Grandma's Gift

We spent so much time, money and energy remodeling our kitchen. It looks amazing. Really it does. Except that we ran our of time, money and energy before we finished. Knowing the floor should be the last thing to replace, we waited and waited and waited as all the details were taken care of one by one. Painting. Cabinets. Etc. In process we:

• ripped the linoleum one of the zillion times when the fridge had to be pulled out
• inherited a fridge that was three inches wider so we shifted the cabinets over making a three inch hole the entire depth of the cabin
• burned a black hole when cutting out the old floor to put the toe boards in

Before any of this started, the floor was hard to clean because it had lost its sheen shall we say. Today I swept and mopped and got down on my hands and knees to clean this stupid floor. Check it out. This is post cleaning.

Nasty. As if I hadn't even touched it at all. It is officially impossible to clean and feels gross on my feet within a day of a serious clean. It's been making me nuts forever. Brian and I have been talking and are just about ready to do it. Grandma said she wants to help. Gotta love her.

It's Swim Season Again

Know how I can tell that it's swim season? The kids bathroom is always littered with swim suits, towels, swim diapers, socks, shirts and shorts. It is a never ending battle. I just walked into the bathroom and saw for the first time in three months the tile floor. It was beautiful. I had forgotten we had a floor in there. It made me so happy inside I thought I might want to enjoy it by sleeping in there on the floor, in which case, I suppose I might want to sprinkle some swim suits, towels, shirts, shorts, socks and swim diapers all over the floor for padding.

Play Interrupted

After my last post about Maddie's potty success, ten short hours later she pooped in her pants. I wasn't the least bit surprised. Oh well. It's a process, right? She has had lots of success when I initiate and remind. She just isn't independent yet. I have been trying to reconcile my policy for the clean up for accidents. Months ago I did the mean and nasty cold bath as a natural consequence. Now I've been kind and gently doing a clean it up yourself system. If she messes, we nicely clean it up together. She has to do most of it and she isn't much of a fan of getting poop all over her hands in the washing process. The worst thing for her is washing her underwear. So far I have kept my cool and she's been willing to comply with the requirements. We'll see if we can both be good or if I snap. I hope and pray I can be good and keep the potty training progressing with positive reinforcement and praise rather than shame and tears. Lets face it, positive is so much better than being mean. Today, though, twice, she stopped play on her own and went to the potty and announced to me that she was going to "get some pee pees." Yes!! Folks, that's a sign. She's ready. By the way, she got another candy bar today if you know what I mean! Life is good. Maybe it will be fast this time and I won't have to potty train her three times like I did with Ben.

Kid Free House to Kid Proof Zone

I'm pretty sure from chatting with old timers in the neighborhood that no children have ever lived in our home. Never. Do you find that as weird as I do? The house is thirty plus years old. You'd think it would have been graced by at least one year of baby spit up, toddler toys or homework at the kitchen table. Anyway, it was a kid free home until the Zufelt Zoo moved in. This means it was set up as a kid free home, not a kid friendly one. The three stories are connected with open air stairs. You know the kind where the carpet is wrapped around a slab of wood and you can drop stuff straight through them down two stories if you aren't careful. This took countless hours to remedy when Maddie was learning to climb stairs. Brian cut a zillion pieces of custom boards to fill in each and every hole, including the triangular one open to the front door area. Before we did it, we almost lost one of the Packard kids. Luckily for us and them, we caught saw him as he was slipping his skinny little body into the hole to hang his body down one story. His big noggin just wouldn't fit through the hole, much to his chagrin. I think he totally would have jumped if he'd have gotten through (he was three years old at the time).

The stair rails are so old that my kids can go right between the vertical metal poles. I know they are 5th percentile kids, but you'd think with 90th percentile heads Ben and Maddie would be to big to fit. I can tell you why they changed the building code on stair rails. I once walked down the stairs to find Ben at 2 1/2 yrs had climbed through the rail to the open side and walked across the rail and was suspended half a story up and darn happy about his "accomplishment" while I shrieked in terror not to let go. We have wire tied baby gates and super tall dog gates to the rails and cut custom boards to fill all the holes so we don't have anyone go overboard. I can only imagine the tragedy and ambulance ride that would result. Attaching standard baby gates to the metal rails was also a feat. In the absence of a router, we borrowed a table saw and Brian ran the boards back and forth and back and forth and back and forth a million times to create a "U" shaped wood piece that could wrap around the pole and was then wire tied around the rails. Then we could drill into the wood and mount our gates. The breakfast nook has carpet under it. Nasty, nasty carpet. I'm sure it wasn't nasty before we moved in. Really. Single adult type people have always owned the house. I really believe it wasn't nasty before I moved in with my little people. But after three and a half years of spilling on that carpet under my kitchen table, I don't even want to try to clean it. It's a lost cause, really it is. Who puts carpet under a kitchen table? Someone without kids. No one else is that dumb. One thing Brian and I always knew was that our house would have to have a circle for the kids to run around. You know so you can run through the kitchen to the hall to the dining room to the living room and back to the kitchen while mom is making dinner and drive her nuts. The circle is essential to a healthy childhood. It's where we as kids went round and round and round doing all sorts of things. We played chasing games, drug our siblings on blankets trying not to whack their heads on the wall corners, rode toy horses and most importantly chased each other in wild, ferocious anger threatening to beat each other to a bloody pulp when we were fighting. All the corners of our circle have paint chips.

