Meet the Basketball

To Register? And Vote!

What is acceptable in today's culture? Do I get a second baby shower? I don't need any big things. We have the crib, the pack n' play, the car seat, the stroller, the toys, the bouncer, etc. What we don't have are baby boy clothes. I've heard it's acceptable to have a second shower when you have a baby of a different gender, which is our case. Well, in all honesty, we had a good Christmas and Old Navy had a great after-Christmas sale. So our baby boy will definately be well-clothed for the first three months at least. So I guess what we'd need more than clothing is diapering necesities. I haven't spoke much of it since we started last January, but we use cloth diapers. It has saved us a ton of money, and it is so much better for the environment. But speaking of money, we started when Olivia was six months old - so we have nothing for newborns. Well, culturally acceptable or not, I registered at a few online cloth diapering stores for newborn supplies. And Ashley took the time to teach me how to add those links to my sidebar. So I thought I'd explain what they were and why they were there. If you find it culturally unacceptable, then ignore them. I promise I won't be offended and will love you anyways. Especially if you were one who gave us baby boy clothes at Christmas. :-)

And on a different note: Jeremy has FINALLY gotten the old voting website up and running. This baby boy needs a name, people - and he needs YOU to choose it for him because his mother can't make up her mind. Keep in mind these factors:
1) I like multi-syllable names - preferrablly three syllables, but I can live with two.
2) I like names that are not in the top 10.
3) I like names that are easily spelled. He's going to spend his entire life spelling out his last name - give him an easy first name!

Olivia Plays the Piano

Olivia loved staying at Gammy and PopPop's house over Christmas break. One of the things she loved the most was the piano in the living room. She would climb up on the bench and just start playing... making sure to hit all the keys, of course.

Get to Know the Homemaker in Me!

Stolen from Onward and Upward

Aprons – Y/N? If Y, what does your favorite look like?
I have two - my Pampered Chef apron which is denim, and a white apron with my name painted on in big green letters with daisies decorating the letters. Larissa made if for me as a wedding present. By the way, Larissa, was that washable paint? I've never washed it for fear of ruining it, but it's getting kind of gross...

Baking – Favorite thing to bake
Cookies! Chocolate chip, peanut butter blossoms, buried cherries, sugar, ginger, snickerdoodles... is there a bad cookie?

Clothesline – Y/N?
We wouldn't have a yard to put it in. We have two drying racks that are constantly in use (we don't use the coin operated dryer to save a $1.25/day).

Donuts – Have you ever made them?
I'm sure any donut I attempted could never measure up to a melt-in-your-mouth-fresh-from-the-conveyor-belt Krispy Kreme, so why bother.

Every day – One homemaking thing you do every day
Sweep the kitchen floor - after every meal! Such is the life of the mother of a toddler.

Freezer – Do you have a separate deep freeze?
We barely have room for our appliances as is! But I would love one.

Garbage Disposal – Y/N?
Couldn't survive without it!

Handbook – What is your favorite homemaking resource?
The only one I have is Crystal's blog - Biblical Womanhood.

Ironing – Love it or hate it? Or hate it but love the results?
Since we line dry everything, I just give wrinkles clothes a really good shake and they usually dry so that we don't need the iron. I'm also not sure where the iron ended up with the last move...

Junk drawer – Y/N? Where is it?
We used to have one in the kitchen, but this apartment doesn't have enough drawers (only three!) So the contents of the junk drawer got put in a small tupperware bin and resides in the storage closet within easy grasp.

Kitchen – Color and decorating scheme
Color? Your typical apartment kitchen - cheap fake wood cabinets and cupboards with white walls and linoleum floor. Is there any other kind?

Love – What is your favorite part of homemaking?
The feeling of accomplishment when the day is done, the house is clean, and the people I love are well-fed and happy.

Mop – Y/N?
Once a week.

Nylons – Wash by hand or in the washing machine?
I rarely wear them, but when I do I usually throw them in the washing machine

Oven – Do you use the window or open the oven to check?
I always look through the window first, but decide that doesn't give me a good enough view, so I open the door.

Pizza – What do you put on yours?
Meatlovers - I'm so healthy.

