Moving Mayhem

How we are going to be out of this house in time to close on Friday is beyond me. I have packed forty thousand boxes and still it feels like everything is still in cabinets and drawers. I am looking at the things I own and wondering why I have hung on to this junk for as long as I have. The pile of stuff going to Goodwill keeps getting bigger and better. Some lucky chump is going to roll up on our stuff and think they hit the jackpot. I am knowingly getting rid of some things that are pretty worthwhile, but I have no will to move them, so out they go! All the moving around of furniture has unleashed a flurry of dust and dog hair into the air, so my floors are filthy. Add to that all the coming and going and we are looking at some seriously dirty floors. I refuse to clean them (okay, so I vacuum every morning, but I mean "clean") until all our stuff is gone, so when my kids go into the bath at night, they are literally black from knees to toes. They are having the best time....crawling into boxes, climbing piles of linens...this is like the world's best (dirtiest) playground for them! At least all the boxes serve a great purpose: to block them out of certain areas....They haven't figured out how to climb the big boxes yet, but today we were at my mom's and we looked over at Hayden and she was kneeling on the tile hearth. Eighteen inches off the ground. How that kid can climb but not walk is beyond me.

The babies are wonderful, and love the chaos. Every day it feels like they are so much older. They know how to tease and play jokes on each other (and us) now, and it is so cute! Every day they try to say something new, and it is starting to sound more and more like real words....Today when I went to get them after their naps, each of them hollered "Mama!" at me....which I love. They both mastered "Dada" a LONG time ago, so this achievement is particulary special to me...(especially since I am the one doing the majority of the hiney wiping...apparently they know little about who is buttering their biscuit!)

I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do in the blogging department, but I just realized that the puke smell that keeps bothering me is coming from my own shirt.....off to change/bed for me!

The babies have been so much fun the last few weeks...they are really starting to come into their own little personalities....I have a ton of cute pictures to upload and share, but the camera is in the other room and I don't feel like walking in there to get it. (can you tell it has been a long day?) Hayden is trying to say "up", but it comes out sounding like "but". Whenever they drop something or fall down, I say "uh-oh!"...Cale can say "uh" and Hayden says "oh!" so together they are getting "uh-oh!" down! :) They crack me up all day long....we were in the car yesterday and the babies were getting sleepy...my mom looked at Hayden and said, "Oh, sleepy baby!" and then Hayden spent the rest of the drive home pretending to fall asleep and wake up. Cale thinks it is HILARIOUS to bite down on the spoon when he is being fed....he laughs when I laugh, and then can't wait until it is his turn to take a bite again so that he can do it all over again. Tonight my mom came over and we made tacos....when we were getting ready to eat, the babies seemed tired, so we went to lay them down....about an hour later, we could hear them still wide awake and talking, so we went and got them out of bed for cookies and milk! Probably a chart topper on the list of bad ideas, but every once in a while things like that are probably okay....On the real estate front, our buyer's lender has waived the appraisal so we don't have to worry about the house appraising for our asking price...Praise God! That was our last and final worry in selling our Schertz house, so now all seems clear to start packing up and get moving. We have to be out by next Friday.....which sounds SO soon...but we both operate better under pressure. I hope the babies are okay with all this transition....This is a lot of change for two one year olds.

So I lied about cutting back on the crafting. I still feel motivated to "do", but can't move forward in any other aspect of my life as of yet, so by making stuff, I feel complete. (Strange logic, but in layman's terms, this means: I stay busy, I don't go bat crap crazy thinking about my upcoming remodel.)
My recent projects....

A little tote that I am using for my purse....I think this would make a really cute diaper tote, but I will have to add lots of pockets inside for that use....My mom asked where my name was...apparently having an embroidery machine means people expect me to narcissistically (yeah, you read it right...I even spellchecked!) stitch my name on everything....yet no name on this bag! Not that I was trying to shock with my lack of a monogram, but I messed it up a little. The monogram is actually on the inside....I didn't like the thread I used to do the monogram, and I thought the black and white would look better on the outside anyway. So I am the only weirdo be-boppin' around town with a monogram on the INSIDE of their bag. Whatever.

My next (and most ambitious project EVER) is a little quilt I am making for Hayden. It is called a crazy nine patch quilt, and seemed easy enough when I read about it online. It is a teensy bit harder than I had imagined, but I got the whole top finished in about four hours today. Which means I made other people watch and bathe my kids so that I could work on it. Actually, most of the work was done while they were already sleeping, so I am not that much of a deadbeat mom. I have to add the batting, quilt the batting and top layers together, baste the minky dot on the back (because minky scoots while adding binding) add the binding, and that's it! Don't look too close, but here it is so far:

So many of her things are pink or lavender...I thought it would be kind of cool to have something in bright, crazy colors. Let's hope it turns out to be worth four plus hours of work!!!! You can link to the tutorial here if you are interested in making one, too. This would be a CUTE baby gift, but only for someone you REALLY like, because it would be a pretty significant amount of work.

