Here's yet another sad admission: I suck at routines. Alex was born almost exactly four years ago (aside: WAH! NOT MY BABY ANYMORE!) and I've been promising myself ever since then that TODAY we are going to stick to a routine. We've never made it very far. I don't think the child has ever had the same schedule more than two days in a row and if he did, it was completely accidental. Let's just chalk it up to my… Read More

One of the big plans I had when we first made an offer on this house was to finally get the chance to sleep train Genoa for good. We'd been so nervous about her (endless, horrific, eardrum-defying) screaming at the apartment that we decided to hold off letting her cry it out until she had her own room. Our interim solution was that I basically moved into her bedroom and she and I slept together on a full-sized air mattress. … Read More

Things that have surprised me about living in an actual house:

1. The Landscaping. The house came really beautifully landscaped, but in the few short weeks since we've owned it, no maintenance has taken place and it's sadly starting to show. We assumed we'd just find someone to mow the lawn for us every couple of weeks, but we just found out that the previous owners were paying $40 every. single. week. for their lawn service. We're hoping to… Read More

We've got the move all planned out for this Saturday. Of course there are a ton of potential ways it could go wrong: the floorers could take longer than they expected to lay our hardwood and not finish on schedule, the painter could flake and not come back to paint the baseboards in time, the movers themselves could be late or not show up. There are always a million potential problems that could screw up our schedule, but I'm still… Read More

We've been out doing a lot of shopping for the new house and everywhere we go, I see Halloween stuff. I can't tell you how impossible it is for me to resist it. I ADORE Halloween. It is hands-down my most favorite holiday. I love the costumes and the candy and the fact that it's such an oddball American tradition. Even the idea of walking around the neighborhood after dark has always been a big hit for me. Having kids… Read More

Today was Alex's first day of school and one of the main reasons we picked this school was in the hope of getting him around the local public school district age cutoff. He misses the cutoff by roughly a month and we've always thought it would be in his best interest to go to school early, rather than late. It seems every single time I mention our goal of getting him into first grade as a five-but-almost-six-year-old, people scoff and… Read More