School days

Every Wednesday Ella goes to "school." In reality all she does is run around and play and does some sort of craft and actually eats a complete meal, but hey, it gives me a much-needed 5 hours where I only have one child to deal with.

Here's my problem with school days. Tuesday night I come up with this crazy list of everything I am going to accomplish on Wednesday. Even as I am making my list I know it is entirely unrealistic. Take, for example, this week's list:

-Clean the whole house. Like not the half-assed cleaning that I am able to accomplish with the kids running around. A real deep cleaning. Including baseboards. Oh, how I loathe cleaning baseboards. But this week is going to be the week.

Thank you, Hyperbole and a Half, for totally getting me

-Drink lots of coffee, in relative peace. Preferably while reading a book. And not any old book. Something that will make me smarter. I'm going to find one of those lists of all the books you should read before you turn 30 or die or something and delve into it.

-Do all those educational and developmental things you are supposed to do with babies that I dutifully did with Ella but poor second child Marian has not had. In fact, this week we will even make it to baby story time at the library. I won't just run into the library with Marian napping in the Tula so I can get more books for myself.

-Prep dinner for tonight. It's going to be completely awesome to be able to pop something in the oven quickly instead of trying to scramble something together during the witching hour as I gulp down wine to keep my sanity.

-Pay the bills. Not only that, after I pay them I will haul myself up to the study and file away everything that has been accumulating on the desk/guest bed for the past six months. Then as long as I'm up there, I'm going to organize everything in that room. And put the Christmas decorations back in the crawl space.

-Finally sew the curtains for the living room.

-As long as I'm doing home stuff, I'm going to go to Lowes and pick up paint to re-do the half bath. Then tonight I'll paint the bathroom and as long as I'm painting I'll make a dent in painting our bedroom too. It is going to be fantastic. Goodbye, Bartian beige. Hello, color.

I do this to myself, without fail, every single week. You want to know what I did today?

-Swept the kitchen floor, washed the dishes, and did some laundry. That counts as the whole house, right?

-Made myself a latte and tried to get creative with the foam art like they do in coffee houses. I made a squiggle. It was fantastic.

-Paid the bills. Piled them up neatly and added them to the ever-growing mountain of stuff to file.

-Checked my phone and email about a gazillion times to see if my best buddy Kristen has had her baby yet. Come on, priorities here people.

-Nursed Marian about a gazillion times. Managed to read maybe three pages of a book while doing so. It is a Pulitzer Prize book by a Nobel Prize winning author so that has to count for something (went back and checked- apparently I have zero memory these days).

-Did stuff in the garden. Pretty sure I managed to eat a bug.

-Goofed around on the internet. Then did some serious internet stuff like browsing for shoes for Marian (hello, was this kid not just born?) and looking at stuff for vacation.

-Chased after Marian as she crawled under the butcher block, attempted to climb up the fridge, cruised around the living room, and made a bee-line for the dog toys. Also let her play uninterrupted with all of Ella's toys, which to Marian is probably the best part of school days. Sang "If you're happy and you know it" probably 50 times because she thinks it is the best song ever. Tried (unsuccessfully) to get her to clap her hands. Comforted her as she threw a shit fit because I won't let her eat paper or the gazillion threads she manages to find everywhere.

-Thought about dinner in a vague sense. Remembered Jim has a work dinner tonight so I can do a kiddie dinner before swim tonight and then do a real dinner for myself after they are in bed. Or, you know, have ice cream. Dinner of champions.

-And now have spent 20 minutes writing this blog post. And it's going on 12:30. I know pretty soon I'm going to say screw it and get another cup of coffee.

Probably I should give in and simply put "relax" and "play with the baby" as the only things on the to-do list. 

Things that make me happy

The other night Jim pointed out that I have a tendency to get too caught up in negative stuff. In an attempt to focus more on the positives in my life (and conceding that yes, he may have a valid point), here is a post all about random stuff that makes me happy.

Afternoon snack time with this little non-napping goober and realizing just how delicious those Annie's bunny crackers are.

This box that has been sitting under this couch for the past few weeks. It means that one day- maybe a year from now- I might get around to making new curtains for my living room.

Waking up to the smell of fresh bread. Thank you, programmable bread machine!

Seeing how happy this little bug is when she wakes up from her morning nap

The sight of cloth diapers drying on the line

Ripe raspberries fresh from the garden

Quick garden update

Things are growing! Some a lot better than others. 

