Update and photos

Our house had its inspection today and did reasonably well, although some issues did crop up.  It was built in 1906, so that was to be expected.  There were three main issues that the inspector found, two of which are relatively minor and one is just unknown as yet:  the foundation.  It's unclear exactly what the issue with the foundation is, but he recommended that the buyers get a special inspection just on the foundation itself.  Hopefully that will turn up nothing, because having something wrong with the foundation would be bad.  Ugh.  Here's hoping that inspection #2 turns up nothing!  The buyers are supposed to be getting back to us in a couple of days, so we'll move on to waiting for that. 

On a totally unrelated note, I just got some fabulous photos over email that I'm going to post here.  They are from our friends' wedding in August.  Their photographer did a great job of photographing the wedding guests as well as the brides, so we ended up with some really great family photos.  I love them all, but the ones of Rosa just crack me up.  She got so tired that she just fell asleep on the table while Sacha was chatting with people.  Then, we decided to take a photo with all of us around her.  Too funny!  Anyway, did I mention how much I love these photos?  Here they are!

More thoughts on being the non-bio mom

I've written about this before, but I thought it might be time for an update on things in our parenting world.  Specifically, I've lately been mulling over my role as the non-bio mom to the majority of our children.  I never expected to be in this position, as both Sacha and I always assumed that I would be the one to carry our third child, if we had one.  However, when it became clear that the only way Sacha would feel okay about having number three was if she was the one to be pregnant, I was more than happy to step out of the way!  I've always felt very clear that having the kid is far, far more important than carrying the kid.  (As an aside, we did give adoption fairly serious consideration for #3, but ultimately decided against it for a number of reasons, including cost and the kids' amazing existing relationship with Apa.)

So, I find myself as primarily the non-bio mom in our family, despite having started out as the bio-mom.  When I was thinking about writing about this, I thought, well, that would be a short post.  All I have to say is that it's going fine!  And, it is.  I really appreciate that Sacha and I are on the same page about most things about parenting, and we have both gone out of our way to make equally parenting all the kids a priority. 

I would even say that we have consciously de-emphasized biological connections with the kids, opting instead to point out ways that each child is like either parent just based on personality and such.  For example, I was thinking today about how much Mateo and Sacha are alike.  We were sitting at dinner and they were both chugging ice water and commenting on how refreshing it was, while I sat huddled in my layers and wished I could turn up the heat just a few more degrees!

Back to my role:  at this point, it's not such a big deal.  As the one who spends most of her time with all the kids, I don't worry much about them bonding with or attaching to me.  We're all basically joined at the hip.  What I worry about, and only a little most of the time, is about what happens when they're teenagers and looking for a way to rebel.  I'm not looking forward to the inevitable "but you're not my real mom" comments.  However, I suppose that all parents get some hateful comments during the teenage years, regardless of biology! 

The other thing I have been struck by is how our kids interpret their parents and how it comes out in their play.  They are always playing a game of Mama and Mommy, and Mateo is always Mama and Tali is always Mommy.  I can't say exactly why this happens, except that (#1) they obviously know whose belly they grew in and (#2) maybe all that breastfeeding caused them to identify more with the one who breastfed them. 

(As an aside, it's also interesting to see how the larger world has already influenced them in terms of how they think about families.  We were at the park today and we met a little girl and her mom.  As soon as they walked away from us, Mateo immediately wondered aloud about where the little girl's daddy was.  There was no consideration of whether or not she had a daddy.  It was just a given.)

Anyway, those are my thoughts, such as they are, at this point.  I suppose all I really needed to say was "it's going fine, although I do worry a bit about the far-distant future!"  As we all know by now, however, I am far too longwinded to ever just leave it at that :)

Two in one

I tried to post yesterday from our new house and was ultimately foiled by our iPad, which doesn't get along with Blogger for some reason.  Here's the gist of what I said yesterday:

We had brunch with friends yesterday morning, during which Rosie learned to sit up!  Leave it to her to learn how to crawl before sitting.  Remember that golden window I was looking forward to, where she would just sit in one place and play with her toys and need little supervision?  She skipped right over that one.  Good thing she's so adorably cute when she crawls.  And, now, when she sits.  She's not a big one for sitting, though, and I can't blame her.  Mobility is much more fun.

