51 Weeks

She fell out of the bath tonight.

She loves the bath and plays in it pretty well, so I usually put a couple inches of water in the tub, plop her in, and earn myself at least fifteen minutes without a child clinging to my clothes and screaming. I leave the bathroom door open and do things that, for the most part, keep her in my line of sight – doing laundry (laundry room is across from guest bath, where all Piper’s stuff is), picking up the detritus she leaves in her wake (toys, books, socks, mail, cat toys, diapers, blankets, baby wipes with bites out of them, crumpled paper, bites of spit-out cracker and banana) from at least part of the hallway/dining room floor, or feeding the cats and cleaning the litter boxes (cat room is next to guest bath). Tonight I put her in, picked up a few things, and, to put an end to the very irritating train of whining cats following me everywhere I went, fed the cats. Whenever I feed the cats, especially at their last feeding of the day (they get fed three times, at 5:00 or 6:00 am, 2-ish pm, and 10-ish pm), I have to make sure that all four of the boxes we currently have are spic-and-span before they’re done eating. We have nine cats and four boxes (that’s all we have room for), so I put only a tiny bit of litter in each one and scrape it completely out several times per day. After much experimentation/trial and error (heavy on the error), we settled on this as the cleanest, easiest system for everyone concerned. The problem is that we have a few furry members of the household who get upset if there is even the slightest hint that someone else has used a box recently, and all the cats like to eat and then take massive stinky craps or Niagra Falls-like pees, so if I don’t start with four clean boxes things get very unpleasant and I spend two hours trying to scrub cat piss out of somewhere that is not a litter box.

So I dashed into the cats’ room (a spare bedroom that contains all the food, litterboxes, and cat-climbing structures, and which is blocked by a baby gate in the doorway so Piper can't get in there), a trail of miaowing furballs behind me, and had just finished emptying the first box when I heard Piper start her “I’m ready to get out of the bath now” noises. I ran to the baby-gated doorway and peered around the corner at her. She was standing up in the bathtub, trying to lift one of her little legs over the side.

“Hang on, okay? Just give Mama a minute. Just one minute, okay?” I dashed back to the boxes and frantically scraped wet litter out into a plastic bag. All four boxes were wet, so if I didn’t do it now somebody was going to pee out-of-bounds before I could get back to them. I had to finish. Piper had tried to climb out of the bath before, but had never been able to, so I thought if I hurried the worst that would happen is I’d have to try and wash down an angry, wet baby.

She continued to fuss at me from the bath while I finished up, tied the bag, leapt over the gate, and ran through the kitchen to deposit it in the trash can outside the back door. I was washing my hands when I heard a small noise – like a thump but more muffled – and the chatter issuing from the bathroom stopped. I ran, hands dripping soap, into the bathroom to find her on her back next to the tub, looking very surprised and then starting to cry. Thank God I had folded a thick, huge bath towel and laid it next to the tub to soak up the water from her tidal-wave splashes. That was why I heard a small muffled thump instead of the crack of a baby head hitting concrete.

She cried a little as I cuddled her and recovered from my heart attack. Then I put her back in the tub, washed her up, dried her off, and tore up my imaginary entry form for the Mother of the Year contest.

Which is okay, I guess, because I was probably out of the running for that honor anyway. I can’t get her to eat anything right now other than black beans and cinnamon waffles. Like everything else, she goes through phases with food. Inevitably, as soon as I think I’ve got it figured out and I buy four containers of the star puffs or two pints of blueberries or three boxes of oyster crackers, she decides she’s done with that item and refuses to eat it anymore. We don’t have a high chair for her, so most of the time “eating” involves me chasing her around with a cracker or a piece of pancake or a spoonful of something trying to get her to stop bothering the cats and eat and get the cats to stop trying to eat her food and go away, all without covering the kitchen in organic blueberry yogurt or herbed chicken couscous. It’s frustrating for all involved and I think I give up too easily. She’s still nursing a fair amount, so I figure she’s getting proper nutrition as long as I’m eating okay and taking my vitamins. I will also selfishly admit that my avid little nurseling probably has a lot to do with why I can fit into my skinny jeans with room to spare lately and therefore I’m in no hurry to cut her off.