Here's the herb garden plus garlic. We let Ella plant a whole bunch of the seeds. You would never know, right? 

Some of our veggies are doing better than others. The spinach and radishes are doing amazing. I actually harvested a whole bunch of radishes after this picture was taken. Sadly, our broccoli had an unfortunate meeting with the toddler ("Here you go Mama. I pick BIG WEEDS for you!"). Right now it is still limping along. 

During my visit to Raleigh Jim decided to put in another bed. We have a few more tomatoes, peppers, and some extra onions in here. The chili pepper plants actually have some small peppers growing. Ella planted some pepper seeds which may have sprouted. Or they may be weeds. Too small yet to tell, although she insists they are her pepper seeds. Hopefully she's right! 

There's a whole bunch of stuff growing in the rock garden bed- onions, beans, carrots, peas, corn, artichokes, and I *think* some squash (next year we are labeling). And of course, weeds. Pesky little buggers.

We also got a pleasant surprise- raspberries! We planted both early and late varieties of berries and weren't expecting to get much of anything this year. Then these little guys appeared.

In other garden surprises- we have a family of robins! Ella found one of their eggshells yesterday and although we saw the nest, we couldn't spot any baby birds. The babies decided to put in an appearance this morning while the kids were playing on the swing set. I guess they got used to the racket and decided to peek out. We even got to see the mommy and daddy robins bringing them worms. 

Perched on our roof with a worm in hand- er, in beak

Feeding the babies

Yummy worms

Randoms...

Here's a hodge-podge post of what's been going on here:

-Had an amazing weekend in Raleigh with one of my besties, Kristen from BeerCat Brewing. Almost four whole awesome days of gabbing non-stop. Being back there made me realize just how much I miss living on the East Coast and how much I wish we lived closer to one another. I have lots of friends here in BFE, but none that "get" me in the way Kristen does. I can't wait to have our next get-together.

-Came back from Raleigh and almost immediately got sick with viral pharyngitis. If you aren't familiar with it, it's like strep throat without the benefit of antibiotics. Plus the lovely addition of full body aches, chills, and hot flashes. I lost five pounds from not being able to eat anything besides ice cream for almost a week. During the worst of it I couldn't even drink water, but for whatever reason I could have ginger ale.

-Jim threw me an amazing Mother's Day weekend. Sushi? Check. Alcohol? Check. A date night so horrible that we can laugh about it for years to come? Check. (Note: my side-eyeing of events at the BFE Community Center is now completely justified.) Relaxing morning? Yep. Alcoholic beverages, ice cream, and not having to worry about a single meal? You bet. Super awesome craft "from the kiddos"? Oh yeah. Jim made me a super cute votive candle holder and then had the girls paint it. I know a lot of moms are like, "Eh, I don't want some craft from the kids, give me jewelry." I'm the opposite. I LOVE stuff that my kids make, especially when I'm not the one who has to come up with the activity, wrangle the kids into doing it, and then clean it all up.

-We had our first salad of the season made completely from stuff in our garden. Minus the cheese, of course. Because what is a salad without cheese?

Anyway, now that we are all mostly healthy again and things are semi-calm here, it'll be back to posting like normal.

Happy Easter!

 Happy Easter from our family to yours! We had a fun weekend of dyeing eggs, hunting for eggs, binge eating candy, and hanging out with friends. 

Each year I go kind of crazy with dyeing Easter eggs. I think I might enjoy it more than my kids, although this year Ella got pretty into it. We make hard boiled eggs quite often and every Easter I think we should dye eggs throughout the year (because why not) and then I end up forgetting. 

This year's finished product. Half of them are already cracked because Ella bashed them. 

Nomming on an egg. Not the funnest of teething toys

The mad scientist hard at work

The girls' baskets were pretty minimal. I totally cheated and put the stuff my mom sent in their baskets (a bib for Marian and a book for Ella) and gave them stuff they were getting anyway, like the Annie's bunny crackers that we ought to buy in bulk. They each got an outfit that my friend Laura custom-made (she has a ton of super cute stuff if you want to check out her shop).

Not quite sure what to make of her Easter basket

Modeling their new outfits

Doing an egg hunt with a toddler was...interesting. Last year we simply scattered the eggs around the floor and called it a day. This year we got the idea to actually hide the eggs. Since she did an egg hunt at mom's day out, we presumed things would go smoothly. Yeah, I should have remembered that she is a toddler and things never go as planned. 