After checking off that milestone, we headed out to our new house and spent the night there.  The highlight of our time was a walk around our new neighborhood and the discovery of an awesome nature trail about five minutes from our house.  To get there, a busy street must be crossed, but once that happens, there is this great trail that we can explore together.  It was fun to feel like we were in the middle of a nature preserve so close to our house.  The path ultimately leads to the park with the duck pond that first attracted us to the neighborhood several years ago.  Eventually, the kids will have enough stamina to walk to the park, but not just yet.

Anyway, I'm trying to blog every day in November and I tell you, I did write the above yesterday, it's just that the iPad first refused to publish it and then lost the whole thing.

So, here's my post for today:

The kids are crazy.  Crazy.  When we were expecting Tali, we read a book about having two kids that suggested that by ages 3 and 5, they would be playing together really well.  It was right; they do play together really well.  What the book didn't mention, however, was how they feed off each other and egg each other on to new heights of misbehavior and potty talk.  What, I ask you, is with the potty talk?  Despite our best efforts and creative solutions, the potty talk is overwhelming. 

I know it's just a phase and all that, but the last two days have been relentless.  We have a rule that the kids can talk about pee and poop and butts and everything else as much as they want when in the bathroom.  Outside the bathroom, they are not supposed to engage in the aforementioned potty discussion.  It seems like a great idea to me, but of course, it doesn't work.  Nothing seems to work, in fact. 

Luckily, they mostly do it when it's just us and not in front of other people, but I'm sure that will change soon.  Last year, we were hanging out with friends whose son is a year older than Mateo and he was really going for potty talk, too, and I felt just the tiniest bit holier-than-thou towards the parents, like, why don't you just stop him?  Now, I understand, and am appropriately sorry for thinking that would never be us!

This is all to say:  I am at a coffee shop now and am ever so grateful to Sacha for giving me a break, because the kids are really full of beans today!  That, combined with the fact that I can barely sit down without one of them hurling themselves onto my back or climbing on my shoulders, makes a little me time very much appreciated. 

In other news, we have our home inspection at 9:30 am on Tuesday.  All good thoughts, prayers, wishes, and energy would be most welcome around that time, as we realllly want our house to pass and not have major issues come up.  Thanks!

Human jungle gym

Welcome to my life these days:

PS:  Look who just learned to crawl!

The small things

We just got back from a playdate at the new house.  It's a lot of fun to have friends come over there with us, because (#1) there's a lot more space than at our old house and (#2) there's no furniture yet, just a bunch of toys, so the kids can just run loose.  And, for the most part, they can be loosely supervised, which gives the adults time to chat.  The friends we went with today were a stay-at-home dad and his two kids, who get along great with Mateo and Natalia, so we had fun.  We've actually had several very successful playdates over there, which gives me some hope that people will still come see us after we move there!  We're only moving about ten minutes away from the city, but that seems really far around here. 

Anyway, I was particularly grateful for something this morning at the new house:  the heating vents in the kitchen.  At our old house, the kitchen is unheated.  It's a hundred-year-old house that originally didn't have a heated kitchen, and when it was updated, the kitchen somehow got left out.  That means that the kitchen is usually about 10 degrees colder than the rest of the house during the fall and winter, and the tiles will practically freeze your feet off if you don't wear slippers. 

I walked into the kitchen of the new house today expecting to be cold and realized that I have come to associate kitchens in general with being cold (except for when something is cooking, of course).  I was pleasantly surprised to remember that our new house has heating throughout the house, even in the kitchen.  In fact, there is a fireplace right next to the kitchen, in the dining area.  It's little stuff like that, along with the freedom that will come with having more than one bathroom, that will make the new house a pleasure to live in.  It's good for me to remember that when I get nostalgic for our old house, because there are a lot of things I'll miss.  The freezing cold kitchen, however, is not one of them. 

