Unfortunately, blogging about the excitement is a hair premature. Let me just say that I have a couple of threads of cautious optimism brewing right now, and I look forward to blogging about them if and when they either crystalize or crumble. Hopefully later this week.
One lovely bloggable thing that happened today is that we went over to our wonderful neighbors’ house, Emily & Katherine, and hung out having a beer on their deck this evening. Their daughter and Noah played happily in the back yard, Josie slept in a sling, and their enormous and adorable 6 month old bounced, swung, and eventually melted down.
It was one of the most relaxing and fun, if short, evenings we’ve had in awhile.
I can’t decide which member of our family is having the hardest time dealing with the whole house-showing business. Except that it probably isn’t Josie.
On the one hand, Jill is stuck doing most of the cleaning and organizing work. Every day before work or before we leave the house, she cleans off all the clutter from the bathrooms and the kitchen, tidies Noah’s room, and makes sure that our room and Josie’s room are clutter free too. And she vacuums.
On the other hand, I am having to spend insane amounts of time outside of the house with a nursing 5 week old. That means we have to find places to go that are comfortable, family-friendly, nursing-friendly, and not insanely expensive. Not exactly relaxing either.
But really, it may be Noah. His toys keep disappearing, even when he hasn’t done anything naughty to justify them being taken away. And his formerly eastgoing mommies wig out when he spills food and dumps pikes of toys.
Our house has been shown 4 times since Wednesday. It gets shown again tomorrow morning. Then we have the open house tomorrow afternoon. We clean it every morning, run off when the phone rings, and have a sad little boy who wonders where his toys are.
Josie is a big 10 pounder, cute as a button. Noah is a bundle of energy, bouncing wildly everywhere.
Well, the house is officially on the market. So far, 3 people have come and looked at it, and another party is scheduled for tomorrow. Sunday we have our first open house.
Part of what that means is that my regular computer is all packed up in the closet. I’m currently using a battery-less laptop that doesn’t (yet) have the software to download pictures from our digital camera. So you still can’t see how adorable and big Josie is getting. I’m sorry.
The laptop also gets packed up between usage, and I can only get it out when Josie is a) sleeping, and b) not on top of me. Which pretty much means there is one window per day other than when we’re in the car our otherwise out of the house. If I’m lucky. And that window is usually in the middle of the night.
The last 2 days have been really nice. Yesterday we had brunch with some moms from our local La Leche League, and today we went to a new moms group at the local hospital, and then had lunch with some of them after the meeting. Adult conversations and getting outside of the house are both good things.
As a bonus, the meeting at the hospital is moderated by a lactation consultant, who also lets everyone use their super-duper-accurate scale to weigh their babies. So I can tell you that Josie is 10 lbs, 3.4 oz. (I could have weighed her in grams, and then weighed her in grams again after she ate, but since I’m not worried, just curious, I elected to just get her weight one time and in pounds.)
At some point, I’m going to blog about Sarah Palin and the upcoming election — the post is percolating in my brain. But for now, let me leave you with my new celebrity crush, the funniest, smartest, and most attractive political commentator currently on the air, Rachel Maddow.
Please leave my Internet access on long enough for me to post this!
(Updated, before posting, to note that no, of course that didn’t happen. This was originally written at 6:30 am on 9/30/08. By 6:50 am, the Internet was no longer working at our house.)
And then, if you read this, please help me. For the love of God, I am a new mother with an infant and a toddler. I’m trying to sell my house, and I got laid off when I was 7.5 months pregnant.
I NEED INTERNET ACCESS. And I need it for all of the 10 minute windows that I get when the baby is sleeping and willing to be asleep other than in my arms, and no one else is in need of something from me.
Seriously. I’m losing my mind here. Having access for 4 minutes at a time SO doesn’t work for me. That’s enough time to read my mail, but not answer it. Or to type 1 answer, but not send it.
It isn’t enough time to post to my blog. Or read my friends’ blogs. Or update my LinkedIn profile, search job sites, or otherwise connect with potential jobs. It is FAR from enough time to reconnect with my friends in online forums.
As a new mom, a mom of a 1 month old baby, those social connections are the difference between sanity and meltdown.
Please, Comcast. Help me stay on the side of sanity. Some days, having to troubleshoot my home network instead of connecting with friends and family or productively trying to get my and my family’s life working is quite literally more than I can cope with on top of everything else.
If you could please find a way to keep my cable Internet access from going down between now and when we sell this house, I would be incredibly grateful. Truly. (I would even, in the future, restrain myself from making snarky remarks about what it is that I’m supposedly paying you for, or mocking the “word” “Comcastic.” But I do have to tell you that right now I’m tempted to go in and edit the Wikipedia entry for “Comcastic” to mean something like expensive, unreliable, and extremely frustrating.)
Who will sometimes poop in the potty at school, but not at home
Even if he is wearing Big Boy Underwear instead of a diaper
Twice during the week before your first showing, including the night before
Without telling anyone
On the rugs
And everywhere else he wandered before the smell gave him away
Having a newborn
Who cries unless she is actually being held (well, most of the time)
And who is moving toward the poopsplosive stage herself
Using your kitchen
Going to awesome kids consignment sales (The woman in front of me had a Britax Regent for sale at $30 — WAH! As Noah would say, “I want some!”)
BONUS: Having the entire economy, starting with the housing sector, begin to collapse completely.
BONUS BONUS: Having a gasoline crisis in the metro area, in which almost no gas stations have gas, and those that do, have 2 hour lines and $20 purchase limits.
Other than being extra exhausted because most of my house stuff has been done while Josie sleeps after her last middle of the night feeding — which starts between 2 and 3 am — I’m doing ok.
Of course, if I don’t find an open gas station that has gas by Monday afternoon, that will no longer be true. Jill found one at 6 this morning, but by the time she left, the line was insane. At 6:30 am. On a Saturday.
At least I got the laptop functional. I hated HATED HATED not having Internet access for the last 2.5 days. Not even the little bit I’ve been getting since Noah was born.
Ok, time to join the rest of my sleeping family.
We are still in the phase of newborn development where more than 80% of Josie’s sleeping takes place while physically on top of me. Or maybe being held in the crook of my arm next to me. That makes blogging surprisingly challenging.
On top of that, we are in the midst of real estate crazyness. The goal is to officially list the house on 10/1. There has been an almost ceaseless stream of painters and contractors in and out of the house since Josie was born.
Both Noah’s room and Josie’s room are being painted today. And tomorrow. We have no idea where Noah is going to sleep. Our room can’t be gated effectively.
Also, our Internet access has been completely spotty recently. Can I tell you how happy I am at the idea of leaving Comcast?
There is good news! According to my favorite midwife, I am officially in good health and have lost 22 of the 30 lbs I gained this pregnancy. And the little one I have to thank for that is waking up and demanding to be fed again, so let’s see if I can keep up that weight loss pace for a little while longer.
(Not that I don’t have some mixed feelings about this post-partum body of mine.)
