The new house has a crazy garden. Here’s the back yard. The front is almost equally scary.

I’ve spent 8-10 hours digging up crazy plants already; my Mom has also spent several hours.

On the plus side, I’ve eaten about a dozen raspberries, and there are dozens more ripening.

My current neighbor, Melissa, identified several species of Thyme, garlic, yarrow, chamomile, borage, and Russian sage; I also saw chives, and of course, crazy volumes of rhubarb.

On the decorative side, there are 3 out of control rose bushes, 2 unidentified trees, a lilac tree, 2 or 3 small pine species, and 5 zillion day lillies. And 3 or 4 mums, lots and lots of stevia, 2 random sunflowers, several giant decorative grasses, lots of low-growing ground cover, including wild geranium, and lots of smaller things with succulent looking leaves.

And there are weeds. The previous owners moved before spring.

I dug out a 5′ tall thistle; Mom dug out several 3 or 4′ tall ones. I’ve pulled out dozens of enormous goldenrod (pre-bloom, thank goodness!), lots of varieties of thistle and other plants in the daisy and dandelion families, and approximately 25 square feet of daisies. Most of these things were at least 3′ tall, some more like 5′ tall. I also chopped the back path clear (middle right photo), cutting back about 1/3 of what you see in the picture.

Depending on when you ask, I might want to keep gardening, or I might want to pave the whole blasted thing. There’s nothing wrong with any individual elements…but the volume is totally overwhelming, even aside from the jungle of giant weeds.

Anyone want some day lillies? Or some borage?

Any minute now, Jill and Noah are going to walk in the door, back from Chicago. They went to a WNBA game this afternoon.

Josie and I didn’t pine away, though. First we played inside Noah’s long-unused “choo choo house” (aka Thomas pop-up play tent). Then we went to Barnes and Noble and played on their train table. Unlike Noah at almost-2, this failed to amuse Josie for 2 hours, but it was a nice 30 or 40 minutes. A very polite 4 year old, 2 days younger than Noah, invited us to play at his house. Since Mom did not echo the invite, I politely explained that we had to go eat at our house, and then have a bath.

But when we got back, we heard the neighbor children squealing in their backyard, so naturally we investigated. Josie wound up having a blast in the sprinkler with the neighbor 4 year old, while his 2 year old sister watched from a safely dry distance. Josie would have had a fit if I’d made her leave to put on a swimsuit, so I took off her church dress and let her run right into the water.

When Josie started shivering and her lips looked faintly purple, we came back home for dinner. She crashed at a near-record early hour: 7:15pm. It wasn’t a SOLID sleep at first, but she’s been out for the last 45 minutes, so I’m starting to trust it.

We are still trying to buy a house.

This is house #3 of our Milwaukee attempts. It isn’t quite in the neighborhood(s) we targeted, but is about 2 blocks west of one of our top 2 choices. And it has 4 bedrooms and a finished basement, which are mighty fine attributes in a house, I must say.

But.

We were supposed to close on Friday. Then we were supposed to close on Monday. Now we are supposed to close on Wednesday or Thursday. The seller “didn’t understand” that his second mortgage was a mortgage he’d have to pay back in order to sell the house. Pardon me while I express extreme skepticism about a doctor not understanding that fact, ESL notwithstanding.

They moved something like 6 months ago, so the wild garden has been growing unsupervisedly since spring first began. Although we haven’t closed yet, Grandma pulled out 4 thistles the size of 10 year olds on Saturday, plus sundry other large and healthy weeds. She also generously donated garden gloves, a denim shirt, and the last couple of ounces of scary weed killing chemicals. I bought giant and regular sized garden clippers.

Today I cut down and rained death on the formerly 2-4′ tall weeds blocking access to the garage, using up the scary chemicals. Then I chopped out — I couldn’t get the root out — a thistle 5′ tall and nearly as big in diameter. I pulled 3 more that were “only” 3-4 feet tall. And I cut clear the path between the alley and the backyard.

More expensive and intimidating than the garden is the roof.

I’m still getting bids, but essentially, we need to tear off a 2-part roof: 3/4 is crumbling, defective, 10-year-old shingle; 1/4 is only partially damaged, maybe salvageable, poorly installed rubber. And in the middle of the rubber roof, there’s a chimney that needs repointing. It seems to regularly “pop” chunks of brick across the roof. Last week I climbed up and looked for myself.