Quiet – What do you do during the day when you get a quiet moment?
I'm an AIM addict. It's my social interaction time. When Olivia's awake, though, I only get one or two words typed before I'm pulled away. Naptime is usually spent entirely in front of the computer.

Recipe card box – Y/N? What does it look like?
One of those cheap >$1 plastic index card holders from Wal-Mart. But more often now, I use cookbooks and I have a menu that lists all my favorite meals and the pages where I can find them - sorted into meat categories (i.e. chicken, pork, beef, etc.).

Style of house – What style is your house?
Apartment on the second floor. We get the heat from the downstairs neighbors and the noise from the upstairs neighbors. It's a two bedroom recently equipped with a washer hookup ;-). It's 965 sq. ft. with one bathroom.

Tablecloths and napkins – Y/N?
I'd love cloth napkins! But right now we just have placemats.

Under the kitchen sink – Organized or toxic wasteland?
It's organized - except for the conch shell and random vase it's all cleaners.

Vacuum – How many times per week?
About 2 times, maybe more depending on how messy Olivia is.

Wash – How many loads of laundry do you do per week?
I do one per day, sometimes two. Rarely any on Sunday - It's the Sabboth! :-) (More like, the family's all here and I don't feel like doing it).

X’s – Do you keep a daily list of things to do that you cross off?
I should more often - I'd get more done!

Yard – Y/N? Who does what?
No yard to speak of. We do have a balcony. We split the resonsibilities... we both do nothing.

Zzz’s – What is your last homemaking task for the day before going to bed?
Either a load of diapers so they can hang dry and be ready for morning or the dishes if I've waited til the last minute (heaven forbid!)

I tag Jes! :-D

My Husband Loves Me (and This Apartment) So Much...

In an effort to persuade me not to move, Josh has illegally* installed our washing machine.

This is our dining room before the washer. It's a little messy because Olivia was awake, so my apologies. I have found it's impossible to keep the floor picked up until she is asleep Oh, and Josh left the milk out. The kitchen is to the left, I was taking the picture from the living room. Oh, there's Olivia's head! Can you find it?

This is the view from under the sink. The 1x4 board had to be attached to the back of the cupboard, and the metal tubing was all his work as well. (The board is there for the tubing to be attached to). He says this was the hardest part, purely because of the lack of elbow room while he had to manuever all this.


Here is the only damage he had to incur. He says it's fixable, but he most likely won't bother with it when we move out. I say, they should pay him for his efforts, and when we leave, they can up the rent, advertising their one and only apartment with a washer hook-up. Those are the hot and cold water pipes, by the way.


The hot and cold water pipes then run the length of the cupboards. He has since attached them more securely with brackets.


And this is our new laundry room/dining room/reptile room. It's a little bit of a tight squeeze for now, but we plan on eventually moving the reptile bit into Olivia's room, but that requires rearranging her furniture. For once, we're thankful we have such a tiny table! Oh, and I forgot to point out that there is a drainage hose going along the back of the counter (you can just barely see the beginning of it - it's black). At first, Josh had cut it so that it went to the first of the double sinks. But then, we found out that sink doesn't drain fast enough. I found this out one morning when Olivia was being particularly clingy and fussy. She would NOT let me leave her room. She would yell at me, pull me back in, and then shut the door. When I finally escaped, I went to the kitchen to check the new washing machine set-up and found a quarter of an inch of water covering everything; it had even gotten into the cupboards. So I cleaned it up, and when the washer drained again, I realized the problem, and had to hold the hose so that it would spray into the other sink, where the garbage disposal is. That sink drained much faster. Josh had to buy a 79 cent adapter to connect that hose to another hose to make it long enough to go to the other sink. He still hasn't trimmed it down, so it's about 2 feet too long and gets in the way a bit when I am rinsing off the dishes. But it drains! Whoo hoo! I have a washing machine again!

So it looks like we will not be moving to a townhouse. But I've come to the realization that I really do like our one floor apartment. I just wish it were on the bottom floor and that no one lived above us. But I like that I always know what Olivia is up to, and I'm always just a split second away. I like that I don't have to go up and down stairs to go to the bathroom or put things away. And now our apartment is cheaper, since we don't have to pay $40 in quarters each month for laundry. Although, we'll see how much the water bill goes up next month.

