Coming up for air

So spring happened. Ok, and summer. Despite all appearances, we are still alive and happy and the kids had a great time getting to know their neighbors, going to camp, having visitors like Oma and Papa Joe, Beverly and Al, Aunt Jennifer and her gang, and Nana and Grandbob, not to mention our other set of cousins with Aunt Joanna when the Schindhelm half of the family went to Smith Mountain Lake for a week and, with the aid of many flotation devices, lived to tell about it. (See! That's why I don't have any time to update this thing!)

Now, we're settling into the fall routine which has been a bit of an adjustment. Waking up is not Annie's strong suit. In fact, I am ashamed to admit it, but there have been days I've dressed her while she's still asleep... no easy feat. Oscar started his Montessori school and it's a great fit. I even noticed him pushing in a chair after getting out of it at a restaurant. That, in itself, is a huge accomplishment. He's having fun tracing shapes for shape books, pin punching continents and countries, and making friends. Along with the beginning of school comes the beginning of Activities (and yes, it deserves a capital 'A'). Annie's doing ballet, piano, Daisy Scouts, and swimming. Oscar is easing himself into being overscheduled and is just doing soccer and swimming. Luckily two of Annie's Activities happen at her school, so the shuttling isn't so bad (I'm holding off on the minivan). She loves it all and it's fun to watch her learn a musical instrument even if she gets impatient with practicing after basically sitting down at the piano. We're working on it.

Oscar is at that lovely almost-four age where a kid's personality starts to come through and he's just so fun to talk with. He loves anything that involves using his hands, so when I suggested he help me make pumpkin ravioli yesterday, he insisted, "No, mama. I want to make dessert." So we made chocolate chip cookies instead (hey, you don't have to ask me twice). I got this little gem of a video. You can see he does not suffer from a lack of self esteem. He's also a great snuggler still and loves to give "moodgie" hugs where he basically grinds his face into your upper body while hugging you. Annie gets a little tired of it, but I love it, as Oscar would say, "to pieces and bits."

We are also happy to report that we have next-door neighbors who became fast friends with our troop. Caroline, 9; Kate, 7; and Will, 5; are a joy to have around and despite the daily destruction of their bedrooms (if I could bottle the speed with which they dissemble their toy bins, I think I could win the Indie 500), it's so nice to live in a place where the kids are happy and comfortable. 

On a sad note, we lost one of our chickens to (most likely) a raccoon one night. We hadn't been locking them in their coop at night during the summer, and have thus, learned our lesson. We will miss you Henny Penny.

Maiden Lane - After

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Maiden Lane - Before

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So this one time, we had a blog...

Remember that? That was fun. Then we bought a house and took on the immense task of potty-training Oscar at the same time as renovating said house. I'm amazed that I lived to tell the tale. (Mostly because of the Oscar thing.)

No stringers, just 2 x 4s.

Stringers, the spine of a staircase.

So much has happened in the last six months. Let's see... Oh! We got new stairs. Yes, stairs. Everyone commented on how loud our stairs were and how you could see daylight through the top of each stair as you walked up them as they bowed under your weight, even more so with a 300-pound electrician (yikes!). We figured the stairs had a cracked stringer or just needed a little extra support. Apparently the people who built this house almost 100 years ago didn't believe in a thing called stringers. Not familiar? Neither was I at the time, but now I am. Intimately. Stringers are the stair-stepped pieces of wood underneath a stair case that actually support the steps of the stairs. Yeah. We didn't have those. We had two very old 2x4's underneath leaning against the bottom corners of the stairs. The whole kit and kaboodle had to come out and be replaced with a brand-new staircase. I have never walked on such quiet nor expensive stairs since. 

kitchen before - cave like.

kitchen after - let there be light!

The rest of the house renovation was mostly cosmetic, albeit thorough. We completely redid the kitchen which included knocking down almost an entire wall between the kitchen and dining room, added a closet to what used to be a breakfast room to create a ligitimate four-bedroom house, tiled the mudroom, refinished the floors, updated the electrical and added recessed lights throughout the common areas, replaced light fixtures, switched Oscar's second closet over to our side of the wall so we now have a double closet, painted EVERYTHING, added a whole-house fan, (hold on writer's cramp) replaced the windows in the attic and second floor, removed a chimney from the attic and had the roof patched with matching slate where said chimney used to be, and just because Oscar was jealous of all the demo to which he was not being able to contribute, he took matters into his own hands, literally, and ripped a spigot out of our exterior wall and flooded the basement for about 2 minutes before I got to the water main. I seriously believe a Marvel comic book is going to be made based on his life someday. 

I still have to hang some shades in Oscar's room so these before and afters are not complete, but you'll get the idea. Oh and in regards to the potty training of Oscar: I can't remember anything, only a ton of laundry and years off of my life.

Annie and Oscar are heading towards summer vacation and we're excited to enjoy a slightly more relaxed pace. They have camps, my parents and my sister's family are coming to Smith Mountain Lake for Schindhelm-a-palooza 2013 (yes, I just typed that), we'll be headed back to Connecticut for our annual Bridgewater Fair pilgrimage, and mostly we're just going to enjoy not listening to the sounds of me yelling, "We're LATE! GET - IN - THE - CAR - NOWWWW!" Ah, summer.

Just as a reminder to myself, mostly, I hope to recap Annie's first feature length performance in Kitty Cat Capers, or some such title, in which she played a singing scaredy cat, very convincing. Until then, enjoy the pictures, and take comfort in knowing that we're alive and well despite our absence from the blogosphere. Happy summer!

All I want for Christmas is a really big mortgage

Ask and ye shall receive. We are homeowners now. I'm still getting used to saying that. 2 months later. More on this in a minute.

Our Christmas was filled with joy, family and the uninvited guest of a stomach virus that made its way through me (right before Christmas), then Oscar (Christmas night), and finally, Annie (the day we got back from visiting our family for Christmas). Jay managed to skirt it. Good thing too, because I needed someone to make sure I had brushed my teeth in the last week. Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Jon hosted us in Bethesda with the kids' beloved cousins, Luke and Colin. Even though we were very under the weather, we had the best time we could in between loads of laundry. I owe Jennifer a lot of favors, not to mention laundry detergent. 

Annie got a bike for her doll from Santa and a big girl bike from us. Oscar got exactly what he asked for, "a Thomas tricycle" even though I'm pretty sure he has no idea who Thomas is. We gave him marbles. You'd be surprised how much he loves the latter. 

Now we're settling into the idea that we have property and new tenants on said property who go by the names of Camilla, Ginger and Henny Penny. If you haven't guessed, we have chickens. We are now those people.

The house needs a lot more work than we anticipated (all pretty much cosmetic, other than a large portion of chimney resting on our attic floor), so we're trying to complete as much as we can before we are out of this rental on March 1. I'll post before and afters. The house will be great. At least, that's what I keep telling our financial stability.

As for the kids: Annie is loving her new role as a Daisy Scout and is in full cookie-selling mode. It's very cute. She barely introduces herself or her purpose before handing the sheet to the neighbor. I mean, they do kind of sell themselves. Oscar is a little helper who is looking bigger and bigger these days. Today he said to me, "Mama, can we have candles on the table?" Me: "Why?" Oscar: "Because I want to have a lovely lunch." He also loves to help me in the kitchen. Lately we have been baking a lot. As you can see, we are very particular about our outcomes, so taste testing is essential. Sometimes we even like to double check our work.