Five Things That Make Me Excited to be a Home Owner in the Near Future

We're house shopping right now, and we're serious about it. We can't wait to get in to a home of our own, and if the joy of home owning weren't enough of a perk on its own, here are five more reasons I'm excited to be a home owner.

1. Paint 

Aaron and I have lived in apartments together for about 7 years now. That means we've had seven years of staring at white walls together. We're ready to get our color on! Now if only we can choose colors without killing each other, we'll be all set. We have very different ideas about colors, so this should be interesting.

2. A Yard

I'm incredibly, immensely excited about the prospect of having a yard. A yard for Gabbie to play in, to put in a garden and flowers in the front, and a yard in which I can put a compost bin. I'm almost more excited about the compost bin than anything else. Worms eat my garbage, indeed!

3.  A Garage

Scraping snow and frost off of cars in Michigan winters sucks hard. (Speaking of which, it's snowing right now. Yuck!)

4. Grilling

We've never lived anywhere where we were allowed to have a real, fire-spewing grill. We've been delegated to the George Foreman type, which we hate. We're looking forward to being able to grill out all summer long, especially since we would grill every night if we could. Grilled food is our type of food.

5. No Sharing Walls with Neighbors


So far this weekend Aaron has yelled:

"Is that your car? Well then get down there and turn that f-ing sh!t down!" (Yelled at the punk kid who shook our walls with the bass from his car at 2:30 a.m. after we had just, finally got Gabbie to sleep in her own bed.)

"I love that you share your bass with us." (Directed toward our floor)

And, due to some celebrating in our neck of the woods (GO STATE! FINAL FOUR BOUND!) there's sure to be some more yelling coming up in the near future. After many, many years of sucky neighbors with which we share our walls, we look forward to at least have some space between sucky neighbors' walls and ours.

Why I need to learn how to upload videos from our camera

I’m probably going to sound like a bragging mom when I say this, but Gabbie is consistently two months ahead on reaching most milestones. She’s 10 months old today and is mere moments away from walking. This is doubly exciting for me, since we expected a delay due to her hip dysplasia and the four months she spent in the brace following her diagnosis. One developmental thing she’s a little behind on, though, is her speech. She’s still only making two non-vowel sounds consistently (ba and ma). (I’m not too worried though – I didn’t say a single word until I was two, and now most people probably wish I would shut up once in a while.)

Anyway, last night we were working with her like we normally do. “Say dada Gabbie! Dadadadadada.” (very effective, I’m sure) After the first prompt, she started shaking her head no, and we broke out the video camera. And every time we asked her a question she’d vigorously shake her head no. No, she could not say dada. No, she could not say mama. No, she could not say supercalafragilisticexpialodocious. No, she would not like a puppy. No, she would not like a pony. No, she didn’t need a car when she was sixteen. It was adorable. She did it all with a smile, and sometimes rested her head on the edge of the couch when it got tired from all that shaking. ADORABLE!

Of course, the video is much funnier than me describing it here, and I should really get to posting it. For such a little person, she sure makes me laugh a lot!

[On a completely unrelated note, a bunny just hopped right past my office window and it reminded me of how excited I am for Easter and for buying Gabbie an Easter dress. They are all too cute!]

Once Upon a Time...

For some reason, Aaron and I have been feeling very nostalgic lately, frequently starting stories out of nowhere with a, "Do you remember when..." The story we brought up the other night was so fun, we decided to sort of recreate it.

Here's the story: We were both in our very early 20s (21 for me, 22 for Aaron), and still had quite a bit of partying to get out of our systems. When invited to a pool party at the home of one of my high school friends, we accepted without hesitation. It was a great night - lots of reminiscing with friends I hadn't seen since graduation, some drunken belly flop contests from the boys, and a ton of laughter. Around three in the morning, we finally decided to call it a night and headed back to Aaron's apartment.

