed to the floor? It’s covering a hole.

There are 5 doors off this room…the one to the left goes into a small hallway off of which leads to Anna’s room, our room and the bathroom. You can just barely see the edge of the doorframe on the right…that one goes into our front foyer from which our bedroom is on the left, the living room is on the right and our front door is straight ahead. Also…the blue ceiling? That’s gotta go!

It has looked like crap for a long time. The wood siding has gotten so old that it no longer holds paint and it’s starting to rot in places. The wood all around the eaves needs replaced. The door was not installed properly and we have trouble with it constantly. We either have a hard time opening it (it sticks) or we have a hard time getting it to close all the way. It’s a completely energy waster in the winter especially…cold air just pours in around the door. There is very little insulation in the walls and NONE over the ceiling. The wood floor on the inside is old and soft…so soft that when I walked across it one day (carrying William no less) it cracked below my feet and I looked back to see a nice hole. The windows are about as energy efficient as the door. Oh, and where the door is positioned is awful when it rains. All the water from that side of the house (a rather large area) runs into that valley of the roof and comes down in the corner right by the door. We can’t get gutters big enough to hold all that water…so it all just pours off the roof…right on to the steps in front of the door. It’s awesome! So…here’s the plan:
I’m leaving town for the weekend on the 22nd, with both kids. I’m really heartbroken that I’m going to miss all this fun, but someone has to take care of the children, right? 😉 My brother-in-law has so kindly offered to help Mark with this rather large project…we have an electrician friend helping with the wiring and a couple of other friends that will help other random manual labor tasks. Thank goodness for friends and for a really nice brother-in-law! I promise to make a grocery run before I leave town so they will all be well fed and there will be plenty of beer for AFTER each work day is done. 🙂 Anyway, Mark and I will prep the room the week before. I’ll take down anything hanging on the walls. We’ll move the computer desk into the living room (which we’ve been planning to do anyway), we’ll take down our dining room table and move it to the shop (it needs some work anyway) and move the big rolltop desk that is the bane of my existence into the dining room. The bookshelf may go in there too and then a piece or 2 will temporarily reside in our bedroom. Mark will take all the door & window trim down along with all the (crappy…there’s that word again!) molding. We’ll also get all the new wood siding painted and ready to go. After the kids and I leave the house Friday morning, Mark will start tearing out the floor and walls. Hopefully (ha!) they won’t run into any snags, but with an old house you just never know what you’re going to find when you start a project like this. It’s going to take weeks to finish. The plan of the one weekend (when my brother-in-law comes over) is to get one wall reframed (we’re moving the door to the middle of that wall…it’ll have a window on either side), the siding up and the subfloor and wood floor in place. If they work really hard, they can hopefully get the drywall hung inside too. Mark and I will have to work on finishing the drywall (and floor) later. I don’t even want to think about how long it will be before we’re able to actually get it all painted and get the trim and moldings back in place and painted. Oh, and there will be a small deck to build too…at least eventually…it will be just sort of a long landing to provide a little space between the steps and the door…Can you tell I’m excited? And a bit terrified too? I’m looking forward to documenting it all here…Anyone have suggestions for wall color? I’m still on the fence. I do want a color more so than a neutral…but I want to keep it light because our house is so dark overall. At the moment the front-runner is a very pale icy blue aqua color. Is that weird? It just screams old house to me. 🙂
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