The House Across the Street

…is a complete and total mystery to me. At any given time, there are three people who come and go with regularity: two men, one woman. There seem to be three cars involved, and any one of them drives them at any given time: a Prius, a VW bug, and a new Tacoma truck (this last one was apparently wish-fulfillment for the ‘main’ resident – the one who seems to be there the most and who walks the dogs – who had truck-lust after he saw my Dad’s truck here while he was renovating).

Is it a home? An office? Both? I seriously want to just go over and satisfy my curiosity by asking what the deal is…but it would probably be inadvisable.

Aaaaaaaagh.

Totally burnt-out, and I have a hellish summer to get through. Bought a house, now have two dead baby birds in the molding above the front door. And many little tiny bugs going to and from their little dead baby bird carcasses.

Dissertation: have a deadline for two chapter drafts, don’t see how it’s ever going to come together, given that I currently have no help with the kids and #2 is rather needy.

Kids: TV is raising them.

Me: Utterly exhausted – literally. I can’t sit down without passing out. Except at night, when I can’t sleep for worrying about the dissertation, crappy parenting, and dead baby birds.

Cardiac episode: Probably imminent.

“It’s a buyer’s market” and other half-truths

Project homeownership hit an unexpected snag shortly before New Year’s Day, when our loan broker (conventional 30 year, preapproval still valid) informed us that, because the house we’re trying to buy is listed as being in a “declining market,” the bank wanted another 5% on top of our planned downpayment.  Needless to say, if we had another 5% we would have offered it upfront; we don’t and so we said farewell to that loan and our hopes of buying the house.

We spent a blissfully quiet next few days.  On Jan. 2, we called our realtor to follow up on the email I’d sent telling her the news, and she asked if we were interested in pursuing FHA funding.  Since we were still interested in the house, we gave her the go-ahead to talk with her broker; in the interim, I drove M. and his parents out to the Indian casinos of northern San Diego County.  Some business was conducted by M. on our cellphones while I drove, and we spent the first two (of seven) hours at Harrah’s standing outside the entrance in the cold trying to talk with/send documents to the broker, all using M.’s useful PDA-style cellphone.  We even went over the Good Faith Estimate pdf on the microscopic screen (although it helped that my Dad was back at home doing a comparison of the new GFE and the old one from the previous loan).

So, at present, we’re waiting to find out if the house will appraise (AGAIN) for more, less, or equal to our price.  If it’s above or equal, we should be able to move on to settlement; if it appraises for less, we’re back up a creek.

It’s funny.  All I read is that the government wants people buying homes again; yet, the current climate is such that if you qualify for the most direct loan, chances are you already have a home and don’t need another one.  The same could be said, I think, for people trying to refinance.  The time, we’re told, is ripe; but what they don’t mention is that you have to qualify for the lower rates, and the reasons you may not might have nothing to do with your financial behavior and everything to do with banks that are trying to find ways to weasel out of stupid mistakes they made (my brother’s situation).

Christmas Eve

And I’m still three presents short – two (for my sister/brother and respective spouses) are little homemade things that will not be done by tomorrow.  One is an Ebay purchase that shipped via USPS on the 17th and has yet to surface – and it’s for M2.  Oops.  She’ll have things to open tomorrow, and this one was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, not something she’d asked for, but still.  Of course, this is what happens when you buy so close to Christmas, so there’s that.

Since M2 is only 3 and our lives have been chaos almost since she was born, M. and I still haven’t quite figured out how to ‘do’ Christmas.  Since we’ll be at my parents’ house this year, and my sister and her family will also be there, we’re doing what they do (which is how my parents did it when we were kids) by default.  This means the usual cookies and milk for Santa, fairly modest stockings, and (the one M. can’t quite wrap his head around) leaving the present for Santa unwrapped and sparkling in the early morning light on Christmas morning.  For some reason, M. thinks this is weird, but he has yet to give me any kind of definitive answer about what they did when he was a kid (was there Santa?  Did he wrap presents?  These are things I’d like to know).  I wanted to be much more organized this Christmas, but I feel like I’m even less on top of things than I was last year, when I’d just given birth and was recovering from a C-section.

I’ve gotten my Christmas present, though: project babyweaning is going swimmingly, and I’ve been basking in blissful sleep ever since we started.  C.’s still waking up a bit – mostly in the early morning (3 am – on), but he’s also been putting himself back to sleep until 7 am or so.  The result is that I’m an entirely more pleasant person – I smile!  I laugh!  I put things into perspective (more or less)!  It’s been great; we’ll see what going out to California on Friday does to the project.

