Lounging

"Do they make La-Z-Boys for babies??"

Little Tricks

Megan is working hard to learn all about her mouth and the little tricks it can do. She has completely abandoned thumb-sucking in favor of sucking her lower lip.

Additionally, she really likes to make clicking noises with her tongue. She is especially delighted if we join her in a tongue click duet. We are more than happy to comply as we like the tongue-click stage much better than the tongue-spit period she went through (put your tongue between your lips and blow). We thought it was really cute to see her spitting until she started doing it at meals. Being showered in pureed peas is not good!

Rally On!

Now that the Portland house sale is final, we decided to shift our attentions to the Salem house. Those of you who have been there know that there are all kinds of projects that need to get done: painting, stripping wallpaper, updating the tired decor, cleaning the pond, unpacking boxes, sorting the garage, and on and on (and on and on). So we decided to dedicate yesterday to one of the most important tasks toward making our home more livable: assembling our new ping pong table.

After getting the 200+ pounds of table downstairs, Mac and Megan worked on assembling it.

"Is styrofoam edible??"

By nightfall (and Megan's bedtime) we were ready for some serious ping pong action.

I won the inaugural game, in a hotly contested match 21-19. Mac and I are very evenly matched, making it a lot of fun for us to play together, though Mac's unsuccessful testosterone-induced slam attemps usually foil his victory.

Having this brand new ping pong set I now realize that paddle condition is crucial. Growing up we used to leave the paddles outside, turning their spongy surface into a brittle cracked mass of rubber. Playing with these warped paddles shouldn't even be considered ping pong! The new paddles are so nice. Now if I could only get out of work so that I could go play!

Update: After falling behind two games to none, Mac rallied to take the third game with the largest margin of victory to date: 5 points.

All tied up

The house in Portland is history! No, I didn't blow it up in some pissed off rampage. It still exists, it is just history to us. The sale has closed, papers are signed, and most importantly, the check is in the mail.

In addition to the sale being finalized, the appliance issue was resolved in a fairly satisfactory way. The Realtors decided to give us a $1250 credit at closing and the appliances are being donated to a needy family.

Now on to all those projects...

Stress

When Mac starts to stress you know things are bad. And ugly, too, as Mac does not handle stress well. Anyway, we think we are out of the Portland house. Well, at least we though t we were, until their Realtor said they didn't want the appliances and most certainly weren't paying us fifteen hundred bucks for them. This would have been fine, except we already have new appliances. Plus we have to get the old ones out of the house - the house we thought we were all moved out of.

Otherwise, things should start falling into place. We signed all the papers today. If no other glitches come up we should be out of financial dire straights tomorrow at 5pm. In addition to paying off two mortgages, we should get a nice little deposit into our account (which is good, because we need to pay the credit card bill for all those new unnecessary appliances!). And then maybe we can get to unpacking - that is after we clean up the thick layer of white dust left over from the ceiling project.

On the Megan front: Megan is now doing some scooting, but only backwards and mostly only on floors, not carpet. She has a look in her eye that says she'd love to be crawling, but she still has a long way to go before she's got it all figured out. Her new trick is the tongue click. When the dust settles (or gets wiped away), I'll get back into posting pictures.

Chaos

"Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos."
- I Ching

I am hoping the above is true, because we have the makings for a heck of a lot of great brilliance.

We spent the last week living in Salem while Mac's parent's, aunt and uncle were visiting. Then Sunday night we put every piece of furniture and all the boxes in the closets, the garage or one of the two rooms without popcorn ceiling and headed back to Portland. I arrived in portland to find all the doors and windows wide open, debris in the driveway, debris on the deck, and full trashbags in two bedrooms, not to mention a non-functional bathroom. Even the cats were in disarray - they were both in the neighbors' yard and Zeus had poo caked in his fur, requiring a minor haircut. And meals present their own problems. Last night I ate my take out burrito with a serving fork - a huge utensil that barely fit in my mouth. This morning I took my tea with corn syrup.