New Pool towels....

So I've gone applique crazy. This is so easy to do, and so cute! I got these towels in the "dollar section" of Target for 2.50 apiece. They're not Ralph Lauren towels by any stretch, but too cute to pass up. They're definitely decent enough for summer pool use. I made these because I realized I make stuff all day every day for other people, but my own kids have very few things I've made. I think they are adorable, and they took me about twenty minutes apiece. I am going to calm down on the projects for awhile, in order to pack up my house.....Just in case I get inspired, the sewing machine is going with us to my parents' house for the summer!

AHHHHHHHH!

This is all I can think of. Seriously. While I am supposed to be in bed sleeping, while I am washing my hair, while I am making dinner.....I am obsessed with all that needs to be done to this house. Note the brown patches in front lawn. (renters do not water your yard, no matter how many times they are asked) Note the missing landscaping in the front bed. (Renters do not water plants either.) My mind is filled with all that needs to be done, where the money is going to come from to do it, where to start, where to buy stuff, what we can do ourselves....the list goes on and on! What you CAN'T see in this picture are the three bathrooms designed by Fred Flintstone, and the TV room that is willfully separating itself from the main structure. Luckily, we had a structural engineer who came today and gave not so horrible news. He said he wasn't sure what was going on with our back room...but he didn't say we should tear it off the house. We are going to fix it up, and that process begins tomorrow when we meet our first contractor. I have talked to the guy on the phone, and I can already tell I am going to talk WAY too fast for this guy. He will probably decline the job before I can finish telling him what we want done. As far as our Schertz house goes, our buyer's option expires tomorrow at midnight, so if we hear nothing from him tomorrow, we are full steam ahead on moving back to AH. I dread it in a way, I am excited in a lot of ways....oh the confusion!
To make matters worse, there are a million and a half crafting projects I want to do, and have half started. I think I am so chomping at the bit to get started on the old house, and we can't do anything quite yet, so I am trying to "do" something somewhere.....I started a tote bag for myself tonight, and have given up for the moment because I have broken three needles and am starting to get annoyed. All I need is forty unfinished projects to pack up...I need to just lay off. I about chewed my own arm off today....the babies and I were prisoners in our own home waiting for the garage door repairman......by three o'clock I was calling Shawn asking about what time he thought he would be coming home. Even the babies were annoyed...they are used to going out and about every day, so the same four walls got old for them, too. At about three, when I thought I had just about had it, I got out their Little People Noah's Ark. They had SO much fun playing with this thing! They love to hold the little plastic animals, put them in the ark, take them out, put them in again....chew on them...crawl around with them. It was so cute! Hayden had an animal in each hand and was trying to pick up a third with her feet. When that didn't work, she tried to bite one. Apparently two animals at a time is not enough for that girl....Cale just entertained himself by handing me animals and laughing. Surprisingly, that was the best part of my day....just sitting on the floor and playing with them.

Back from Memphis...

We arrived home last night from our LONG weekend in Memphis. Other than the ridiculously long car ride (what were we thinking????) we had a great time. We saw Graceland, which is hilarious. It is so obviously decorated by a 70's lovin' Elvis, with NO female input. It is smaller than we thought it would be (considering he was a mulit-millionare) and one room they added on the back of the house has like four window unit air conditioners hooked to it. It was really interesting to see.....different than we imagined, and strange to walk around in the house that he lived in. We got to see his airplanes (24 karat gold seat belt buckles!) and all his crazy jumpsuits....I don't know about everyone else, but I really loved it. We went to several of Nick's baseball games, and were amazed that the babies seemed to enjoy them. Every time people clapped, they looked around and clapped too. They probably thought people were clapping for them! Hayden even threw her arms up for a touchdown a few times, even though we tried to explain to her it was the wrong sport. :) We ate at a few famous Memphis spot (Corky's for ribs, The Blue Plate for breakfast) and just generally had a great time. The babies' schedule was all jacked up, but they were so resilient! The only hard part was the amount of time we were in the car getting there and back....at a few points they were straining to get out of their car seats, which I totally understand. That is a LONG time to be strapped in! We stopped on the way home to see the bears at Baylor (our old stompin' grounds) and they LOVED that. They actually enjoyed looking at the bear, and she sat right by us and scratched her back on a rock. (too cute) The bear pit was amazing...it looks like a real zoo exhibit...when we went to school there the bears lived in a cement bowl that looked like a skate park. We always felt so sorry for them! Thanks to some people with way too much money for their own good, the bears now live in a tropical oasis....Baylor looked so different, too. I don't remember it being so nicely landscaped when I was there....the babies enjoyed stretching their legs on the grass before getting back into the car for the last stretch...
Now that our trip is over, I have to get into moving mode. Yep, that's right...we sold our Schertz house! (unless the dude backs out for some random reason, we're good to go!) I am a little sad...this is the first house the babies ever lived in, and it is so near my parents. Oh well! Our goal was to get ourselves down to one house, and we have done it. Now we start the remodel on our old house. The idea of remodeling a house sounds really fun, especially to someone who enjoyes "house porn" (HGTV) like me. There is just so much to do that it is a little overwhelming. Add to that the fact that we are closing on this house in two weeks...YIKES! I cannot imagine having our stuff packed up and ready to go that fast, but I know we can do it. For now, all our stuff is going over to the other house, and will be left in boxes and covered with tarps while we stay at my parents for the duration. Hopefully we can find an amazing carpenter/remodeler and get this thing started!

