This is the reason I am always late...

This picture is from this summer but it is still accurate portrayal of something that has happened one too many times.

Here is the scenario,  we are all cleaned and dressed, ready to leave for town. I tell the kids to go get in the van and buckle up while I load up our stuff. Somehow between walking from the kitchen through the garage to the van my daughter finds something to distract her. The results look something like this.

Sometimes I wish we lived in a high-rise condo.

'til next time...

Of course I think they're cute....they're my kids...

but you must admit, they are pretty darn cute!

'til next time...

Why I don't put vacuum marks in my carpet anymore...

Well, aside from the obvious fact that I don't have carpet I think there are other reasons I am no longer "that housekeeper".   

I used to be, my place used to be spotless, now...there is not a spot uncovered.  

A lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of the youth members of this household.  Regrettably, there is a lot of mess that I would be hard pressed to accuse them of.  

I'm always somewhat amazed and horrified to realize my living room looks like this every afternoon. 

And then I'm equally amazed that it looks like this by bedtime.

ahhh....one day I will miss the mess!

'til next time...

The correct way to wear sunglasses...

My daughter seems to believe that sunglasses are designed to be worn on the top of the head instead of covering the eyes.  
In vain I have tried to correct this misperception.  
Recently it was called to my attention that there may be a legitimate reason for her confusion.  
The following pictures of me were taken over the space of a weekend. 

Well, that explains that. 

'til next time...

Getting your taxes done can be fun.

Most people dread this time of year....the dreaded tax season.  Us, not so much.  We kind of enjoy it.  

It helps that my husband has been using the same guy for years and years, they spend the first half of the appointment visiting and catching up on the previous year. The other reason this is enjoyable is that our tax guy works in Alexandria so we usually spend the rest of the afternoon enjoying Old Town. 

Since spring came so early this year it was very beautiful down by the waterfront. 

"hey sis, let's pick the flowers in the city park! Mom won't be mad if we give her one."

We didn't get a big enough tax return for this car.  Wythe wanted to take a ride in it, when I explained it was someones car he corrected me, "that's not a car, that is a toy."   "You are right buddy, that is called a grown up's toy."

Enjoying a treat....Wythe had asked to get a crepe but settled for a croissant instead. I do sometimes wonder what kind of monster I have created. 

"Oh look, the Eiffel Tower!!!"

Then...

"are we in Paris??"

One day buddy, one day.

"I wanna go too!"

"I'm cross."

Really?  We hadn't noticed.

"I run!"  ...what she does all day long.

Now, we only have to wait 365 days to do it again....

'til next time...

Visiting the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum

A few weeks ago we met some friends at the Air and Space Museum.  The kids had a great time running around looking at all the aircraft.  We got to see the Enterprise shuttle one last time before it moves to New York.

This museum will be the lucky recipient of Discovery, arriving on April 17, 2012.  The plan is to fly it in to Dulles that morning.  I would love to see it being flown in, what a site that would be!  They haven't, and probably will not, announced the time it will be arriving.  According to some sources Discovery will be flown around the city before it lands but that has not been confirmed, nor would they confirm a route.  My guess is that anywhere near Dulles airport or the museum would offer up a view of the plane with the shuttle.  I am not sure if we are up to camping out with two little ones in order to catch a glimpse, we will have to make that decision later on.

On April 19, 2012 the festivities start for welcoming Discovery to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum.  The parking lot and building will open two hours early that day and visitors are encouraged to arrive early in order to park.  The schedule of events is as follows:

11:00 am Discovery arrives
       They will have the U.S. Marine Drum & Bugle Corps and Discovery crew members
       Nose-to-nose meeting of Discovery and Enterprise

11:30 am  Ceremony starts
     
From noon till 4:00 pm people will be able to view both Discovery and Enterprise and take photographs.
At 4:00 pm the shuttles will be moved. Enterprise will be moved out of the Space Hanger and Discovery will be moved into the hanger for permanent display. 


The website for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has more information about welcoming Discovery.

I am hoping we can attend some of the events but I haven't yet figured out how to spend all day at a museum with a 2 and 3 year old.  Here are a few of our photos from our recent visit. 

My son was "impressed" with the airplanes and helicopters. 

It would seem we are raising very studious children, they were very interested to "read"  the details about each exhibit.  

My son was excited to see the space shuttle.  They were actually working on Enterprise that day in preparation of the move. Enterprise has been here on display since 2003 but will be arriving  in New York on April 23, 2012. 

