mamajoan | Entries tagged with brian

I feel bad about all the things I never post here. I feel bad for you because you're missing out. ;) Heh, not really. I feel bad because I want to get that stuff out. In large part I think of this journal as my memory book for later, and I hate that lately I lack the time/energy/whatever to write the stuff down, and future-me won't have much to go on. Even now I love to go back and read my entries from a year or two or three ago! But what will a-year-from-now-me have to read?

Here are some things that have happened lately:

1. I broke my glasses, which made me very sad. Then I bought new glasses online at a cost of $38 for two pairs. Buying glasses online is awesome. Except that I don't entirely love them. But they are okay. But I really wish I had sprung for the thing where they turn dark in sunlight. I've had that forever and it turns out that I can't really live without it.

2. I contacted the guidance counselor at Isaac's school, and his teacher also, about helping to support Isaac through his feelings about his grandma having cancer/chemotherapy. It became clear at some point a week or two ago that we needed help with this. Isaac loves his grandma so much and he is a lot more worried about her than I realized. I feel guilty because for basically his entire life I've been feeling pleased and smug about what a good relationship he has with his grandma (something I never had since my grandparents lived so far away) but yet I never thought about the downside: to wit, how devastated he will eventually be when she dies. Which we hope will be decades from now! but still.

3. Speaking of my mom, she is doing well and chemo is half over (three treatments down, three to go). The kids remain fascinated by her hair loss. The other day Isaac drew a family picture wherein he gave Ruthie enormous amounts of hair, me and himself moderate amounts, and just two or three little wisps on grandma's head.

4. I found this rainbow cake recipe online and decided to make it for Ruthie's birthday party, but I decided to do a trial run first, so we made it last weekend. (I didn't use the actual cake recipe there -- I used a regular white-cake recipe and followed the steps on that webpage for making the rainbow.) It came out great! I posted the pix on Facebook and will try to post them here soonish too.

5. I signed Isaac up for Little League. It starts in late April. I am getting a little nervous about the whole games-at-6pm-on-weeknights thing. I don't think I'm ready to be a "soccer mom." Isn't it "funny" how parenting forces you to do all sorts of things for which you don't think you're ready?

6. My beloved upstairs neighbor Brian announced that he and his girlfriend are going to move in together. This is nice for them but sucks for me. :( He hasn't yet decided whether to rent or sell his place. I can't at all imagine living here with someone else upstairs! But my fantasy of buying Brian out so the kids and I can have the whole house remains stuck firmly in fantasy-land, because, you know, do I look like I can afford to double my monthly mortgage payment? Umm no. So I don't know what's going to happen with that. I just know that we'll miss Brian terribly. :(

7. Oh so much more...but that's enough for now I guess.

Current Mood: discontent

Not this past weekend, but the one before, we went to IKEA. It was my and the kids' first time ever in an IKEA, and it was everything you always hear it is. ;)

I really wanted to get a bunk bed for the kids. I had been looking at them, mostly online, for quite a while. The problem mainly is that the ceiling in the kids' bedroom is fairly low and I hadn't been able to find a bed that I thought had enough clearance between the top bunk and the ceiling. I hoped to find something at IKEA: maybe even the same model of bunk bed that my mom bought last summer for our summer cottage. The ceiling in the kids' room at the cottage is low too and that bunk bed fits in it nicely.

But it turned out that they no longer make that model, alas. They only had one bunk bed that was made of wood (the others were all metal, which I don't like) and I didn't like that one either. It didn't have the option of taking it apart into two regular beds, which to me is a must-have.

So I was about to give up, but then I decided to take one more look around, and ended up finding the "Kura," which is actually a loft bed (a bed that's elevated above the floor, but not to "true" bunk-bed height) and is designed such that you can put a second mattress on the floor under it. They had it set up in the IKEA showroom with the second mattress underneath and also with a tent thingie over the top bunk, which Isaac really liked. The kids had a blast playing around it in the store (they don't let you climb onto the top bunk in the store, for obvious reasons) so I decided, what the heck. It was only $200 for the bed and $150 for each mattress, totalling $500, and I had been mentally budgeting $800-1000 for a bunk bed based on my online research, so I feel like I got a deal. And as my mom pointed out, since I spent so little on the bed itself, I won't feel too terribly upset if a couple of years go by and it isn't working out.

So, I got the bed and the two mattresses. I also got myself a new desk chair, since my old one was in tatters. And, since the new bed for the kids uses two twin mattresses, we had to get all new sheets. The kids had a lot of fun selecting their colors. :)

Then mom and I had to manage to get all this stuff out to mom's car and pack it up somehow. Remember that mom is still recovering from her surgery, so she isn't supposed to lift anything heavier than about 20 pounds. The bunk bed, in its box, weighed almost 100 pounds! Luckily IKEA has people who will lift stuff up onto the top of your car for you. But for liability reasons they won't help you tie it down. So mom and I had to tie it down ourselves, using copious amounts of rope. Luckily, everything else aside from the bed itself (the mattresses, chair, and all the other little things we got) fit inside the car.

Then we had to drive home, on the highway, with the bed on top of the car. That was incredibly nerve-wracking!! Luckily it was a Sunday, so traffic wasn't as heavy as it might have been, but still, it seems like even if you drive slowly in the right-hand lane with your flashers on and an obviously heavy large box tied to the top of your car, people STILL think it's a good idea to tailgate you. Idiots!!!!

