kiddie pool

One new thing that Amelia likes is crawling into Granpa's old chair. She does this all the time and often she carries one of her toys with her. She puts the toy up in the chair and then struggles mightily to get in the chair. She began with little kid sized chairs but now she can do it in real chairs.
Today we bought Amelia a little kiddie pool. It was well worth the 6 dollars.

Oh--here is how tough it is for her to get into the chair. I finally realized that I needed to pull her pants up so she could get the proper leg extension. When I did that she was able to hoist her right leg up high enough to climb into the chair and provide the drugged look picture above.

Big Work Day

Today I worked on the house a ton. I painted the floor in the den that Heidi had painted but then Yoda stepped in.
Then I repainted the deck.
The big project of the day was to redo the kitchen floor. We weren't sure if we needed to do this but it seemed like--if we were fixing everything else then we should fix the floor too.

And here is Amelia doing some work.

Thunder Storm

For those of you that don't live in NH--we don't get as many thunder and lightning storms as you do out west. We just happen to be having a big one right now though. The last blast was enough to rattle the dishes in their cabinet.

We are back at Grammie's house for the night. We only have one car for a bit because a sharp edged granite curb jumped out and smote the wheel of Heidi's Civic. We had to take it in for a new tire and a new wheel. So it is easier for us to be here so Heidi doesn't have to drive me to work at 5:30 am.

Tomorrow we begin a long process of trying to sell our house. Tomorrow we are going to try to get rid of all of the things that belong at the dump. I am a great collector of these things so it will take a while but I think we can do it in a day or so.

Next weekend we will be moving out some of our bigger furniture so as to make the house less cluttered looking. Then maybe we will bring in furniture that is 3/4 normal size so that the house will really look big. Then we might bring in some very small people to look at the house so they won't notice that the ceilings are only 6.5 ft. tall.

My Kid is a Chain Smoker

Well, not of cigarettes but of Graham Crackers. This afternoon I was alone with her and she was crying her eyes out and I gave her a quarter of a cracker. She ate that in two bites and started crying again. I gave her another quarter. She ate that in two bites and started crying again.

Can you see where I'm going with this.

I can't tell you how many quarters I gave her but it wasn't the whole box. If I did tell you Heidi would probably tell me that, "You can't give her that many crackers because it will ruin her dinner." But isn't that part of what I do? Sort of do anything to make my daughter happy so that she will love me someday--after the years of hating me when she is a teenager. I think I'm just following the job description.

I don't want to leave my mother in law's house

No, this is not an Onion article.

I don't want to leave my mother-in-law's house. It is so fun and easy here. Food appears as if out of nowhere. An addle minded cleaning lady comes every two weeks. The showers work. The floors don't have nails that stick up and hurt your feet.

The garge door opens with some kind of magic button. There are 3 refigerators. The decks look out on beautiful mountains and not piles of trash. The trash is taken away by men in a magic bus that drives by every week.

Anyway--we are leaving this week and are already looking forwar to a return.

Amelia's Day Outside

Sadly we might have to go home

Well, we are finally almost ready to move home. Our 2 week stay at Grammie's which turned into a 6 week stay is winding down. Today I finished the drywall in the new bathroom and the final step--the electrician--is coming on Friday.

After that we should be back in the house. The strange thing is that I think we will all be sad to go. We have really loved our stay here and being closer to Concord has made us all the more interested in selling our house and moving closer to the town where we work.