Speaking of nursing, I took her to a couple of local La Leche League meetings this week so I could get out and meet some people and she could get out and play with some other kids. It was nice, but exhausting. I used to go to LLL every month when we lived in Plymouth, it was a wonderful source of support and encouragement for me. I met some really great mamas that way and am good friends with a couple of them now. Those meetings were somewhat smaller than the ones I attended this week, both in numbers of attendees and size of venue. I’m used to it being a smallish group in a medium-sized room, plenty of space for everyone’s kids to roam around and a door that shuts firmly so nobody wanders off. Last time I went, in March (when we were still in Michigan), Piper was cruising furniture and crawling around, but all I really had to do was keep her from crawling over the tiny babies lounging on the floor or taking other kids’ toys. These were my first meetings since Piper has started walking outright and what a difference! Bigger rooms, more kids, more space to roam = I spent most of the time snatching her away from a small baby she was attempting to poke the eyes of or apologizing for the fact that she stuck her hand in some other kid’s snack tin of crackers or giving back toys that she had picked up and carted away. All I could think was “Oh, God how did I get the crazy kid? How did I end up with the kid you see tear-assing around getting into things?” She wasn’t bad or out-of-control or anything. She was just very active and interested in everything, which can be exhausting to keep up with.

It's the 24th, which was my due date. Last year at this time, I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs and looking expectantly at my belly. How strange that all seems to me now.

Daddy Is Golden

A few friends have asked me how Piper did with Ryan when we first moved down here, after being away from him for three months. They were a big three months – when he left, she was just starting to scoot around, just showing the beginnings of her army-crawl. When we met up with him again, she was crawling in earnest, chattering away, and thisclose to walking.

The truth is, she was fine with him, great in fact. When we picked him up at the airport, she fairly leapt into his arms. A few times that night and the next she insisted on me over him when she’d bonked her head or was tired, but that was all. Didn’t skip a beat, really.

And now? She adores him. When he’s home, she follows him around and has to be near him. She cries and pounds on the door when he leaves and tries to run after him. One day we were playing outside and when he left to go do some errands, she wailed and charged towards the street, then ran down the sidewalk after his car. When he comes home, she lights up. She squeals “Dada!” and runs at him as fast as she can go, beaming. Every time he lays on the floor to watch TV or read or play video games (the man cannot do any of those things sitting up like a normal person, don’t ask me why, at this point I just sigh and try not to trip over him), Piper has to run up and tackle him, then wrestle until they are both tired.

Not only that, but she sits still for him during diaper changes. It must be love.

50 Weeks

Really, she just keeps getting more and more fun. She laughs when we laugh now, and her laugh sounds like “Oh ha ha ha ha ha, guys! I’m right there with you! I totally get the joke and it is SO FUNNY! You guys are hilarious and I’m laughing to let you know that I totally understand what’s going on! Hear that? That is the sound of me definitely knowing why I am laughing, as I can assure you that I am not just copying you, nossiree!” And she’ll look from one of us to the other while doing it, watching us for cues on when to stop.

She also likes to smoosh our faces together to make us kiss. We’ll be standing close to each other and one of us will be holding her and she’ll reach out and push one person’s face into the other so we kiss. We kiss, a big smacker with a “MWAH!” sound, and pull apart to find her grinning. Then she makes us do it again, and again, and again, grinning the whole time.

Now that she is walking, the cats are experiencing a whole new level of terror. She can chase them around – occasionally while holding one of them by the tail – and follow them into places that were formerly baby-resistant. She loves them…a lot. Her favorite sport these days is Chick Wrestling, a hilarious game in which she body-slams our sweet, slow, lazy 17-lb tabby and then rolls back and forth over him while cooing, chattering, and saying “as eee” (“that kitty”) and “ei nee” (“nice kitty”) over and over. Sometimes she holds his face and pokes him in the eyes, asking “Eis? Eis? Si eee eis?” Chick is usually very patient and just whines for rescue until I run up and tell Piper that yes, those are the nice kitty’s eyes, and if you don’t stop poking them he’s going to bite you and it will serve you right because you know better. When he is in a peevish mood, he gives her a few warning meows before he nips or scratches, and since I tell her every time please don’t bother the kitty and, most of the time, drag her off him at least once, I feel it’s only fair to let him defend himself as long as he doesn’t get too rough. One day he bit her hard enough to almost draw blood, and I let him know that that was unacceptable, but most of the time I don’t intervene. Eventually, they’ll figure it out themselves.