See all those little bumpy dealios on the edges of the shingles? They aren’t supposed to be there. They’re the shingle curling up. Unsurprisingly, that also makes all the little rocky parts get loose.

The part where it looks like it has a skin condition isn’t actually part of the problem. I think the previous owners were trying a home-grown “maybe we can get the light to reflect and then upstairs won’t be so hot” effort. The problem is mostly around the chimney.

So anyway, we’re getting a bunch of bids to replace the roof and fix the chimney and it seems like every person who comes through has a new suggestion of what’s wrong and what needs to be done to replace it.

And while I’m out there getting estimates, I’m also doing yard work.

If this sale falls through, someone owes me (and Grandma!) for a LOT of yard work.

This weekend was, um, absolutely batshit crazy. Mostly fun, but crazy.

On Friday night, Jill and Noah went to Chicago to watch a WNBA game. Here’s Jill behind my WNBA crush, Katie Smith, now of the Washington Mystics. (Noah appears to be blocked by Katie’s leg.)

Josie and I stayed home and had pizza and salad and beer (well, not for Josie) with our good friends Peter & Meredith, whom we have not seen since, um, maybe we all went into hibernation? My birthday?

Saturday, Noah was nightmarishly cranky from having had his sleep so disrupted by the travel & game. (He still went to t-ball practice, and the coach says he’s getting much better and fielding!) Josie and I went to the birthday party of one of her classmates.

(Aside: We have noticed that in spite of being a nice progressive environment full of diversity and inclusion, there is serious social separation at school. The first time we went to a birthday party for a classmate of Noah’s, we were the only white people. Of the 4 we’ve gone to since, 1 was attended by only white parents, two were all white but for one white-Asian biracial family, and 1 — the very largest party — was at least 90% white. In all examples, the entire class was invited to the party. What’s up with that???)

We had a lot of fun at the birthday party, sociological observations notwithstanding. The family lives adjacent to a public park, an easy walk from the playground. The kids all got sandpail party favors and got themselves delightfully dirty before getting sugar-crazed on birthday cake, and a good time was had by all.

And we imagined that we were at cousin Maxim’s birthday party, which was going on at the same time, only in New York, and probably without the Dora cake. Happy Birthday, Maxim!  We hope you like the scooter Grandma gave you! And the mystery gift from all of us!

Sunday, everyone was surprisingly tolerant of going to church. Then Noah went with Grandpa to see the air show — they saw the Blue Angels flying UPSIDE DOWN! Josie, poor Josie, was dragged furniture shopping with her mommies. We heard a lot of “Stop it, Mommy! All done, Mommy!”

Then we picked up Noah from Grandpa’s, and discussed furniture and house layout until both kids were ready to explode.

Fortunately, they crashed quietly and reasonably quickly.

By 8:30, I was back at the furniture store. Our new house is bigger than our apartment, and our living room furniture is well and truly trashed. We bought it cheap when we were newlyweds, and it fits badly into the kind of smaller home where we’ve always lived. I’ve been persuaded that we should let it go.

So, back at the furniture store, I launched the task of filling our new house with places to sit and places on which we can rest things like books and beverages and toys. And because they had such a great price (cheaper than in the link) on a queen sized sofabed, we, um, bought 2.  Identical. One for the basement and one for the upstairs office which will also double as a guest room. (This Grandma & This Grandpa? Doesn’t it look comfortable? I can hear it calling your names!)

After I got home and crashed, Josie decided it was time for vengeance: at approximately 1:45 am, she began singing and happily shouting. It lasted, off and on, for 20-30 minutes. She sang herself hoarse and proceeded to scream for water. At least she was happy.

I have seldom been so tired when I woke up again at morning-time, and was very grateful that Noah slept in and Josie fell back asleep after her 5:15 wakeup.

Today marks the first day of Summer Session at school, so everyone’s routines will continue to be adjusted and off-kilter for a few days. But it could be so much worse…like if they didn’t have summer session. Or coffee.

Dear Noah,

Yesterday you turned 4 years and 4 months old, and your cousin M turned 3 years old. Grandma is leaving to visit M and his baby sister today; you’re going to miss her.

The last month has been a rough one for you. On the one hand, you got a new-to-you, first ever Big Boy Bike, along with an awesomely cool helmet with dragons and flames. On the other hand, you whine and complain, “I can’t do it!” with alarming speed, about everything from riding your bike to standing up from the couch and walking into the bathroom to brush your teeth.