We hid the hard boiled eggs around the play room. I thought it would be cute to hid one in the pan on her play kitchen. She promptly found it but refused to pick it up because (a) the stove is hot (duh mom) and (b) it wasn't done cooking yet (double duh). And so on and so forth. 

Then she moved onto the few plastic eggs we had hidden around the living room. She found the one by the couch and decided to re-hide it under a pillow. Every time we asked her to find more eggs she would go back to the couch, show us the egg, and inform us that "it's hiding." 

In any case, she had a fun time. 

Ella searching for eggs

Enjoying a cup of coffee in the midst of the chaos

Poor Marian, on the other hand, spent most of the weekend out of sorts, as she is battling yet another cold. Eventually we have to reach a point where neither kid will have a runny nose, right? Despite feeling crummy, she figured out how to pull herself to standing. Now she demands to stand all. the. time.

Oh yeah. This happened. 

 On the agenda for this week- going for lots of walks to burn off all the Cadbury eggs.

Garden preview

It's that time of year again- garden time. This year we decided to significantly expand our little garden area.

Here's the original garden area:

With our soil it's pretty much necessary to have raised beds. Last year Jim meticulously built our first garden bed from rocks. It looks nice, but we- well, he- didn't have time for that this year. Plus we aren't entirely sure what we're going to do with the side of the yard and needed something less permanent. 

Enter in these two garden beds: 

The plan is to have one for herbs and one for more vegetables. If you're wondering what the black thing is in the back corner- that's our compost bin. I'm weirdly excited about composting. 

The planned plants for this year: 

-tomatoes

-cherry tomatoes

-squash

-zucchini

-onions

-carrots

-lettuce

-peppers (bell, jalapeno, and cayenne)

-green beans

-peas

-broccoli

-cucumber

-corn (well, maybe- we're looking into it)

-rhubarb

-spinach

-potatoes

-cantaloupe

-pumpkin

-parsley

-oregano

-basil

-cilantro

-rosemary

-thyme

-chives

-mint

-garlic

-turmeric

-ginger

-cumin

If that wasn't enough, we decided to put in a big long row of raspberry, blackberry, and blueberry bushes. Supposedly they do quite well in our climate. They don't look like much of anything at the moment. When we checked on them today, some of them were already getting some leaves. They won't produce anything this year but hopefully next summer we will have plenty of berries. 

There you have it. I'll post an update later when the garden is a little bit more interesting to look at. 

The pit of despair

Today, we are getting our very own pit of despair installed.

Sadly, it doesn't look like this:

Albino monk sold separately

It's actually just a boring tornado shelter. But obviously it's a lot more fun to call it the pit of despair.

Considering the time we've had so far today, I think my naming is pretty apt. The guys ended up hitting a water line while they were digging. Can I pause and ask, who the hell puts a water line under the garage? Because, ya know, if something ever happened to said water line, wouldn't it be vastly preferable to dig through grass instead of through concrete? The hitting of the water line meant that, along with having no water all morning long, we have to pay the plumber AND will have to pay the shelter guys overtime. Ugh.

Hopefully the pit of despair will be complete soon. And here's hoping we don't ever have to use the thing for anything other than storing beer.

Tuna fish, we meet again

In my last post I mentioned my love of Lenten Fish Fries. I forgot until this morning that along with Fish Fries, Lent also brings one of my most hated foods: canned tuna fish.

If you didn't already know, Catholics are supposed to abstain from eating meat on Fridays in Lent, as well as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. I tend to solve this problem by eating a vegetarian meal or having some sort of fish filet. Jim tends to solve this by making tuna fish sandwiches.

I have several issues with canned tuna fish.

1. It comes in a can that looks like it could be mistaken for cat food (which, in my opinion, it probably is)

2. It looks like something my toddler ate then spit out

3. It makes the entire house reek and requires hours of fumigation/gas masks/candles to get rid of the smell

4. It is generally paired with one of my other most hated foods, celery

5. Tuna can be absolutely delicious when it is served properly (mmm, ahi tuna) and it's insulting to me that someone decided to turn something scrumptious into a pile of cat puke

Every year I debate whether canned tuna fish is too much of a price to pay for the crispy greasy goodness of Friday Fish Fry. Maybe in true Catholic fashion I should just offer it up.