I’m sure the grandparents will have fits when they show up to visit and Piper’s arms and legs have scratches all over them, but I am also sure that will be just one item on the list of Ways I Am Failing Their Grandchild. It is a list which will probably also include items like Refusing to Allow Anything With Elmo On It To Enter My House, Begging Them To Stop Buying Her Truckloads of Cheap Plastic Crap, and Lobbying For Them To Buy Quality Wooden Toys and Fancy Cloth Diapers Instead of Seventy-Five More Carter’s Outfits From Kohl’s.

Since we are preparing for the grandparents to swoop down in a few weeks, they are on my mind right now. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, because while Piper was always a pretty active baby, since she’s started walking, that’s pretty much all she does. She just goes from room to room all day (destroying, unfolding, un-stacking, emptying, and unloading things) amusing herself, occasionally stopping by with a book for me to read or taking a break to wrestle one of the cats. I’m certain the grandparents are going to want to hold/hug/cuddle her (particularly Ryan’s mom, who never has been able to understand that Piper doesn’t like that, so stop squeezing her and she’ll stop crying), and that is just not on Piper’s agenda.

Maybe they’ll be content to watch her walk around – it is pretty cute. She does jazz hands when she walks, with her arms bent at the elbows, hands wiggling up near her ears. Most of the time, it’s better than TV to just watch her wander around, doing jazz hands and babbling away.

Like Wildfire

I'm sure pretty much everybody has already heard, but:

The California Supreme Court has overturned the ban on gay marriage.

Here's an LA Times article, too.

I am hopeful, but not about ready to start lighting fireworks and popping champagne yet. Hate groups Conservative religious political groups are already circulating petitions for an amendment to the state Constitution that would definitively block same-sex marriage. That bonehead Governor Schwarzengger has already vetoed bills passed by the Legislature allowing same-sex marriage. He always says the veto is "the will of the people." Uhh, you mean the people who elected the people who passed the bill? Natch.

And, as the LA Times article points out, this sort of lights a fire under those opposed to same-sex marriage, because nobody can say 'Oh, it'll never happen, quit worrying' anymore.

To which I always say: What BUSINESS is it of yours? Why do you care who gets married and who doesn't? It has absolutely no effect on you. Find something more important to worry about. Like a device that will keep socks from getting lost in the dryer.

Further Evidence The Internet Should Be Dismantled

Or at least a case for being able to criminally prosecute people for Emailing Without Brain Cells.

My mother forwards things. There are days when I am deeply sorry I ever helped her set up a Hotmail account. Some sharp words and some begging have gotten her to stop forwarding me things with titles like I AM A BAD AMERICAN or CHRISTMAS IS UNDER ATTACK!!!!!! And somehow my siblings and I were able to convince her to let my dad check most of the MISSING! BABY! PLEASE! HELP! and THIS CHILD HAS CANCER AND HER ONLY WISH IS TO SEE FOUR TRILLION NAMES ON THIS FORWARD BEFORE SHE KICKS IT things before she sends them. It has at least slowed the deluge of crap she perpetuates; I still get ones about Friendship and Love and Send This To Five Women Who Rock! but I'll take those over stupid, inane rants about how OMG gas is SO expensive you guys! Everybody, don't fill up your car on April 23rd, that'll show 'em! or the far-worse racist idiocy that gets billed in some circles as "just speaking the truth."