Wythe and his buddy

My kids checking out the Enola Gay.  They liked this plane because "it is shiny".  I really haven't taken the time to explain World War II history to my two-year-old and three-year-old yet, so they do not realize this is just a pretty killing machine.  I figured I should probably wait another year or two to explain that part of history.  

Saying goodbye to Enterprise. 

'til next time...

How to potty train two toddlers at the same time

Tip #1:    do not attempt to do this.

Tip#2:     if you ignore Tip#1  go directly to the store and buy lots of wine


In January I decided it was once again time to potty train my son.  I say "once again" because we have had numerous failed attempts.  But this time I figured he was actually ready so decided to give it another go.  I really wasn't planning to train both kids at once but they do everything together so train one, train both.

For the record, I do not advise this.

Should you choose to do it this way you may find men in white coats carting you out of your front door with your arms strapped to your sides.

On the plus side, the quiet time in the padded room may come as a welcome relief.



There are many stories I could tell about this experience, but frankly I'm not sure if I'm ready. Some memories are still too raw, and there are some things I'm not sure I want to remember.

I'm not sure that I want to remember how many days my daughter refused to wear a diaper yet refused to go in the potty. The amount of messes I cleaned up....did you know children pee about 20 times a day?

I think I would prefer to not remember the bathroom disasters as my children attempted to clean out their potty chairs. Apparently one must pour buckets of water over the toilet, on the floor, then use one half roll of toilet paper to attempt to wipe it up, but when the toilet paper turns into a soggy mess you just leave the room.

Speaking of cleaning toilets...I choose to not dwell on the memory of finding my daughter cleaning out her potty with my toothbrush.

I also choose to believe that was the first time it had ever happened.

I could tell you about my kids saying "look mommy, we are washing our cars!"  Then me explaining to my kids that "we do not 'wash' our matchbox cars in the pee in the potty."

I would like to forget about finding my children dipping their crackers into the pee in their potty...and eating them.  Don't really want to remember that one.

I would rather not remember the embarrassment of my children asking strangers at the store "do you go potty in your underwear???"

I would like to forget...grocery shopping with two toddlers that are potty training.  I believe I spent more time cleaning up puddles and changing wet clothes than actually shopping.

I would like to forget...having your kids fall asleep in the car and having to make the choice of letting them sleep knowing they will flood their car seat, or waking them so that you do not have to wash the car seat covers yet again.

I would rather forget having our Valentine's dinner interrupted numerous times by taking a child to the toilet. Actually that would apply to all the meals we have had since January 24th.

I would rather forget the amount of treats I have let my children consume all in the spirit of pure bribery

I would like to forget the amount of times I have had to cheer enthusiastically for that 1/2 teaspoon of pee in the potty

Or the dorky smiles I have had to paste on my face as I say "congratulations on your cacca (poop), yes that is a big one......yes, that does look like a caterpillar......yes, I am impressed that you can make a caterpillar cacca"     ?????          I do not remember a single parenting book that warned you that you would have to compliment the appearance/shape of your child's poop.

Yes, there are many stories I could share about the past 57 days but I think I will just try to forget all that and instead be glad that we have arrived at the stage of only a few accidents a day.

yes, having identical potty chairs does help!

'til next time...

Potty training + house renovation = Stale blog

2 few weeks back my favorite living brother wrote on my Facebook page,  "your blog is stale"

Well, that really made me want to sit down and write.

Not.

Funny how words of encouragement like that just make you want to run for the hills.

But he was right, my blog has been stale.  Frankly, my brain has been stale. I'd like to say that has changed but...I think that would be telling a falsehood.

Anyway, despite my brain being completely dysfunctional I have been potty training two toddlers, working on the house addition, potty training two toddlers,  planning for spring plantings,  potty training two toddlers, and potty training. I'm pretty sure the potty training explains everything that is wrong with my brain. That, however, deserves it's own post and I may or may not write about it, I'm still trying to decide if I want to document the misery.

In other news,  we have continued working in the addition but we have been doing the dreaded task of painting trim. To date we are putting our 3,287th coat of paint on the trim and it still looks the same as it did a few weeks ago. I can't even show pictures of the "progress" because the 3,287th coat looks remarkably like the 1,245th coat looked.
We did finish painting the bookcases and put the books in so that we could get the boxes off of the floor. That was an encouraging sight because the room starts to look "lived in".
Probably the biggest project I accomplished was cleaning out the closet in the addition.  That was kind of like my own Day of Reckoning. For weeks, or months, I have been shoving everything into that closet. Outgrown clothes, tools, paint buckets, gifts, everything that doesn't fit or have a place in our house. And, I know of at least one time that I just grabbed everything off the floor and stuffed it in that closet before company came over. I knew that one day I would have to clean out this closet of shame. The good news is I got a slight grace period on my day of reckoning, I got to move a lot of the stuff out to the office. That will be my next room of shame to deal with. But at least the closet is cleaned out and we can work on  installing the shelves and racks.

