Gettin' Buggy With It

I first owe everyone an abject apology for being such a horrendous communicator during the last few weeks. I have an excuse…

As I have assumed a new role at the college in Residential Life, it turns out that we had the opportunity to move into a house the university had purchased. No more living in the bottom of the men’s residence hall! Yippee!

We were so excited about this change and had been told it would take place mid-late July. Well, imagine my surprise when I was handed a key to the house on July 1!

We were so excited – but that also began a frantic process of moving. We’ve actually been sleeping here since July 3, but still have tubs to unpack. I call the sunroom our “staging area” and have baby gated it off from the rest of the house!

Our address and contact information will remain the same, as it all goes to the university. However, we can now extend an invitation to everyone to come visit us – and we actually have a bedroom you can stay in rather than the blow up air mattress wedged between the sofas and t.v. in the living room! We’re moving up in the world!

The girls have been a little discombobulated about the move as well as happy. The yard is enormous and fenced, so Mia has pretty much free reign to do as she pleases. Right now that has included a stop by a mosquito spot – she’s decorated with bug bites.

There have been a few unfortunate side effects to the move. One, while the house was relatively clean it wasn’t really clean – I’ve been going crazy cleaning the blinds after finding the skid marks of a doggie backside on the blinds in the bedroom! The previous owner’s dog really had control of the house – and has left a flea infestation behind. That, combined with the mosquitoes, has gotten all of us a bit antsy. Thankfully the bug man will be bombing the house on Friday morning, necessitating a trip to the zoo for most of the day. The girls are so bummed about that! (Not really.)

The final thing that is a bit odd is the fact that there are mushrooms growing out of the fireplace.

Apparently the roof has to be fixed (they’ve been working on that the past two days after we discovered a small stream flooding down the chimney during a hard rainstorm) and the moisture has provided a suitable environment for these dear little fungi to grow. Don’t worry. I won’t be cooking these babies up for dinner.

Those are the not so fun things about the move – the great news is that we have three bedrooms, two living areas, a sunroom and a cool kitchen. It’s at least twice as large as anything we’ve lived in before and we have a yard that doesn’t include a college campus complete with a bug pond calling my children to swim unsupervised. We’re feeling quite blessed. (As well as itchy.)

Today I found myself dancing with Mia in the living room to Elmo’s “Potty Time” theme song. It’s really catchy in its tune and frankly, quite clever in the way that it talks about going to the bathroom. Regardless, I had Mia dancing with me and was twirling around with Maggie, who was smiling a HUGE smile.

We weren’t quite done with the song when Mia just stopped and headed back to the sofa. She climbed up and began to look at her book.

“Are you done dancing, Mia?” I asked, while still shaking my stuff with Maggie.

“Yes, Mommy,” Mia told me in a matter of fact tone of voice, “I’s too busy.”

Maggie has also been busy – she’s started to walk! We have counted as many as six steps from her and she’s, of course, quite proud of herself. Her motivation is trying to keep up with big sister. They’re getting along so well!

Both of the girls have decided this week to stop sleeping the night through so I’m hooked up to the I.V. of caffeine again. I keep vowing to quit drinking coffee and coca-cola cold turkey but then I conveniently find excuses to continue the habit. Perhaps I should just buy stock in Coke and let it be.

Izzy is busy recruiting for both the men’s and women’s soccer teams. There have been some bumps in the road and also some really awesome achievements. The college had a donor commit $100,000 to improving the soccer fields – which is excellent but even that huge sum of money doesn’t quite cover the cost of actually adding lights to the fields so they can play night games. So, it’s a mixed bag of blessings and challenges. I guess that keeps you on your toes? I will say, if any of you have a desire to sponsor the OWU soccer program, let Izzy know – he’d be grateful to have a little breathing room to get the team travel gear and uniforms, etc.

It’s a funny stage of life – we’re both basically working for fringe benefits right now. I’m working for the house and food and he’s working for the health insurance and cash J It’s a good thing that we’re both in positions that suit us perfectly – and have the freedom to split our days so that the girls are with Izzy almost every morning and me almost every afternoon. I’m really grateful to be married to a man who is willing to split the responsibility of child rearing… and he’s so good at it!!! I wouldn’t call our situation normal, but it is working out well for us.