Tonight I got a forward which prompted the following reply:

MOM! Please check Snopes before you forward things!

http://www.snopes.com/medical/homecure/peroxide.asp

I am very disappointed in you! You took a lot of Chemistry to get that nursing degree, you should be able to spot a fake like this a mile away. And as a R.N., you shouldn't be encouraging people to put hydrogen peroxide into their mucous membranes. Does soaking any part of your body in peroxide for ten minutes really sound like a good idea? That's not just bad advice, it's DANGEROUS.

I'm sure it won't sink in, but at least I've done my part to try and make the world a little less stupid.

I Almost Goldfrapped Myself

All I can say is: WTF?

Why would anyone think dressing like that is a good idea...EVER?!

49 Weeks: Symphony of Destruction

I had been feeling like a complete asshole because our house, for the most part, still looked like someone threw a hand grenade into a moving truck. Turns out the baby's destructive tendencies were the reason I couldn’t get the house together. Ryan took her out Thursday night for a couple of hours, and I unpacked all the stuff in the living and dining rooms (which included five huge tubs of our clothes and a significant amount of spare bedding), put it all away, straightened up, and cleaned. Two hours without the baby and it looked like an actual home instead of a squatter encampment constructed entirely of fleece blankets, DVD box sets of Joss Whedon shows, and cheap t-shirts from Target. The next day she took a hour-and-half long nap and I got our entire bedroom done. It’s much bigger without boxes of crap lining all the walls. Ryan came home from work that day and kept her busy for an hour and her room no longer looked like a Babies R’ Us had dumped a supply truck in the middle of the floor. We’ve lived here for a month, and I felt like a gigantic slacker because the only room in any sort of working order was the kitchen, so I was relieved to discover that I could actually blame the mess on my child. Now we just have to keep both sets of parents from toting carloads of crap down here and dumping it off.

On the other hand, she requires somewhat less entertaining these days precisely because she can roam the house looking for things to do. I am so very, very glad to have this house right now. We don’t have a lot of stuff at the moment, and there’s not much she can hurt (or hurt herself with). It’s one level, so I no longer have to worry about her climbing up or tumbling down stairs, and now that I have things 90% unpacked and put away, most of the maintenance is vacuuming every day so the entire house doesn’t turn into a giant hairball. When I need to do something, I can just turn her loose and let her toddle around. I still spend time with her, of course. We read books every day, books and books and books. Sometimes we (try to) go for a walk. We wrestle (she’s a pretty rough-and-tumble little kid, and wrestling on our bed is a full-contact sport), we do piggyback rides. She likes handing me things, so I get her to help me sort laundry or load the washer. She really, really likes wrestling the cats. For example, as I type this she is body-slamming and then crawling over poor Chick while chattering and giggling away.

We haven’t done very many (or, um, any) out-of-the house activities yet, since our one-car situation means that if I want to do something during the day, I have to get up at 5:00 am, put the baby in the car, and drive Ryan to work, drive home since nothing’s open that early, do my stuff during the day, then pick him up in the afternoon. Piper still wakes up 2-3 times a night, and doesn’t usually settle in for her longest stretch of sleep until 2:00-3:00 am so most days I do not feel like dragging my ass out of bed at 5:00. I’ll have to start soon, though, or I’ll never meet anyone. When we were in Plymouth, I’d made some friends with women who have babies around her age and we’d go to lunch or the indoor playground or the park or coffee together at least once a week, and I am hoping to make some similar friends here to do the same with. I miss having friends to talk to, and judging by the enthusiasm with which Piper greets the neighbor kids, she misses her friends, too. I put together a list of area storytime events, toddler-friendly activities, and La Leche League meetings so we have plenty to pick from every month.

48 Weeks: I'm Walkin' Yessiree

So, she is off like a rocket.

We went from being able to coax her into walking from one of us to the other to chasing her around in the space of three days. We both thought hey! It’ll be so much FUN when she can walk, we won’t have to carry her everywhere and she’ll tire herself out and she’ll be so cute in those little shoes!

Um, yeah, well, objects in rearview mirror may appear smaller than they are.