Yes, a real family lives here

It's been a rainy couple of days here in Oklahoma. Yesterday morning the forecast called for nice and sunny weather, so we made plans to go to the playground with some friends. Great idea- until it started down pouring. 

Enter a moment of toddler-induced craziness. I texted my friends and suggested they come over to the house instead for an indoor play date. 

Why was this so crazy? 

Because my kitchen sink was filled with breakfast dishes needing to be washed. 

Because the counter still had mail piled up on it. 

Because I hadn't vacuumed the carpet, scrubbed the half-bath toilet, swept the floor, dusted the house, picked up the playroom, straightened up the living room, and made a nutritious snack for the kids.

Because I didn't have any activity planned for the kids besides "let them run amok in the house and hope no one gets a crayon stuck up their nose." 

And because they were coming over in 15 minutes and there was no way my house was going to be perfectly clean and organized, a snack was getting made, or a toddler-friendly activity found on Pinterest.  

Yes, my friends were going to see that actual people lived in my house. They were going to find out that I'm not a perfect housekeeper. That some days my toddler gets Saltines that I have snagged from the last time we were at a restaurant for a snack. And sometimes the best activity I can come up with is letting Ella go to town with a sheet of stickers (it's good for those motor skills, right?). 

Believe it or not, the world did not come to an end. The kids still had a fun play date, and I know at least Ella was tired enough afterward to take a fantastic nap, which made the rest of the rainy day go by faster. 

It just goes to show that what Jim has been telling me for years is true- that I am my own worst critic when it comes to the house and being a good mom. Inviting people over without thoroughly cleaning and planning involved taking a major step outside my comfort zone. But had I not impulsively invited people over, I would have spent that morning bored and frustrated- as would have my toddler. Instead I got to share the tedium of a rainy day with friends. That trumps a perfectly clean house any day.  

Productivity with and without a toddler

We decided recently to get a mother's helper. No, I'm not talking about booze (for once)- we hired one of Ella's babysitters to come by one morning a week so I can actually get things done around the house and run errands without having to wrangle her in and out of the car seat. 

I thought before this morning there must be something inherently wrong with me because I can never seem to get anything done. Everything around the house seems to be in a perpetual state of being half-done. Some nights I contemplated the possibility of adult-onset ADD (not sure if such a thing even exists, but you know how crazy thoughts can get at 3am). 

Here's what I typically accomplish in a morning: 

-Shower

-Brush my teeth

-Get Ella dressed

-Make 5989038589 trips to the potty

-Try to wash dishes while simultaneously reminding Ella to tell me if she needs to go to the potty, telling her repeatedly that we only color on paper, and having to stop at least once to get her down off the kitchen table

-Occasionally go to the grocery store, which involves telling her she can't take things down off the shelves, that we sit on our bottoms in the cart, and oftentimes a reminder that we leave clothes on in public

Here's what I accomplished today: 

-Meal planned/made a grocery list

-Ran all my errands (bank, drugstore, grocery store), which took a grand total of 45 minutes

-Organized all the papers in the study and organized everything in my desk

-Dusted the upstairs

-Cleaned the kitchen

-Went through my email

-Had time to go to the coffee shop, drink a latte, and read some of my book with zero interruptions

Besides getting things done, I feel about a thousand times more relaxed. That leads me to the more reflective part of this post. When hemming and hawing about whether to hire someone to come in to help, part of me felt like I was admitting defeat as a mom. Surely I should be able to deal with raising a child, housekeeping, and being pregnant without any help. After all, isn't that what most moms do? 

A conversation at the playground with an equally-flustered friend made me think that, no, motherhood is not supposed to be about doing it all on your own. Childbearing and child raising traditionally has been (and in many parts of the world still is) a more community effort. It's only recently that moms are expected to take a solo approach. And let me tell you, I don't think this approach is healthy or is working. Every mom of a young child that I know talks about how she feels overworked, overtired, lonely, and frustrated. Every single one has talked about needing to take more time for herself but not knowing how to make it work or how to do it without feeling insanely guilty or inadequate. 

What I really accomplished this morning was learning that doing something for myself is the best thing I can do for my family. When Ella wakes up from her nap, she'll have a mom who is refreshed and ready to read Curious George books repeatedly. Jim will have a wife who is happier and more relaxed- although I make no promises about not falling asleep on the couch tonight. 