At school, you do amazingly detailed artwork, and your math skills are phenomenal. You continue to hover on the very brink of learning to read. But you’ve also been sent to the administrative office area for refusing to follow adult instructions. You’ve also been spoken to, multiple times, about using inappropriate language.

(Aside: Why is it hilarious to talk about potty activities, the body parts involved, and the results? This is the kind of inappropriate they mean.)

You can go from 0 to 60 and from 60 too 0, in terms of mood, in about 1 second flat. If your will is thwarted, bam! If you are successfully distracted, whee!

Of late, your Star Wars obsession has grown, and your sister has begun sharing it. At the end of our new toy moratorium last weekend, I took you both out to a neighborhood store with the intent of allowing each of you one toy that cost no more than $20.

The neighborhood store, which we’d never visited before, turned out to be more of a comic book/action figure store than a mainstream toy store. This was not a problem, since both of you were able to get unboxed Star Wars action figures for $5/each. I even relented and let you each choose 2. You picked Luke Skywalker in his Jedi training with Yoda costume, and a stormtrooper. You tell me about all the exercising you need to do in order to stand on one arm, just like Luke. Josie picked “D-2-D-2″ and “Ku-ba!” (Chewbacca).

In spite of your current whiny tendencies, I love you very much. You are mostly wonderful as a big brother, and as a son. I hope the whining phase passes soon, and that you know how very, very, very much I love you.

Love,

That Mommy

Noah brought home lots of schoolwork last Friday. Here’s a picture of my favorite piece:

Yup. That’s counting by NINES right there. AKA the 9 Times Table results! Or in Montessori-speak, counting the 9 bead chain. (Actually, in Montessori, they probably call it counting the blue bead chain.)

Ok, his handwriting is still a work in progress — you can be forgiven if you think that says 57 instead of 27, or if 72 or any of the four 81s are unclear. But if you look at the whole thing, you can see clearly that Noah was counting something in sets of 9.

He also did some “research” on the Goblin Shark, but I’m not sure how much of that was Noah’s vs the after-school teacher’s. So it looks cool, but I don’t like it as much as I love this obviously entirely independent counting work.

Dear Josie,

On Sunday, you turned 21 months old.

You came to church with me, clutching This Mommy’s little green bible, and totally unwilling to part with the fish hat she unearthed as we try to purge our house and prepare for our next move.

Developmentally, you are clearly edging towards two. You alternate between sweet, charming, and helpful, and stubborn, willful, and 100% engaged in passive resistance.

Your language development is so much fun. Whether you want help, or are offering it, you look at the person and say, “I helping me!” If it turns out you wanted their help, and they don’t provide it, you scream, “I HELPING ME!” until either they do, or you are somehow distracted from their refusal to help you do whatever dangerous activity it is that you wanted help doing.

You love to read, often asking to read a book when you are right on the edge of falling asleep or waking up. This morning, I offered you the choice between something to drink and a book, after you asked for a book. You repeated your demand for a book, then fell back asleep for 15 minutes.

You love your brother in the sweetest way I can imagine (most of the time).

You love to sing, and we eagerly await the time when we can recognize more than just the ABCs and Twinkle Twinkle in your rich repertoire! You can sing most of the ABC song from memory now, and enthusiastically “count” — especially the numbers between 2-7. I think you fully grasp the concept of “two” but the rest of it is less clear.

At school, you also love water work, especially washing the baby dolls. You clearly also enjoy pouring and sorting work; yesterday, I could barely tear you away from the lentils you were pouring.

At home, your favorite things to do are 1) anything Noah is doing, and 2) coloring, especially your own body with magic markers. We already see differences in your style and what Noah’s was at your age. He liked soft, gentle coloring, and then heavy dots of color, slammed into the paper as if he were trying to spear through the table. You draw furious circles, dark and intense, but giggle most of the time when your will has not been thwarted.

We are getting ready to move to a new house, and in that process, we’ve been packing, making some changes to our bedtime routines, and otherwise doing some things that might stress you out this summer. I hope you understand, as you get older, that we are doing these things to make our family life easier and saner for you and Noah as well as for your Mommies.

love,

That Mommy

Edited to add: I can’t believe I forgot this new thing you’ve been doing: You love to say stop. It has nearly replaced “No” in your vocabulary. Stop, STOP, or STOP IT MOMMY, with the occasional Stop It Noah thrown in for good measure.