It’s kind of fun, holding her hand as she toddles around. And yes, the sandals we bought her are very cute. But trying to get her to walk the same place we are walking is almost impossible, and when we’re walking outside she runs for the street every chance she gets. My friend’s son used to do this, too, and come to think of it every newly-walking toddler I’ve encountered has a magnetic attraction to That Place Where Cars Go. I don’t know why, maybe something about the weight of a child at that age and the Earth’s gravitational field. Whatever the reason, it can be a very exhausting and frustrating business to herd her where we need to go. Today I tried to take her for a walk around the neighborhood, hoping it would tire her out a little and help coax her into an afternoon nap, but we only got four houses down before I got frustrated, picked her up, and trucked on home. It took us twenty minutes to cover 500 ft. of sidewalk, with me yanking her out of people’s yards and swatting her little hands away from plants I couldn’t identify and stopping her from eating grass and waiting around as she stopped to whack on every utility box, light pole, and tree trunk we encountered, then running right back to it when I tried to drag her farther down the street. By the time we got home, I was the one who needed a nap.

The increased mobility has also increased her mess-making ability. I already spent most of my time following her around the house cleaning up the things she destroys, but it’s worse now. Instead of crawling or scooting from one room to the next, all she need do is get up and WALK! Walk to the kitchen and pull things out of cupboards and drawers. Walk to the computer room and unload a box of books waiting to be unpacked. Walk to the living room and unload a basket of clean and freshly-folded laundry. Walk to the bathroom and smash her fingers in the toilet lid, then pound on the lid and scream because something is smashing her fingers. Walk back into the living room and take all her books out of the basket next to the reading chair. Walk into her room and unload the bookshelf, the sock drawer, and rearrange the neat piles of baby clothes I set aside to get rid of. Walk into the bedroom and shut the door then scream because the door is shut and it won’t open.

And all this while I was feeding the cats.

I Has A Baskit

The house is still in total disarray, but the cats can always be counted on to let me know where the comfortable spots are:

47 Weeks

So, you know about the walking. Let me tell you about the talking. My little miss is quite the chatterbox.

When she’s playing, she’s almost always making some kind of noise, chattering away to herself. She has “reading noises,” a certain set of sounds that come out whenever she’s looking at a book. She has generalized chatter while she’s playing, d’s and b’s and a’s and little squeals Long ago she learned how to wiggle her fist or her fingers against her mouth while yelling and make funny noises. She does that a lot. She’s a really LOUD kid. Nobody ever loses us in a store because you can always hear her four aisles away. Which is not bad, but I can always count on having the loudest kid at any given function and sometimes I really need a quiet kid.

She’s had some words for a while, and even if they were of dubious clarity we always counted them because she used them in context. Mama, Dada, bath, cat, and so on. Recently those words have gotten clearer and she uses them more. “Mama! Mamamamaaa!” she howls every single night while I’m trying to make dinner and she is wrapping herself around my legs because she wants my attention. “DADA!” she cries when Ryan walks through the door, and crawls up to him as fast as she can. “Cats!” she squeals when it’s kitty feeding time and the area around their food bowls is one solid mass of yowling fur.

But by far the cutest word she has right now is “thanks.” It comes out like “ats,” but it is “thanks.” She says it all the time. She’s very into handing you things, so she says it when she gives you something: “Ats.”
And when she takes it back: “Ats.”
And when she gives it to you again: “Ats.”
And takes it back again: “Ats.”
When she offers me some of her graham cracker: “Ats.”
When I decline but she shoves it in my mouth anyway: “Ats.”
When she reaches into my mouth and takes it back: “Ats.”
And when she offers it to the cat, who eats it out of her hand: “Ats.”
So I give her another one: “Ats.”

There’s also “uh-oh.” She used it a lot more about a month ago. Eveything was “uh-oh.”
After she hurled a toy out of the shopping cart: “Uh-oh!”
And watched me pick it up twenty times: “Uh-oh!”
I gave it to her and she threw it out again twenty-one times: “Uh-oh!”
So I chucked it into the basket instead of giving it back this time: “Uh-oh!”
When one of the cats came up and grabbed food out of her hand: “Uh-oh!”
Or when she gave it to them: “Uh-oh!”
Sitting in the high chair, dropping crackers over the side one by one: “Uh-oh!”
And watching the cats eat each one: “Uh-oh!”