Yeah for me!!!

Today during naptime, I decided to try to use some of the features on my space ship of a sewing machine. Considering this thing is bad as* and I hardly do anything on it besides sew and embroider...(you ask, what else can it do? Well, hold on to your hats!!) This thing has about six hundred decorative stitches. I am not kidding. I have always wanted to use applique in my projects, but didn't really know how. (Even though I knew this machine would do it easily) I googled "How do I applique?" (Don't you love how you can do that??) and followed some easy steps.

I thought this was pretty cute for my first project. It is a strip for a burp cloth...I think I am going to monogram initials in the center of the heart (just because I can!) My little brain is on fire thinking of all the ways I can incorporate applique!

Additionally, I am OBSESSED with Jill. Jill is of http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com and I LOVE all her cutie ideas! I found the blog by randomly clicking away on the blogspot homepage, and now she's my new best friend. Seriously, if I lived in NYC, I would track this girl down and ask her if I could brush her hair. She posts the cutest tutorials, and just posted a list of projects she wants to accomplish. I love ALL of them....especially a tutorial for a cute baby dress, a fabric "basket", a decopage stool....I have NO reason to ever be bored! I now have enough project ideas to last me until the end of time. If you fancy yourself a crafter, check out her blog. I promise, you'll love it too! She is the mini-Martha!

p.s. apologies to anyone who reads this blog solely for baby updates. I am sure this doesn't interest you in the slightest, but hey, this thing is about me, too!! :)

p.s.s. In case you are wondering, I tried "time out" with Hayden this morning. It consisted of me holding her firmly away from the fun, in my lap, while her octopus limbs flailed this way and that and smacked all over me. She was mad, but I think she got the point because she played "nicer" afterwards. Yippee!

I can't believe the time has come, but I think I am going to have to start thinking about discipline. It is all easy to have "theories" before you have to put them into practice, but now that I have a child that is engines blaring temper tantrum throwing, I am not sure what to do. Hayden has started throwing FITS when she doesn't get her way. Today it happened three times. Once, because I averted potential electric shock as she was playing with the Glade Plug In. (I need to just get rid of those things!) Next, because Cale wouldn't give her the remote. (She jerked it away from him and proceeded to bang him on the head with it) And lastly, when she tried to drink Cale's milk and I gave it back to him. That one was the worst. Back bowing, leg kicking, screaming anger. What to do???? Shawn suggested time out. I don't know where I could put her in time out, because she won't stay anywhere since she is too little to "get it". I don't want to use her crib or her high chair because I want her to like both of those places.....ahhhh!!!! The rigors of parenting! Who knew I would be worrying about this with a ONE YEAR OLD??? For now, I am going to completely ignore the tantrums, in hopes they go away. I know she is doing it for a reaction, because she is looking right at me when she is going to town. My prayer is that I continually remember it is NOT ABOUT ME when she is doing it, and to not take it personally....babies have to assert themselves somehow, and I have just been gifted with a child who is going to be more vocal about it. Let's hope she is just as stubborn when people are trying to talk her into horrible ideas later....

Lest you think I am complaining about this precious baby, know this: She can say "night-night" now, and can walk back and forth to mommy and daddy in the baby pool. Still only one step and then a hiney crash on dry land, but we're working on it. Despite the concerns about her head spinning tantrums, she is still hilarious, adorable, fun, et al.....

Another side note: Cale has a stuffed bear that he loves. I mean LOVES. When we say, "Can you love on your bear?" He crawls on top of it and stretches his little legs out behind him and hugs it so sweet. It is so adorable! Of course, Hayden has to try to steal his thunder, and comes over and tries to hug any part of the bear she can get her hands on. I have got to get a picture of it!