Anyway, we made it home. Ruthie fell asleep in the car, it being around her usual naptime (but she doesn't tend to nap on weekends any more -- but that's a whole other post) and stayed asleep the whole time. We got to our house and fortunately my upstairs neighbors were home, so they helped carry the heavy items inside. Then we drove back to mom's house, but Ruthie was still napping, so we decided to drive around a bit more and let her sleep. We went to Central Square for mom to run an errand, then we drove to Whole Foods and I went in with Isaac to grab a few things we needed while mom sat in the car with the sleeping Ruthie. Then we went back to mom's house and finally had to wake Ruthie up to get back into our car and go home. LOL.

Then, the following Tuesday, my fabulous upstairs neighbor/co-homeowner Brian came down while I was at work and the kids were at school, and he put the bed together for us! How awesome is that? :) The kids were crazy excited to see their bed all set up when we got home. They picked out their sheets and we put them on and they slept on it for the first time that night. They love it!

Of course, there was still the small matter of their old beds cluttering up the room. It was almost impossible to move in the room for a couple of days. I posted the beds for free on craigslist and someone finally came and took them away on Friday. I also gave away the enormous mirror that had been hanging on the wall where Isaac's top bunk now is.

Oh, and I put the desk chair together myself on Wednesday evening, while Ruthie was throwing a massively epic tantrum because I wouldn't let her have milk in her granola. I am so mean. Also I rule. ;)

Pix of the new beds to come soon.

Current Mood: rushed

Well, our concert went off fairly well.

Music-wise, it was pretty great. All the singers (chorus and soloists) were great, the orchestra was mostly great, and the audience was appreciative. What little there was of it, that is.

I'd say there were maybe, I dunno, a hundred people there? I suck as estimates of that type. It was a very good turnout considering the weather. It would have been a *terrible* turnout in different weather, but ah well.

Before the second half, the mayor of Cambridge (who also sings in our chorus, and was there at its founding) presented a proclamation and the key to the city to William, our music director, who, as I may have mentioned, is retiring and this was his last Messiah concert with us. It was emotional. I cried a little. I cried more at the very end of the concert. sigh.

( Getting to the concert was an adventure.... )

By the time we got out after the concert, the precip had all turned to rain, and much of the snow to slush; there were ENORMOUS puddles of slushy water at many street corners, which made me shiver in dismay at the thought of what those would look like this morning, all frozen over. And without going into the gory details, let me just say, I was right. It was REALLY ugly this morning. I had parked in a slushy parking spot, and had some difficulty getting out simply because of all the crusted-over ice. And it's supposed to remain in the 20s F today, so nothing will be melting. I hear it'll be in the high 30s on Wednesday, but it's supposed to snow more *headdesk* so I guess we won't be "helped" by much melting there. Ugh! Have I mentioned lately how much I hate winter? :P

Just because no post would be really complete without a cute-kid tidbit, I'll mention that Ruthie has gotten the concept of "too" as in "also," so if for example she sees Isaac having milk, she might say "milk too!" ("muck doo") to express that she wants some. She is also getting the idea of "two" as in the number two, and now when she points out features (e.g. eyes, boots, hands) she'll say "two!" afterward. This morning she pointed to my eyes and said "mama eyes" and then "two," and I said "yes, mama has two eyes," and then I said, "Ruthie has three eyes!" and she gave me a very surprised/confused look, and Isaac was like, "Noooooo!" LOL -- I think Ruthie is a little young yet for that particular type of humor, although Isaac finds it very funny.

Ruthie has also started using two-word phrases with "more" e.g. "more milk" "more book" or (somewhat heart-breakingly, last night when I was taking a long time about parking the car after not having seen the kids all day), "more mama!" She still refuses to say an actual word for nursing; she will make the sign or make her little grunting noise, and I always try to get her to say "nursie" but she won't. But now she'll say "more" and then grunt. LOL.

I'm happy to say that my sore throat basically disappeared in time for the concert, yay. And the nausea and TMI from Friday has not recurred. However, today my stomach's still a little uneasy so I'm not sure what is "safe" to eat for lunch. sigh. But I better go figure something out, 'cause I'm getting hungry.

Current Mood: cold

Awesome chorus rehearsal last night. On the drive home, mom and I both commented on the fact that, even though we've been singing Handel's Messiah every December for many years (mom says it has been 18 years, I say 16, but either way it's a lot), we still learned and discovered new things about the music in yesterday's rehearsal. Truly a testament to the genius both of Handel and of our music director.

Not so awesome was the kids with the babysitter last night, alas. They were both cranky all night. ugh.

Also not so awesome was ( the saga of the washing machine. )

So, cross your fingers that I'll successfully do some laundry tonight, 'cause it's fairly dire. yikes.

In Ruthie news, her new word this morning appeared to be "pumpkin" unless I'm losing my mind, which is quite possible, heh. Also she has been working hard on her pout. She has quite an impressive one, which she busts out if things don't go her way in even the tiniest of matters. ;) I really hope I'll manage to get a picture of this pout, because it is world-class, people.

Speaking of pictures, Amazon has a deal on this digital camera that's awfully tempting. Only $155 and you get a free 2GB memory card. It looks like a great camera, except for the part about battery life and the flash needing 4-6 seconds to recharge. That can be an ETERNITY when you're trying to get good pix of fast-moving kids! So I'm not sure. The memory card costs about $20 and there are other good cameras in the same vein for $130, so maybe I should do that instead. I dunno. What do you think?