Felix's Crush

Tonight as we were talking at bedtime Felix said.

"I don't think it's ever happened that someone stopped having a crush on a person."

"Oh, I think that is pretty common, especially among first graders."

Then he goes on to tell me all about the girl he refers to as "my crush".
All the things they have in common.
She loves Star Wars.
She likes technology.
She has even had hives, like me!

Then he tells me that she is the girl he wants to marry.
I say, "It's pretty unusual to decide who you are going to marry in first grade."
"But I know she is meant for me."
I'm going to write it on a piece of paper and take it with me to college, 'Don't marry anyone but Juniper'"

I have Felix's s permission to post this.

Phew! Finally agreed.

Here we go. She agreed to reduce the price of the house, and let us do the roof.
Thank goodness. I had nightmares about her having a cheap crappy job done and us having to pay to have it redone anyway.

Oh My God.

We are actually going to move!

I'm excited and completely overwhelmed.

still in limbo, but closer...

We got the radon and the roof. Okay. That's fine.
We said we'd pay for the skylights.
She doesn't want to do the skylights.
WTF. You want to do the roof, this week, and not the 25 year old skylights? Even if you aren't paying for them?
What's the hurry? We're asking for a price reduction and letting us do the roof.
Praying she says okay. It would be so stupid to do the roof and not the windows.

Cardboard creating

Ozzy

A little further

Inspection is done. This one didn't make us want to run far far away, but there are some things that are problems.

Roof needs replacing
Windows need replacing
AC is 30+ years old
Some electrical stuff around the tub
and high radon levels

So we submitted an amended offer asking them to fix the problems. We are waiting to hear back from the seller.

Babies

From Glennon Doyle Melton:

We worry they'll never be babies again... but they always are. They're doing everything for the first time- now they're baby teens, then they'll be baby graduates and then maybe baby parents and on and on. Every new phase is a beginning again. They will need our support to help them learn to walk through every new stage of life.

Parental Love is like water- it changes forms, looks different, feels different - but never ever does a drop disappear.

I love you, (child) Thank you for bringing your mama into this world.

Necessary, but so unsatisfying

The most frustrating part of getting our house ready to sell, is that if I do it right, everything I do, will go completely unnoticed.
I am fixing things so that they won't become reasons not to buy the house.
Mostly things I have been ignoring. I've been meaning to get to them, but you know, life.

The tread on the bathroom doorway
The rusty patch on the tin kitchen ceiling from when the toilet leaked,
cracked windows, loose doorknobs, covering up paint that is to our specific taste...
The list goes on and on, and the whole point is so that they notice the house, not the little stupid things about the house that aren't perfect.
Necessary, but not at all satisfying.

Plus, I wonder why the heck I didn't take care of these things before.

Well that's good news

Testing the waters...

We stopped for a little walk around a new pond. Everyone was very excited (and a little hard to keep away from the water).

Felix's Gift

Felix sent Peder and me on a treasure hunt, complete with a map, to find the present he had wrapped up for us. 

It's a turtle candle holder!

Active contingent 2

We're at it again. This one is about 4 blocks from the other one. This one is much less flip-tastic.

Corner lot, which I swore I would never do again, but this one is far back and there are no sidewalks, so most of my issues with corner living have been addressed. 

 Fully fenced back yard with a shed, a real patio and big trees!

 Basketball hoop! Oh, and a 2 car garage.

We can see this pond from our front yard (at an angle, but it is half a block away)

Walk in the front door to the dining room.

 This was the original dining room, we imagine our piano and bookshelves in here.

Galley kitchen, not my favorite, but it has good amounts of storage and there is a pass through window into the big living room

The show piece, the added-on living room. Isn't it lovely? 

Back bedroom

 Front bedroom

 Bathroom has a laundry chute! 

They don't show the weird corner toilet like this.

Main basement area

We're thinking we would wall off the back area here for FP's office

 North basement bedroom (seller's amazeballs sewing room)

 South basement bedroom (seller's even more amazeballs craft room)

Laundry room

The crazy basement bathroom

And that's it. I don't really like the color scheme and decor, but that is completely fixable. It has everything that the other house had without the sketchiness. (hopefully). We put in our offer yesterday. Tons of people had looked at the house when we got there on Sunday, it had been on the market for 3 days and at that point there were no offers. The owner accepted our offer. Now we start the whole process again! Fingers crossed that all goes well. 

More stuff/less stuff

Some days the hardest part of this "preparing to move" process is deciding to let go of the thing I've been holding on to "just in case".

Today I started tackling the basement. The place where stuff gets tossed when we need to clean up quickly for company. The place where projects go to die. 

I found a few things I thought were lost, got a few things done, and got my hands on a smaller table & matching chairs for the dining room. and am now tired as all get out.

It wasn't right.

We cancelled our offer on the house

Too many things wrong. Despite lots of great things, the inspection revealed too many bad things.

My boy

Felix has turned a corner.
For the past year he has struggled with poop.
He is the kid that all through kinder, and a good chunk of first grade who regularly pooped in his pants. We have seen multiple doctors. We have tired lots of tactics. It has been more than a year of frustration, embarrassment, tears, shame, anger, LAUNDRY.

But now we are going on 3 weeks of clean pants. We've finally found a combination of things that seem to work, and I can see a difference in Felix. He had one slip the other day when we had forgot to follow the routine, and he was so disappointed. But he was right back to good the next day and I could see in his face that he was happier.

My fingers are crossed that this is it.