She wakes me up most mornings by poking me in the eyes. “Eiss? Eiss?” she asks. “Am-am-mamaa…iss?” And I can never be mad. “Yes, those are Mama’s eyes,” I say. “Mama’s very tired eyes.” Then we get up and I teach her how to use the coffee pot.

On Wednesday of this week, she walked all by herself, for real. I set her down in front of me and she just charged off. She went about six steps alone, before she realized nobody was holding her up. Then she sat down in front of the toy box. But – it was real walking. No hesitation, no stumbling, just WALKING…holy shit!!

46 Weeks

It’s been a long time since I did one of these (again), and there’s a lot to report. The first order of business is mobility. Not two days after I wrote the last update (at 38 weeks), in which I stated that she was still only doing her Army-crawl, she started full-on hands-and-knees crawling. She’d done it before, a little, but it was not her primary mode of getting from place to place. Then something clicked, and there was no stopping her. Here’s something you may not know: babies can crawl very fast. Turns out my child is also fearless. She climbs stairs, she dives headfirst off things, she tries to follow the cats down basement stairs or out onto the porch. She climbs on stacks of boxes, scales open dresser-drawers, and has an attraction to hot ovens, dishwasher trays full of knives, and strangers’ large dogs. I have spent nearly every waking moment since that first crawl chasing after her, and have had a number of small heart attacks.

Two days ago, I was standing in the kitchen of my new house chopping vegetables to make Thai green curry. I suddenly realized that Piper was no longer underfoot unloading the bottom kitchen drawer that I had stocked with sippy cups and Tupperware in hopes of keeping her out of cupboards full of less baby-friendly items. At the same time I realized this, I heard some very I’m-so-pleased-with-myself baby giggles and looked up to discover the front door had blown open and my daughter was most of the way outside. She had a handful of dried leaves headed towards her mouth and a terribly pleased expression on her face. I bolted for the door and managed to keep her from eating the dried plant life. She grinned at me and laughed. This is more or less how the days go now – one rescue after another.

Particularly since, in addition to crawling, she continues to cruise the furniture and walls, and still loves to have someone hold her hands and walk her around, but now she can walk one-handed. Sometimes it’s our idea for her to go one-handed; sometimes she demands it. Every time, I marvel at her locomotion, the jerky halting steps that propel her forward. If we let go of both her hands, she can stand on her own. She only falls when she realizes she’s not holding on to anything. We have even gotten her to take a couple of STEPS at a time without help. Steps! My baby, walking! Not so very long ago, this was inconceivable to me – that I would be the mother of a toddler.

Home.

A Few Notes On Moving Into Your Very Own House

1. If you are at all interested in marital harmony, don't buy a house. These past two weeks have seen some spectacular fights. Fights which our neighbors may have heard, fights which resulted in throwing packs of Post-It Notes at each others’ heads, fights where many unpleasant names were called, fights during which each of us proposed the idea of divorce and the other one pointed out that we have to stay here, we own this goddamned house now and anyway neither of us has anywhere else to go.

2. When you have been stuffed into dorm rooms and apartments since the age of 18, and then spent the past nine months crammed into one room at your parents' house, it's really nice to have several days before your stuff arrives at your house so you can enjoy all that space.

3. When your closing has been pushed back a week and you are not 100% sure until the day before that you are actually going to close this time, the gas company is not sympathetic to your plight and will not give you an emergency appointment so you can have heat over the weekend. Not even if you beg. So we spent our first several days as homeowners still sleeping at my husband's frat house rental place.

4. After the above-mentioned fights about your new home, it is very nice to have a separate bedroom for your baby so you and your spouse can have make-up sex (and make-up-for-lost-time sex; he was gone for THREE MONTHS, people) and not have to be totally silent about it.