Babysitter mishaps

My family owns a company and has a foundation here in town, and both have meetings periodically throughout the year.  Sacha and I have committed to getting sitters on the days of meetings so that I can attend, and we normally use an agency that does a thorough screening process and hires great people.  You can request the sitter you want, so we try to find someone we like and then stick with them, which has worked really well, up until today.

I had a meeting to attend today, so I lined up our current favorite sitter through the agency.  The kids have spent time with her a number of times in the past and they always report having had fun with her.  They sing songs, color, read books, and generally have a good time.  Well, today that all went out the window.  To give credit where it's due, I should say that both Tali and Rosa were model citizens throughout the day.  Mateo, however, caused a huge amount of turmoil and pretty much ruined the sitter's day all in seven short hours. 

I don't know if this had anything to do with it, but we all got our flu shots yesterday.  I did think that all the kids felt a little warm this morning, but my hands are usually cold, so it's kind of hard to tell.  In any case, they were acting fine when I left, so I figured all was well.  Then, as I was sitting peacefully at the meeting and enjoying the relative peace and quiet, I got a call from home.  I went out of the room to answer it and it was the babysitter, saying that Mateo had just thrown a big tantrum and wasn't listening and had been throwing stuff and such.  She wanted me to talk to him to see if I could calm him down, which I tried, but it had no effect. 

We decided that she'd put on a video and see if that would help him reset a little bit.  Before I could even make it back to the meeting, she called again, and I could hear wailing in the background.  This time, he had freaked out and started hitting her when she gave him a timeout for misbehaving, and then proceeded to throw another tantrum.  This, from a kid who has always behaved well for sitters in the past, was surprising and rather dismaying. 

I almost just went home right then, but she called me back to say that he had calmed down and was watching the video calmly.  We decided he needed a nap, since he was acting so totally out of character and like he was exhausted, and he did eventually take one, but not before flipping out again and going kicking and hitting and shrieking into yet another timeout.  Good times. 

Eventually, the meeting ended and I rushed home to rescue the poor babysitter.  Of course, Mateo acted totally fine from the moment I walked in the door and said he didn't know why he had been so grumpy before.  I wasn't sure what to do at that point, but luckily Sacha got home and took over.  She sent me out to get a treat with Tali and Rosa, as a little reward for Tali behaving so well all day. 

Meanwhile, my teacher spouse took Mateo and had him clean up the whole house with her as a way of making up for how he had acted earlier.  By the time we got back, he was out of the proverbial doghouse and feeling quite proud of himself for how helpful he had been to Mommy. 

We just hope that today was an aberration and that he was feeling crummy from the flu shot or something like that.  I have to admit, I am already dreading the next time I leave them with a sitter, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  Let's hope today's babysitter bounces back and wants to come back again!

Wild ride

Well, we are in escrow again with our house!  It happened in a rather unexpected way, though.  As you might recall, after our first offer fell through, we had a second offer waiting in the wings.  It was actually a better offer than the first one, but we had already accepted the first by the time the second came in.  The second buyer had seemed extremely interested, so we thought it was very likely that he'd follow through with his offer after the first one collapsed. 

However, upon revisiting the house, he realized that it has only one bathroom (which it clearly had the first time he looked at it, too) and decided that it wasn't what he wanted, after all.  This was on Monday morning.  Our broker put the house back on the market (it had been marked as pending before) and we were back at square one.  We were kind of deflated, but figured we could get back into the routine of showing the house and all that stuff.

By Monday afternoon, we had gotten word that someone else was thinking about writing an offer.  Later that day, the word was that the offer would be written in the morning.  Then, around noon on Tuesday, we got the offer.  Full price.  Pre-approved.  They even included a letter to us about how much they loved the house and hoped we would accept their offer...which we happily did!  We were a little stunned to get a full-price offer in this market, but in a good way!  We're thrilled.

Of course, having had two offers go down in flames before this one, we're a little gun-shy and are trying not to count our chickens before they've hatched.  We'll have the inspection in the next seven days and then go from there. But, we are cautiously optimistic that it will work out.  We sure hope it will!  This has been a wild ride so far and we'd love to see it even out for a nice, calm, predictable closing.  Fingers crossed!