*We honestly believe we are actually not doing anything "illegal." We have read nowhere that tells us we can't install a washer. But we also didn't ask permission for fear of being told "no."

Olivia Loves Annabelle

Olivia loves puppies. It was such a thrill for her to get to live with one for a whole week! Watch her chase Annabelle through the house, then participate in Annabelle's trick.

Olivia Sings VeggieTales

On Christmas morning, Olivia loved opening up her presents. Her favorite (and our favorite to watch) was opening up a VeggieTales DVD. She realized at once what it was, and started rocking back and forth, singing the theme song! Of course, only the extremely talented can pick out the tune, but it's there!

It Got Cold

So we were GOING to go to the library this morning. I bundled up Olivia (complete with gloves), packed the diaper bag, collected the movies to return, made sure her diaper was okay, gathered the recyclables (I like being able to do multiple things when I go out), and headed out to the car. Only to find the doors frozen shut. I finally got the key to turn so I know it was unlocked, but the door wouldn't open. Olivia started to cry, I think because she was sensing my frustration, and I think she also was a little afraid of the snow. So we came back upstairs and now she's watching this wierd VeggieTales called Autotainment or something like that and putting shoes on anything with feet.

Oh well, at least it's finally cold out. Olivia got a really cute fleece and an equally cute sweater for Christmas and it hasn't been cold enough to wear them until now! Sigh. I live vicariously through my daughter's wardrobe.

Olivia's First Time on Ice

Josh took Olivia out on the ice when they went skating. We didn't think she'd like it, but she surpised us all.

Olivia's First Time in Skates

Olivia got kicked off the ice for not having skates. So we got some (amazingly, in her size!). She didn't quite know what to do with her feet.

Olivia Improves Her Skating

She's figured out how to keep her ankles straight. It takes a lot of concentration, though.

Olivia Skates Like a Pro

Towards the end, she was looking pretty professional.

My Little Artist

Here's what Olivia did while I was cleaning. Such a big girl! Actually, this was only part of what she did. She also got her own rag and helped me dust. She liked spraying the rag with the polish. And then she got out the jar of shells and dumped them out all over the coffee table. This is what it's like to clean with a toddler. She constantly cancels out any progress I make - and looks adorable while doing so.

Friday: Cleaning Day

I'm so proud of my accomplishments today! Usually, I vacuum and clean the bathroom and call it done. And this week I've been especially lazy and behind because I just came back from a wonderful week and a half at Josh's parents' house where my only chore was laundry! But after reading some controversial posts on housekeeping, (which I was going to link, but they have been removed due to their controversial nature), I was re-energized and ready to go.

I cleaned off my "Pampered Chef desk/place where we put things small enough or sharp enough that Olivia would hurt herself with them" and moved the turtle and crab there so that they're finally out of our bedroom! That's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. They used to be on our dresser, which I was always upset about because I'm so proud of the fact that our bedroom furniture matches, I hate to mess it up by making half of it host to creepy crawly reptiles and such. Also, it makes it really hard to dust when you have to move habitats around. And the Pampered Chef desk was cluttered with assortments of forgotten mail, paper clips, broken necklaces, etc.

Oh, but the real pride behind my accomplishment lies in the fact that in order to clear off the PC desk, I had to first clear off a shelf on our one and only bookshelf to fit the PC binders and paperwork. And in order to do I had to clear off the computer desk to see what would fit on the shelf with my PC stuff (the computer desk was littered with all kinds of papers and books with titles like: "Multivariable Control Systems" and "Principles of Mathematical Analysis".

So I didn't think I'd blog about something as dull as this, so I didn't think to take any "before shots", but afterwords, I felt so proud of myself I had to document the occasion with pictures and a blog. So here's my clean apartment! (Or rather, the parts of my apartment that are clean.) :-)

Here is the finished bookshelf. (The shelf I cleaned was the top one - I know the others need help as well, but that's another Friday). I know it still looks cluttered, but I promise it's a lot better than it used to be! I'm just simply amazed we're making do with only one when we had three in our last apartment. But that's when we had an office and could put up really cheap black plastic Wal-Mart shelves and just tell company not to look. Now our "office" is in the living room.