Just to humiliate myself I'll show you a before picture,

...and after a very long day,

Here's to stale blogs!

'til next time...

Addition update - progress has been made

I was looking at my blog today and realized that I haven't updated about the progress on the addition.  The best part is, there is actually progress to report.

At the end of November we moved the bookcases to their new home, you can read about that here.  But since that post we have installed the crown molding around the top and painted the bookcases.  Like everything else around here it is not quite finished so I can't take it off the list but it is still progress.

                               

We have also been working on the outside as well. Our property is very sloped and we had to dig into the hill when we started building the addition.  The long range plan was to build retaining walls once the addition was completed. However, we have been getting so much water under the house every time it rains that we had to move forward with that project. Last month we had a company come in and start digging the footers for the retaining wall.  This was a very effective way of entertaining our toddlers, you can read about that here.

This is what our yard looked like behind the addition. Notice the logs?  I call those "redneck retaining walls", they didn't really work.

After a day of digging we had lots of dirt piles.  A little boy's dream come true.

Then after days and days and days of work, we have the first level of wall up, 110 feet of concrete block.  Now Peter is digging back 8 feet to make room for the second level.

Basically, we are building our own Great Wall of China.  It is possible that the Great Wall of Rightmyer may take almost as long to construct as the China version. Once all the block walls are up we still have to clad all of the walls with brick. Peter and I were discussing how many bricks we need for the first level of wall. We discovered we can't count that high. It is somewhat discouraging to realize you will have to lay more bricks than you can count. However, bricks are pretty small, not too heavy, I see no reason why Wythe and Ainsley cannot start their masonry training soon.

Now for the big news.....the bathroom!  After months of trying to pick tile, pick paint colors, changing tile, changing paint colors, making up my mind, changing my mind....it is finished.  I can no longer change my mind on the tile or the layout of the tile.  I could change my mind about the paint color but I think I am content to let  that be.  This bathroom has been a story unto itself.  I think to do it justice I will need to write a post only about the bathroom, so you may be hearing more about that later. But for now, here is the picture of the bathroom prior to tile/paint/etc. 

And here it is painted and tiled. We are still waiting for the shower head and I need to do some touch up work, another coat of stain on the cabinets, hang the window curtain, things like that.  But this is pretty much what it is going to look like.

It is so exciting to see things finally coming together, perhaps this will motivate me to finish painting the rest of the addition!

'til next time...

A coat of many colors...

but isn't it adorable?   I think this is my favorite coat for her.

'til next time...

The pros and cons to heating with a woodstove

There are many great reasons to heat with wood.  If you have enough trees on your property then it is basically free, provided you put the muscle into chopping down the tree, splitting, stacking, etc.  Also, there is nothing more cozy than a house with heat radiating off of a wood stove. 

However, the downside is, unless you get up during the night to keep filling the stove then it is freezing in the morning.  It may take a few hours to get the house warmed up to a comfortable level.  We now keep our furnace set on 60 degrees so that it will come on in the night. We found that when the house drops into the 50's it takes forever to warm back up.  It probably doesn't help that we have all hardwood and tile floors in the house, they get ice cold as well. 

Here is what it looks like some mornings around our house, particularly when I am having a rough time getting that fire going. 

'til next time...

Christmas morning with two children...

Probably the last year the kids actually "sleep in" on Christmas morning.  We had no complaints, we were up all night wrapping gifts so we needed the hour of sleep.

Checking out the stockings....look at the pile of presents under that tree!

she is either really concentrating or half asleep

Wythe got some trains, Ainsley got a tiny cat figurine. "Better kiss that present little girl, it may be all you get!"

Peter & Wythe opening "Cranky the Crane"....not sure who is more excited.

"It is what I have wanted my whole life! All 3 years of it, or since I knew what trains were..."

"Seriously?  a bath towel?   Wythe got trains and trucks and I got a towel?"

the fun of Christmas morning, gifts to play with, paper and ribbons strewn on the floor and more gifts yet to open!

One of the best parts of Christmas?    Both of my children took a nap, AT THE SAME TIME, and slept for two hours!

We will now be celebrating Christmas on a weekly basis. 

Expensive?  Yes.   Worth the cost and hassle?  Absolutely. 

'til next time...