I currently know the location of absolutely nothing. This includes many important items such as my driver's license, credit card, passport, and birth certificate for my first born. This is a bit of a problem, since I need most of these things for our trip to California in two days! (this'll be Megan's third roundtrip airline flight - quite the world traveler for a six month old!).

Mac and I have moved twice cross-country and twice locally, and the cross-country moves were way easier - hands down. This is largely my fault, I know. I did all kinds of planning, sorting and purging for the cross-country moves; my packing style currently involves throwing anything into a box that'll fit. Kitchenware mingles in boxes with desk items; Megan's toys have merged with craft supplies; tools nestle in with my clothes. And, of course, I stopped labeling the boxes after the third one.

Mac's mom kindly pointed out how many stressful events we have going on right now: new baby, new house, new job, big test, upcoming trip. She forgot in-laws visiting! (just kidding, mamaw, we loved having you!).

The stress has gotten to Mac, too. He has a new grey hair - on his chest! So at least I have something to laugh at during this stressful time!


**I have more pics to post, but of course, the camera and computer are never together, so looks like they'll have to wait.

Feed Me

Megan's food repetoire now consists of rice cereal, green beans, carrots, peas and squash. So far no gagging, but quite a bit misses her mouth!

Homework

As if it weren't bad enough to be living out of two different houses, now they are both under construction!

Last weekend was very productive, thanks to a lot of help from our friends. On Saturday Craig helped us take down the wallpaper in the living room and dining room. And on Sunday, we got a lot accomplished downstairs with the help of Kris, J.D. and the Gingeriches.

We got the game room painted, the family room stripped of wallpaper, the media room ready to paint, and all of the fake wood paneling out of two rooms. Additionally, the boys did a little messing around!

At the end of the day we had generated quite a pile of trash - wood paneling and bags of wallpaper debris, plus eight dead mice found in an air vent! Thank you to everyone who helped out!

On the 15th, a crew arrives to remove all of the acoustic ceiling (popcorn or cottage cheese ceiling) and to reface all of the walls that had the fake paneling removed. Mostly after that, it should just be paint, paint, paint, before most of the rooms are livable. Of course, the kitchen and baths will still need a bit of work, but that'll have to hold off a while (till my stress level is down and bank funds are up!).

Back in Portland, we are out a bathroom. The house inspection revealed a leaky shower with rotted floorboards, which we are now in the process of replacing. Sadly, our contractor Mike, thinks we were duped when we bought the house. The floor boards have all been replaced, but the shower tile is original. Mike believes they replaced rotted boards, but didn't fix the shower. He thinks the owners probably didn't use that shower on purpose so that everything would look hunky-dory (and dry) when we got the house inspected, but then we've been using a leaky shower for the last four years. So now the onus is on us to get this problem fixed once and for all. Of course, that doesn't mean we are going to be doing a top of the line remodel, either. Mike is very understanding about our desire to do some "bargain shopping" when it comes to materials.

Our house is set to close on the 24th. Mike wondered if we needed the house to fund before we could pay him.
"Well," Mac explained, "I am 99% certain we can pay you before that."
"Good," Mike countered, "I am 99% certain that I can get the job completed by the 24th." We like Mike a lot.

To make matters more interesting, we had a toaster fire the day the bathroom got demolished. It was a great test for our brand-new up-to-code smoke alarms that Mac had only installed the day before!

This picture only captures the last gasp of the flames after we had taken the toaster outside. At one point we had quite a bit of black smoke and a toaster full of flames. All right, we get the message: We need to clean the toaster more than once every five years!

Time with Dad

Megan is enjoying having a stay-at-home daddy. It is so hard for me to go to work in the mornings!

Check Up

Megan had her six month check up today. She was 16 pounds, 10 oz (75%) and 27 inches long (90%). We knew those thighs were chunky!