Peace and Quiet

This is the first morning since C. was born that I’m up before anyone else, having spent the entire night in bed. It’s pure bliss.

C. had a fitful night: woke up at his usual appointed hours, and he was Unamused (in the Queen way) when M. went in, told him gently-but-firmly “Go night-night, C.” That engendered much screaming, complete with baby expletives (you could just kind of tell that he was swearing) and much jumping up and down. But he did finally settle down, and when he woke up at his usual times after that, he settled back down even more quickly than the time before. He stirred and cranked a bit at 7 (it’s 7:40 now), and then went BACK to sleep again.

So, Best Night Ever.

In the meantime, M2 spent half of yesterday afternoon saying, “I’m going to have a good sleepover, Mommy. But I’ll be sad because I’ll miss you. But just a little bit.” She was having dinner when we left, and just before we took off she insisted on having a tissue from the box, so she could blow her nose and wipe her eyes of tears when we left. Which she did. Repeatedly, as we kept not leaving (quote: “When are you going, Mommy?”). M. said, “Great, we have a drama queen.”

Into the abyss

Well, our addendum was partially accepted (furnace yes, crawlspace no), and we decided to proceed with the purchase, so if we get the loan we applied for we should be on our way to owning a home.  The feelings I have about it are complicated and kind of contradictory; on the one hand, I’m happy that we’ll have something that’s truly ours and that we’ll be able to make into what we want, rather than always deferring to a landlord.  I’m really excited that we will have bedrooms for both of the kids, which may (may) help with some of the sleep issues, and which will certainly cut down on toys scattered around the house.

On the other hand, it’s all very terrifying in a way, and we still have some hurdles to get over.  We haven’t been approved for a loan yet (we were preapproved), and it looks like we have some stuff yet to pull together before that all happens.  Since we’ll be traveling to SoCal next Friday and will be gone for about 10 days, I’m a little worried about what will happen if we have to attend to some house-related crisis.  M.’s disability and the fact of not one, but two small children means that if one person leaves to take care of something, we all leave – there is no staying behind.  There’s also a LOT of work that needs to be done on the house before we move in, and I’m anxious about all of that – cost, family harmony (my dad is the primary contractor, and since we’re supposed to be joining him and my mom in Hawaii for a week not long after we’d probably move in, I’d like for us all to still be on speaking terms), design – you name it.

I guess I should just let go of my anxiety, make some lists of things that need to be taken care of, take a deep breath, and get to work.  Or concentrate on my more immediate project: tomorrow night marks the beginning of Babyweaning! – The Nighttime Feedings.  Wish us luck.

Baby is One!

So the baby boy turns 1 today, and this marks the 364th day I haven’t slept through the night (he slept through the night exactly one time, a few weeks ago when he was down for the count with a cold). He’s been nursing through the night (I’m talking 6/7ish, 10/11ish, 1:30ish, 4:30ish – he’s practically still on a newborn schedule, for the love of God) for what seems like an eternity, and I’ve decided that 1 year marks as good a point as any to learn about disappointment and change.

So, come Friday night, we’re sending the 3 year old away to my parents’ house and embarking on what will likely prove to be a very long night of baby anger (not so much tears – he just gets MAD if he doesn’t get his way, the little pi**er). Because I just can’t take it anymore. I know I should probably nurse him until he’s about ready to pack up for college, but my health is actually suffering from the chronic lack of good sleep, and it’s time for C. to contribute to – as I read another blogger mention somewhere – the family harmony.

(FWIW, I’m not asking him to go cold turkey. We just need to stop doing it all night long).

And today is M2’s preschool program. It promises to be an amusing and adorable 12-minute extravaganza.

Plans

I think I might try to start using this as a daily journal kind of thing, since I clearly don’t have the time/energy/inclination to spend time crafting meaningful posts.  I do find that blogs that chronicle daily ins and outs are interesting in their own ways, and give a nice picture of life as it’s really lived.  We’ll see.

In the meantime, just to bring everyone up to speed (”everyone” being, of course, the three people who are still reading here): M2 has recovered nicely from her (apparent) allergic reaction to amoxicillin, one ER trip later.  She had a miserable few days there, but once we discontinued the medicine she started slowly showing improvement.  Now she’s bouncing off the walls and getting ready for her preschool Christmas program (all two songs of it).