Here's the cleaned off computer desk! Sigh, see the beautiful wood? There's so much of it, too! I'm pretty sure before I started there wasn't any wood showing.


And here's the former Pampered Chef desk. Again, you really can't appreciate how nice this looks because you can't compare it with what it was before. But trust me, this is a HUGE improvement! But best of all....


Here is the new and improved non-animal habitat dresser! I was so proud when we got it because it came with a matching bed (matching furniture *gasp*!). And it was all a gift from God through the secretary of the school where I taught. She was moving and was going to throw it out! But again, notice the nice shiny wood. Sigh.

But now I'm starting to feel guilty because I should have been cleaning the bathroom during Olivia's nap, but instead I just sat and was satisfied with what I'd already done. I suppose Josh did just clean out the tub yesterday (Olivia still thinks the bathtub is a toilet). But I should go do the rest of it while Olivia is still napping.

WeeMee!

Townhouse

So we've lived here for five months, and I'm already looking to move. This apartment has been great - the mainainance people are quick, and they even eventually fix the problem. We love the courtyard that is separated from the parking lot so Olivia can run around safely (with the exception of a couple residents who refuse to obey to rules and put their large dogs on leashes). We haven't had to turn on the heat basically all winter because the people below us like tropical temperatures. The layout of the apartment itself is spacious and I must say I'm getting better and better at decorating the more we move - this is our best-looking apartment yet!

However... I can't take the coin laundry anymore. The washing machine doesn't clean as well as our own does and it kills me to have to keep ours in storage at a $30/mo loss to us. Add to that the $40/mo in quarters we spend on laundry, and we're $70/mo poorer for having to use an old, disfunctional machine.

Another reason I'm looking to move is the fact that we're on the second floor. I know I'm not the first to be in this situation, but it's so exhausting! Every Monday, we go grocery shopping, and I have to carry 2 gallons of milk, 4 gallons of water, 2 jugs of juice, 1 gallon of orange juice, plus all the food we eat in a week up a flight of stairs and down the hall. All while carrying a toddler and a 7 month pregnant belly.

So I've found us an affordable townhouse. (It's the two bedroom). Here's the floor plan, except take the downstairs bathroom and make it a laundryroom:

So we haven't seen it yet; we've just driven around the parking lot. But it looks well-kept. We have an appointment for Friday to see a lived-in townhouse. They don't have any available right now and they don't know if they will have any in August. And even if they do, we'd only want one with the laundry room, which reduces our odds. So it's up to God whether He wants to continue to build my patience and physical strength, or whether He chooses to give a poor mom a break. :-)

The perks of this townhouse would be:

• Laundry room (saves $40/mo)
• Water/Trash/Sewage paid for! (Saves $30/mo)
• Might be able to squeeze all our stuff from storage in it (saves $30/mo)
• We ARE the neighbors upstairs. If someone's stomping around, we can go up there and stop them. (Currently, our upstairs neighbors have an 11-yr-old boy who plays pretty rough and stays up pretty late.
• The laundry room is downstairs. In our last apartment, the laundryroom was just off the bedroom - and we have a dryer with a buzzer that doesn't turn off and lasts for at LEAST a full 60 seconds. Very inconvenient for napping babies/children/parents and that last load you like to throw in before going to bed.
• The bedrooms are upstairs. The babies won't hear us watching LoTR (or vacuuming, whichever...)
• When carrying groceries, I can just drop them off inside the door - no stairs!
• The mail slot is in the door!
  

The drawbacks would be:

• We haven't seen it yet, so it could be completely run-down on the inside.
• They don't have the nice courtyard. In fact, we didn't see much lawn at all.
• We don't know what kind of a deal they'll give us on the price. Right now, it's $121/mo more than we pay here. They said they'll likely be able to give us some kind of deal, and when you calculate the savings I mentioned above, it might work out - but you never know.
• Since we'd be getting one with a laundry room, we would not have a bathroom downstairs. Not sure how difficult that would be with pottytraining...
• Heating might cost more. We still pay a pretty high gas bill for not having turned on our heat all winter ($60) so it might stay the same or at least not go up too much.
  
• Hmm... can't think of anything else! I might have more to add after Friday, though.