Monday, August 13, 2007

Catching Up

I found the card reader! So here's an illustrated update on what's been going on in our lives. The rocker above was a present from Sonia. I didn't tell her I wanted one and I didn't even tell about my plan to have people give me presents as consolation for getting stretch marks, she just gave it to me out of the blue. It came in a box in pieces so I spent the evening putting in together while Aaron put Jack to bed. I have mixed feelings about the results. It took me three separate attempts to get the arms on because the pieces were mislabeled in a way that didn't make any sense at all. The two support pieces under the arms were labeled right/front and right/back, which was backwards, but then the arm pieces were labeled left and right, which was also backwards. So the way it ended up fitting together was putting the piece labeled right/front in the back, the piece labeled right/back in the front and the arm labeled Left on top. Yeah. I eventually abandoned the instructions and did what made sense visually. I'm glad I'll have some time to test it out before rocking in it with a baby, as my assembly job might be a little less than reliable. It's really pretty though, so if nothing else I can sit on the couch and look at it. We have the cutest neighbors. August 7th was National Night Out Against Crime, and local police and firemen were encouraging neighborhoods to organize block parties and coming by with their engines and gear with hats and stickers for the kids. Two of the neighbor ladies organized a block party for our cul de sac and came by a few days before to introduce themselves and invite us to come. Since it was right outside our front door it was rather convenient, and all the neighbors we met were really nice. We exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers and agreed to form a Neighborhood Watch. The men drank beer, the women talked and the kids played(Jack made friends with the only other kid in the neighborhood, a really sweet 2 1/2 year-old girl named Harmony). It was very grass roots. This is Jack "helping" Aaron move the box springs for our bed into our bedroom. Our king size bed takes up pretty much all the room there is; we put it in the smallest of the three bedrooms so Aaron can redo the master suite. Jack has settled nicely into his own room which I'll post pictures of later, he's sleeping right now. Before we moved I bought him a Lightning McQueen blanket(his favorite movie is Cars) and saved it to give to him until after we'd settled in a bit. We bought a Cars lamp to go with it and Jack picked out a blue rug from Home Depot, so his room is looking pretty cute. Aaron also put Jack's desk in his room, which I found for free on Craigslist and had a hilarious time wrestling it into my car in the pouring rain with my big pregnant belly. The desk was much larger than it looked in the picture. It took me roughly five separate attempts to finally wedge it into my front seat(the only door it would fit through). Jack has been super into drawing lately though, so I really wanted him to have a special place to keep his art supplies and do his work. So this is weird, no? Yes. This is a "before" picture of our backyard. "After" pictures might be slow in coming, but I'll take some "during" ones tomorrow. The woman who lived here loved to paint, and apparently she painted everything including piles of bricks and rotten tree stumps. The neighbors told me that at one point she even had life-sized wooden cows she's painted on the front lawn. A little eccentric, but it gave me something to do yesterday. After getting frustrated over not going into labor, I decided that I need to have a plan of action. On Saturday I trimmed the hedges in the front yard, and Sunday night I attacked the stumps. I picked the two creepiest ones, the ones with faces painted on them that stare at me through the window at the kitchen sink. You can't see him in this picture, but there was another slightly bigger stump like the blue one off to the right, and both of them are no more. I got an axe and a shovel and hacked away at the rotten wood which was great entertainment for Jack, who got to learn all about termites courtesy of the rotten yellow stump. As the first big chunk of rotten wood fell away a mass of winged termites came tumbling out, accompanied by a few other species of creepy bugs who like living in spongy material that smells like mushrooms. Jack thought it was great, and helped me pick up the pieces of wood and put them in a garbage can. I'm in the process of digging out the roots now as there's still quite a bit of stump attached to them, but no more painted faces. I didn't go into labor, but I did succeed in giving myself a pretty sore back. No regrets though, it was pretty satisfying. It's not everyday you've got an excuse to throw an axe around. I'm not sure what tomorrow's project will be, but if this kid doesn't come out soon Aaron may find some very interesting construction going on when he gets home from work. It's lucky that I drink so much milk because as I was enjoying a glass this evening, I realized I wasn't enjoying my milk very much at all. This puzzled me at first because milk is my favorite and usually brings me much joy, but tonight's milk was lacking. Then I realized the problem: it was warm. Not icy-cold, like milk should be. Upon further investigation I discovered that Jack had turned the fridge off. I'm so happy I realized it before going to bed, or I would have been really upset tomorrow morning when my half and half curdled in my coffee. Sometimes little boys are too clever for their own good.

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