On the way there we confessed to each other how absolutely starving we both were, and discussed what to eat when we got home. Macaroni and cheese? Pizza? Popsicles? Hot Pockets? We got there, found that he was out of mac and cheese, popsicles, and Hot Pockets, and that the pizza place was closed. Looking through his cupboards we didn't find much, and finally decided on sharing a pan of Stove Top stuffing.

To this day, it was one of the best things I've ever eaten.

You know whe you're slightly drunk, starving, and whatever you eat is absolutely delcious? Yeah. We had that going on. We sat in his bed, in our underwear, eating stuffing out of a pan, and laughing about all of the hijinks we experienced that evening. And we still remember the details to this day. It's funny what things become memories, isn't it?

So the other night, faced with the fact we were starving and neither of us wanted to go to the store, we stared into the pantry and both had the same thought at the same time. It was a total moment for sharing a pan of stuffing. So we did, and it wasn't nearly as good as the last time, but it was almost as much fun. These days, when it's hard to remember the romance sometimes, when we're both stressed out from work and lack of sleep, and making big life decisions, it seems that something as small as a pan of processed stuffing can bring the good feelings flowing back. We've vowed to do it again.

A little much

It is currently one of those weeks. Work is insane, Gabbie is in the middle of a sleep regression/developmental spurt/teething/whatever the hell else is keeping her from ever sleeping. I've had to go to work early and stay late the past two days, and I'm expecting two more days of the same at least.

On top of everything else, if I weren't still breastfeeding I'd swear to everything holy that I was getting my period, because, as Aaron can vouch for, I am Moody. It's probably a combination of fatigue, stress, and some other issues (work related that I shouldn't discuss) that are making my life a little less easy. And we're starting the process of buying a house.

Aaron and I have discussed it and our plans for this weekend include sleeping, sleeping, and more sleeping, and then I'm taking two vacation days next week to sleep some more (and probably go look at houses). Here's hoping I survive the next week without too many tears or completely telling someone off (it could happen).

Party Girl

In what might seem like a recurring theme around here, I've realized how little it takes to make me excited these days. Before I ever got pregnant, a weekend might include dinner at our favorite neighborhood bar with friends, a play or a movie, a hike, brunch on Sunday, and probably a few other activities thrown in there just to keep us busy.

This weekend my plans include a little shopping for craft supplies and for locally, responsibly grown meat, maybe a trip to the zoo (our hiking trails are probably a little muddy and/or flooded due to a large amount of rain recently), but mostly sitting around the house with the familiy. I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.

And just to make life a little more exciting, I must cut this short to take care of my incredibly constipated daughter who is crying as she messes her diaper (I'm sure she'll be so proud I wrote this). Poor thing!

See? I still know how to party. Right?

A couple of questions

Question of the day today: Do you ever get a phrase stuck in your head like an earworm instead of a song? Someone in a meeting this morning said, "Very good" in response to a report on project activities (as in I said, "We've accomplished this goal," and he said, "Very good") and that phrase keeps playing over and over in my head like there's a record skipping in there. This happens to me regularly, whenever someone says something sort of weird that sticks in my mind, and it's annoying as all get-out.

Alternate question o' the day: Why did Gabbie stay up three hours past her bed time even though the time change should have only caused for one extra hour awake? OMG SO TIRED!

Holy Cow it's Thursday!

I swear I just looked up thinking it was about Tuesday, maybe. But, no. Thursday! Time is going by way too quickly. Here's a quick look at what has kept me from posting this week:

One tooth through, one tooth nearly through (these are Gabbie's first teeth) and resultant lack of sleep/increased need to be held 24-7

Someone who constantly wants to be holding onto my fingers and walking around the house

Some sort of stomach bug that just causes general, sharp abdominal pain and the need to lay on the couch as much as possible (it's much better now than earlier in the week)

A new season of America's Next Top Model (for some odd reason, my most favorite show ever) and the resultant double show last night

Work, work, and more work

Obsessively checking my email and Facebook for pictures of my best friend's new baby (only one found so far)

I know it doesn't look like a lot, but, I am worn out! Thank goodness the weekend is right around the corner!