5. If you are going to have to stay in temporary lodgings until you get into your house, it is nice if they are only two miles down the road from said house. This may, however, inspire a certain laissez-faire attitude in your husband concerning the moving of your belongings from the temporary house to the permanent one. Most of our stuff was moved in the ReloCube, but there was the carload Max brought with him when he moved here in January (his computer, clothes, etc) and the carload that came down with us (a suitcase of our clothing, baby toys, our mattress, various odds and ends). Since we were in the temporary house over a week longer than planned, our stuff had time to spread out and scatter. I wanted to pack our car as full as possible each time we ran between the temp house and the new one; instead Max preferred to throw, say, a bath towel and two t-shirts into the back seat and call that a load. This made me crazy and led to a couple of the above-mentioned fights.

6. This close proximity of houses may also cause you to leave your cats in the basement of the old house for probably much longer than you should, while you attempt to unpack at your new abode and feel like a horrible person for enjoying your nice new home as a pet-free place. This enjoyment of a pet-free lifestyle may in fact cause you to realize that while you love your pets, you will probably not get any more once these are gone. You may also feel a twinge of despair when you calculate that this will probably not happen until your daughter is in high school. Then you will feel like an even more horrible person.

7. I cannot recommend ABF U-Pack enough. They are cheap, reliable, and extremely accommodating. They showed up exactly when they said they would, they were great about letting us have the container two extra days and then holding it for us until we called for it. Everyone on their staff was friendly and able to answer all my questions whenever I called. I will say, however, that the driver who dropped off the ReloCube warned me to pad and pack everything really well because “these things ride pretty rough.” He was NOT kidding. When the cube arrived, there was a big scratch mark down one side of it (not through it, though, it didn’t pierce the hull so our stuff was untouched). I think had I not resorted to stuffing clothing into the cracks between boxes, there would’ve been a lot more shifting going on during transit. As it was, the heavy round base for our living-room lamp was floating around in there unsecured, and it came out pretty banged up. Some screws and most of the little pins for our other lamps went missing, since I didn’t think to tape them into place. But that’s it. So on the whole, missing the clickers and a couple tiny (and replaceable) screws for some $10 Target lamps isn’t that bad.

Did We Get Our House?

Yes, we did. We closed last Friday (the 4th), a week after we were supposed to, but fine whatever okay great. A few notes on closing a house:

1. We were warned that there would be a lot of signing, but ye Gods! It never ended. I tried to count the times we put ink to paper and lost track somewhere around fifteen.

2. Hearing "no, she doesn't have to sign, her name's not on the loan" was one of the most humiliating moments of my life.

3. Being told "yes, you have to sign there, your name is on the title" was one of the strangest.

4. Ryan and I both got the distinct feeling that the lawyer conducting the proceedings was not terribly impressed with us. He was both older (I guessed somewhere around 60) and dressed in a very nice suit. He came off as being very old-school. One of the last names on the door was his and he probably owned the shiny new BMW parked right outside said door, so our raggedy broke-ass hippie schoolteacher married-with-different-last-names selves probably made him shake his head and wonder what the world is coming to.

5. I am also in the wrong business, because if I figured it correctly, Mr. Old School Lawyer got paid $270 to sit for twenty minutes speaking jargon and handing us things to sign. I'm quite sure he didn't even put together the thick sheaf of papers; that's what first-year associates are for.

6. Although logically I knew everything was on the up-and-up and that we had no reason to be paranoid, as I sat there looking at the long list of fees and terms which I only half-understood, I tried not to panic. Somehow I couldn't shake the feeling that we were getting screwed somewhere in all this. This was not helped when I realized that if we didn't have to pay all these people/agencies/firms to do...whatever it is they do...our payment would be about $200 lower every month. It was also not helped by the fact that most of these "processing" and "document research" and "title search" fees really amounted to paying some company's interns to do a couple Google searches and photocopy the results in triplicate. Our house was built in 2005; it's not like there was a lot of stuff to go through.

We are still not really unpacked, the cats are STILL in the basement of the other place, we have no furniture, and I can't find anything. We just got our own Internet connection, so I no longer have to truck around with my laptop looking for unsecured networks or keep the baby from eating electronics and getting bit by ants while I check my e-mail at the other house. Driving here is crazy, I still don't know where anything is. I am behind on everything, so if I owe you a phone call, email, cup of tea, pie, or anything else, just know that I will catch up eventually.

