In place of a real post...

My laptop died last night in the middle of composing a post about my superbadnogood day. I'm sure there's a lesson in that somewhere, but I'm too tired to find it. So instead, today, to revive my nearly dead blog, I give you a link to a post about mothering, from a new favorite blogger, Calah.

Enjoy!

Heartbreaking.

From the friend of a friend of a bloggy friend.




Would you go here, buy some coffee and help my friend bring home her boys and start putting their hearts back together again?

Jamie, Six Months Old (a little late)

I'm six months old now, can you believe it?



I have my mommy's eyelashes...



And my daddy's eyebrows...



I like to chew on my fingers



And other stuff.



Sometimes I just crack myself up! (can you see my teeth??)





And sometimes, I need a nap.

... and the embarrasment just keeps on giving...

Today at a friend's for breakfast, I decided to share our "funny" story (posted yesterday) with a mom-friend who was there. Due to the nature of the story, I took her aside and began to tell the story in a discreet monotone. As other people drifted into the room, I found myself inadvertently sharing with a larger and larger group of people. By the time I got to the punch line, I found myself saying That Word in a roomful of adults, in a normal tone of voice... repeatedly. And before I could finish up, the final member of the party strolled into the kitchen to join the group who had, I now found out, congregated there to bless the meal...


"Let us pray...."


And as a bonus, halfway through the prayer, I we heard Sofi, in the other room, telling the kids all about it. She, of course, has no idea why Mommy and Daddy think Judah's new kind of prairie dog is so hilarious, but she's not adverse to trying for a laugh when she thinks she has a killer line...

I will never again laugh when my kids accidentally say a bad word. I have learned my lesson. And then some.

In Which J and I Wish the Floor Would Open Up and Swallow Us (or; "Why Did We Ever Teach Him to Talk??)

Last week, in "school", Judah and I read a story about Prairie Dogs. He really latched on to the concept and was a Prairie Dog for days afterwards. He actually got so involved in it that he invented a new kind of Prairie Dog.

A new kind with some unfortunate juxtapositions of vowels and consonants...

"Mama, I'm a Cahnt Pairie Dog today! And Dadah, you're a Cahnt Pairie Dog, and Sofi's a Cahnt Pairie Dog TOO!"

Only, in your mind, replace all those 'a's with 'U's.......wait for it..... wait.....There.

And then picture that scene in the pew. At church. While all the faithful are filing out after the service.

Yeeeah.

And so, for the rest of the week he has been a "new supah heeroh, Mama"

"I'm a fire-shooting, C,auhnt Pairie Dog that howls out LIGHTENING!!"

*sigh*

Well, I'M not going to tell him, are YOU?

Finally. (eta floorplan)

The Lord has answered our prayer for a home! Yesterday I took our final month's rent to the management, along with our thirty-day's notice. On April 8th we will close on Our House and begin moving! Hurray!

If you click on the link above, you'll notice that this is NOT the house we made an offer on back in October (which, unless you are a FB friend of mine, you won't know anything about...) That one was a short sale and the bank never did get back to us with a final word on our offer. Yes, that's right. We made the offer in October, and this is April, and they never got back a final word to us.

The story of this house is that back in February, in depths of despair over the length of time it was taking to hear back from the bank about our first offer, and wallowing in self-pity over my eternal captivity in this tiny apartment, I noticed a new property whose price had just dropped within our price range. Elfstone Drive. How cute, I thought. Elfstone Drive, in Casselberry. It sounds like an address from a fairytale. Let's go look at it. Just for kicks.

So we did. And we loved it. It's the perfect house. The yard is perfect. The kitchen is perfect. The pool is perfect. It has vaulted ceilings, a fireplace and a waterslide. What more could you ask for?

It was riiight at the upper edge of our price range. We took all of one night to talk it over. The next day we drew up an offer and submitted it on the Friday before President's Day. Early that Monday I had a notice from our listing engine that the price had just dropped $12K

???

Yep. $12 THOUSAND.

We spent the holiday rushing around, coming up with a new offer based on the new price, quickly submitting it, fingers crossed that they'd not realize that we were the same people who'd just submitted the (much) higher offer that they'd just seen that morning.

No such luck. We got a call that night saying they would accept our first offer. Bleh. We declined. They countered the next day with the info that there were multiple offers on the house and all parties had till noon on Wed to submit their highest and best offers.

OH, the agonies, OH the doubts, the second-guessing, and the trepidation... We spent ALL NIGHT trying to come up with an unbeatable, but still affordable offer. We submitted it the next day with only an hour or two to spare. And then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And then on Friday, we got the word. Our offer had been accepted! Hallelujah!! The house was ours!! In the weeks since then, we've been dancing around to all the bureaucratic red tape and vagaries that are the mortgage industry in Florida right now. But now the final piles of paperwork have been printed, signed and faxed, the last rent is paid and I"m picking out my paint colors! On April 8th we'll sign the closing documents and we will own 2200 sq ft, a pool (and waterslide) and over a 1/4 acre of the state of Florida.

Praise the Lord!