The house thing is ongoing.  We put an offer on a foreclosure, which was accepted.  However, there was one furnace issue (we knew about it) and one crawlspace issue (we didn’t) that we decided need to be remediated by the bank, not us (there’s loads of other issues with the house, but we’re prepared to take those on, since they’re largely cosmetic).  So we’re sending an addendum back today, and we’ll see what happens with that.  It would be a good house for us, I think – it’s basically the house we’re currently renting (same model, same layout), but with a substantial new addition in the back that makes it possible for every kid to have a bedroom.  But…we’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m trying to scrape together Christmas presents and hoping that Amazon is serious when they say that the stuff I ordered yesterday will be here by the 24th.  Dissertation is currently dead in the water, but I’m still paying tuition and registering for diss credit, so I guess I’m still in the game.  Trip to in-laws on the 26th – wish us luck!

If anyone is still reading…

I will be amazed.  Grateful, but amazed.

We’re still here, but it’s been a hell of a few months.  We started the process of looking for a house to buy, but the vast majority are either bank-owned and trashed (intentionally or by the elements), short-sales (which is a ticket to nowhere on a very slow boat), or seller-owned and massively overpriced (the number of people who think that the market actually should sustain the absurd prices of the last few years really surprises me; homes that should have been, at this point, in the mid-200s are still being listed in the upper 400s.  And sitting, and sitting, and sitting.  The banks involved in short-sales haven’t figured this out, yet, either.

Miss M. started preschool in September, and it’s been one long, slow descent into Level 4 biohazard territory.  She got the plague about a month ago, and it’s turned out to be the gift that just keeps on giving.  $100+ in pediatrician copays later, we’re still trying to get rid of the damned thing.  It looks like she may miss her class Thanksgiving feast (that she was really exited about), and at this rate we’ll be lucky if we make it to the REAL Thanksgiving at my parents’ house.

So, still here, but dragging.

Still, still here

I’ve been a crap blogger lately, and I’ve even thought about just hanging up my hat a few times.  I’m not going to yet, though, because this all may pass one of these days and – who knows? – I might even get back into the swing of things again.

But, right now, life with the little people is kicking my ass.

Which isn’t to say they’re bad; I mean, yeah, the toddler is doing 3 by the book (and what’s the deal with “the terrible twos”??  Two was fine.  A total piece of cake compared to the hellfire that is three.  Three is wiping me out.  Defiance, check.  Ritualistic parroting of every stupid thing that comes out of my mouth, check.  Mule-like stubbornness, check, check, check.  I’m terrified of doing with with the baby when his time comes, seeing as how he’s got infinitely less patience as a baby than the toddler ever had – she was a paragon of patience, and right now she’s hell on wheels).

And the baby…will not wean.  I know, I know; if I was any kind of good mother I’d nurse him until he was packing up the car to go to college, but, dammit, I want my own damned body back.  I’m so, so, SO freaking tired of waking up in the middle of the night (because he simply cannot go without, don’tcha know), and I just want him to WEAN, DAMMIT.  But…no.  He refuses to take a bottle and can’t reliably drink out of much else right now, so I have to nurse just to keep him reasonably hydrated.  Which is especially important since he drools like a leaky faucet.  His teeth are taking the slow-and-one-at-an-excruciating-time approach, which means that he’ll probably stop teething sometime around his sixth birthday.  When they start popping out.  Sigh.

So, between those two, I’m down for the count.  Dissertation?  HA.  Oh, sure, I try to write here and there, and I do okay as long as I don’t ever, ever think about the bigger picture (ie: that I’m writing one paragraph or one page, and that’s a drop in the ocean relative to how long the damned thing’s got to be).  But every so often I think about it, and then I get paralyzed through the sheer weight of the thing.

There are good things, I suppose.  The toddler is finally, finally peeing in the potty.  Not pooping, of course – because that would just be too easy.  But she is peeing, and that’s something.  The baby is taking semi-regular naps now – he goes down, but how long he stays is still up in the air.  On good days, he does a good two hours in the afternoon.  On bad days, about 20 minutes.

But, they’re naps, and that’s better than the no naps he wasn’t taking before.

So, anyway, this is why I’ve been AWOL.  I’ve been entertaining myself to death with J-Network’s Japanese TV service (so much fun!  And since I never get out and have no social life, I can justify the money it costs), and M. just got us a Chumby to play with, too.  It’s a silly little contraption, but kind of fun.  And it helps me to wean the toddler off the TV.

Gorgeous day outside…I think we’ll all go have a walk soon.