Temporary Lodgings

Still no house. Ohh, yeah. Still waiting.

We left Saturday evening and drove through the night. I was pretty apprehensive about how my car-hating-child would handle a 10-hour drive, but through the valiant efforts of several adults we kept her up all day, with the exception of a 20-minute nap. She slept most of the way, and we took breaks to feed, change, and release her whenever necessary. There were a few streteches where she screamed for 20 straight minutes, but on the whole it wasn't too bad. Ryan and his dad drove his parents' ailing Dodge minivan, which was crammed with us, our stuff, and all 9 of our cats. There was so much shit stuffed in there I barely had room for my feet.

The worst part was that I had to stay awake the whole time to make sure the two very tired drivers didn't fall asleep at the wheel, so even when the baby was crashed out I was poking Ryan in the ribs or asking my father-in-law if he'd ever been to Charlotte before and which basketball teams he was rooting for. Some time around West Virginia I ran out of polite conversation starters and since I don't know Ryan's dad well enough to just poke him in the ribs or pinch his arm like I did to Ryan whenever I saw the car start to drift or his head start to bob, there were several points when I very nearly screamed out "YOU ARE SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF ME. YOU ALMOST RAN OFF THE ROAD JUST NOW. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMNED MOUNTIANS, IT'S PITCH-DARK AND STORMING LIKE CRAZY. PLEASE PULL THE FUCK OVER BEFORE YOU KILL US." Twice I deeply regretted my decision to chug two Smartwaters and an Arizona Green Tea, because I damn near peed my pants as he started awake and swerved on the dark, wet road.

We arrived safe, but still have no house. Monday we were told that "the lawyers" who needed that 72 hours to look over paperwork had not even received said paperwork yet. Our mortgage person was reportedly "hopeful" that we would close later this week. Yesterday we got word that we're scheduled for this Friday at 3:00. If we get delayed again my head might possibly explode. I am not sure exactly who is holding up what and which pieces of paperwork are missing. I guess that's all for the best, because if I knew who the weakest link was, you can be certain that I would take Piper and all nine cats down to their office and camp out all day, every day, until each and every piece of paper needed for us to get this thing settled was where it belonged.

Ryan's roommate graciously agreed to let us crash here, as he is away on business at the moment. I am thankful he's letting us use his house (our cats are stashed in the basement, since the roommate is allergic), but it's...um...a bit like a college house. I can't seem to locate the vacuum sweeper and there is a staggering collection of liquor bottles on top of the fridge. There are jugs of apple cider exploded in the freezer, along with some sort of dribbly red alcoholic concoction frozen into wine glasses. They cleaned up a bit before we came, so the bathtub and kitchen floor are reasonably safe, but everywhere there are piles of expensive electronics (ahhh, to be a single male with disposable income), thick layers of dust, cd's, half-unpacked boxes, various types of weaponry (nobody was ever sorry they bought that mace when zombies attack, I guess) and keyboards and video games and glass figurines. The baby is perpetually covered in dust, crumbs and hair (yes, hair) and I have been going crazy trying to keep her clean and out of things.

Last night Piper was cruising along the front of the entertainment center and decided to give the deocorative screen-print tapestry hanging there a good, hard yank. Turns out it was held in place by two ceramic ashtrays, which fell direcly onto her little baby noggin. They didn't break, but a large seashell that had been resting inside one did, and the sharp little pieces flew everywhere. Piper is okay, she got a few small cuts on her head and scared both of us half to death. Two minutes after that I found an extremely large red fire ant trundling along three inches from the baby's leg. I snatched her up, stashed her in the playpen where she sleeps, and then took a shoe and killed the sucker. It was of alarming size.

Piper was screaming by now, standing up in the pack n' play and letting off howls of fury at being treated in such a manner. Despite that fact that it was 12:30 and my husband gets up at 5:30 for work, I marched into the room where he was sleeping, flipped on the lights and said "I don't care WHAT it takes or who we have to kill. We better have our house this weekend."