My Basement:

Yeah. Our house looks like kids live here now. That pristine beauty is long gone. I think back to the pictures I took of our house when we were house shopping and how amazing it was. An office and a guest room upstairs instead of two kids in one and a crib in the other room? Huge, mondo, big flat panel tv in the basement instead of all our junk and tons of toys. Another generous sized flat panel tv on the main floor with a wet bar and gorgeous furniture instead of carpet stained with carrot spit up and mud from the backyard adventures. Oh the damage we've done in the name of our children. Makes me wonder, would we have ever bought this house if it had looked then like it does now??? Hmmmm.....

The Basement Before Zufelts:

We Finally Closed!

After years of quiet thinking, then idle talk, followed by wishing without working, we moved to learning without doing and on to trying without success. We finally made some progress in our real estate business completely on our own. We closed on a house in Riverside yesterday. Sure, we've done lots of little things here and there. Some stuff has fallen in our laps and we've played along, but this one is all us. Feels good. We made upwards of twenty or thirty offers on foreclosed houses out in California. Never saw most of them but by random luck, we did actually get inside this one. We only drove past it because my brother owned the other half of the duplex like single family home. There was a sign in the yard so we went in. It was in "great" shape relatively speaking for a rental, though certainly nothing delux about the place. We put in an offer like we had done so many times before and it was eventually accepted. Dealing with the bank and a foreclosure was slow and tedious. I know I signed the same form three times, I think it was four. It all was less stressful because we went in knowing it would be slow and painful. Going in with that type of expectation made it easier to roll our eyes and comply with silly requests to negotiate around imaginary problems the bank dreamed up. Closing was delayed several times and we had to pay for some minor repairs before we owned it which we didn't like, but it wasn't a major repair so whatever. Real estate is a risk anyway, right? Just like the stock market. Now we fix it up (via email and phone calls to our highly capable property manager). Then rent it out. Yeah!

One of These Color and One of Those

This is a picture of Maddie enjoying a mini candy bar with her breakfast. I couldn't be more proud. You see, she gets a candy bar every time she poops in the potty. We have been doddling with potty training since last August. That is one solid year now. Guess how many candy bars she has earned in a year. One. Until today. I got all the kiddos set up with breakfast both at the table and in the high chair. Then I took the recycling out to the curb and rummaged through someone else's trash to grab out the coupon packets from the Sunday paper. Upon my return I was greeted with Ben hollering out of the bathroom that Maddie needed a wipe. Sure. She pees all the time. I entered the bathroom to see them sitting side by side. Ben on the big toilet, Maddie on her potty chair. She got up a little in order to show me, "Look. I got one of these color and one of those color." (poop and pee) I was elated. Success! "Great job!!!" I beamed. "Now I get my candy bar, wright, mommy?" "ABSOLUTELY!!!"

Break Out the Root Beer...Lauren's Gone!

Brian and Lauren have an interesting relationship to say the least. I think it all started over two years ago when Brian answered the door or phone and was less than enthusiastic in announcing her arrival/call. Nothing personal, he was just tired that day. After a bit of chastisement from her about not being excited to see her, Brian stepped it up a bit and it's been going on for well over a year. Whenever Lauren calls or comes by the house now, he greets her with a smile from ear to ear and a ridiciously excited and boisterously loud, "LAUREN!!!!!" Trust me, it woke the kids from their naps upstairs one time. It's loud and exuberant. Sort of makes me laugh too and I'm sure it makes her feel sooooo special.

Since the kids get along so well, they have had many a dinner at our place too. I'm not much into beverages, so Brian has had to manage his own stash since our wedding day. He always has two sodas in the fridge chilling for his enjoyment. Cold drinks are important to him. I mean very important. I even received a compliment once that made me laugh. Someone once told me that they liked eating at our house because we always had "superbly chilled beverages."

Apparently, Lauren is of the same persuasion as Brian. She enjoys a superbly chilled beverage, root beer in particular. Brian also favors his root beer (and his beverage chilling system). Since the standard stash typically includes a single root beer and one other flavor, it became an arm wrestle of sorts who got the root beer when our dear guests dined with us. Brian, being a chivalrous fellow, typically gave Lauren the root beer. When Lauren and I had lunch together, Lauren knew to ask before she partook of the coveted drink, lest Brian return home from a long hard day at the office and only could find a nasty, putrid, room temperature root beer. Between the three of us, over time, it became our little inside joke. Brian and I would laugh when she wasn't there that he was going to have to hide them from her in the vegetable drawer to make sure he had one when he wanted it or sometimes he'd ask as he restocked the fridge if Lauren would be coming over soon so he could put in extra so as not to mess up his system.

Alas, I seem to be going through friends like I did college roommates (nine roommates in a two bedroom apartment over a short 11 month period). Lauren, like most my other good friends, moved last weekend to the far away land of "Fair Oaks Ward." That's far in Mormon talk.* Very far. Heck, it's a different stake. In fact, we may never see each other again. Ever. You know what I mean. There's no hope. Another close friend, gone to the wind. In my attempts to again, look on the bright side and keep a positive attitude about my loneliness, all I have to say is, "Lauren, we'll miss you. Now break out the root beer, she's gone!"

*Mormons typically go to a congregation based on geographic boundaries, so everyone in the congregation lives close together. So, rather than "church shopping" when we move, we just find the closest congregation then your church friends end up being your neighors too. Lauren will go to another building and our paths won't cross as often as they used to when we could walk to each other's houses...but she'll only live 5 miles away. :)