The 40 Day Challenge

Every so often my house starts to drive me completely insane. I become this crazy person obsessed with cleaning and organizing. Usually, though, I burn myself out halfway through one little project or become bogged down with searching for ways to better organize things or products that will help keep everything in order.

A couple of weeks ago, I got the organizing bug again. Bad. While browsing Pinterest for nifty ways to make my life better (because that clearly was a more productive use of my time than, ya know, actually cleaning), I came across a pin entitled "40 Bags in 40 Days." Basically, the idea is to pick out 40 areas in your house to clean, spend one day cleaning/organizing/purging stuff from each, and at the end you will have a cleaner house and less crap to boot. A lot of people do it over Lent but as I don't want to wait until next spring to do this, I'm starting now.

There are two reasons I'm a little obsessed with organization and purging unnecessary stuff from our lives. The first is I simply don't like having a lot of "stuff." We still have our fair amount of crap and stuff tends to start accumulating quickly so I figure the more I can get out of my house, the better I can deal with everything that comes into it.

The second reason is I have a hard time keeping myself organized. I can't blame it (entirely) on having a toddler, but she does exacerbate the problem. Most days I feel completely scatterbrained and I know it will get worse with two kids. I am trying to motivate myself now, before Schrodinger is born, to have a good system in place so things will be slightly less chaotic and I might have a fighting chance at salvaging some sanity.

Here, in no particular order, is my list of the 40 things I want to clean/organize in the next 40 days:

1. Master bathroom (linen closet)
2. Master bathroom (under my sink/drawers)
3. Pantry
4. Fridge/freezer
5. Guest room closet (part 1)
6. Guest room closet (part 2- yes it's bad enough I need two days)
7. Laundry room
8. Car
9. Playroom
10. Living room bookshelves
11. My desk
12. Study closet
13. Ella’s bathroom
14. Crawlspace
15. Magazines
16. Cookbook cabinet
17. Bins in study
18. My closet
19. Recycling
20. Spice cabinet
21. Entryway closet
22. Ella’s closet
23. Dresser drawers
24. Bonus room
25. Junk drawer in kitchen
26. Mudroom
27. Garage (workbench)
28. Garage (miscellaneous)
29. Jim’s clothes
30. China cabinets
31. Kitchen utensils
32. Baking cabinet
33. Miscellaneous cabinet in kitchen (this is where we put stuff we don't know where it should go)
34. Back patio
35. Ella’s art supplies
36. Clean exterior of kitchen cabinets
37. Clean oven, stovetop, and microwave
38. Butcher block (where we tend to dump everything)
39. Filing cabinet
40. Half bath

I won't do daily updates because honestly that would be tedious for me to write and even more tedious for you to read. I'll try to do a weekly accountability check-in to let you all know how it's working out for me.

Sick Toddler

My clothes are encrusted with snot.

There are crayons all over the kitchen floor.

Everywhere I turn, there is yet another dirty tissue.

Foods that don't contain cheese are poison. Unless they are crackers. Preferably eaten with cheese.

Yesterday the only thing that made her happy was pretending to sweep the floor. Today, it's watching me sweep the floor (is she trying to tell me something about the cleanliness of the house? Hey kiddo, if you didn't smash your crackers into the floor, it wouldn't be so dirty).

We may not survive the week.

My problem with eating healthy

I try to eat healthy. I seriously do. I'm big into making the majority of our food from scratch instead of buying pre-made food. I mean, hello, I even have made my kid her own snack crackers. Obviously I wouldn't go through that much of an effort if I was not passionate about making sure we eat healthy.

But I have a problem with this. A big problem.

See, here is what happens. I go to the grocery store, feeling self-righteous in the fact that while other people are putting soda and potato chips into their cart, mine is being filled with things like broccoli and quinoa.

I get home, and start making all sorts of delicious, nutritious things for us to eat. Everything is going great. I am smug in my knowledge that while I could have bought ice cream, instead I am making banana bread as a treat.

Then a day comes where I look to see what there is to eat. As I peer through the fridge and pantry, I start to feel incredibly stabby. "Who the heck had the brilliant idea that I should eat granola and yogurt for breakfast?!" I think angrily.

Usually this ends with me finding the bag of chocolate chips I had hidden from myself in the back of the pantry. Feeling remorseful, I go off to the grocery store, determined that this week I will not fall victim to the siren call of sugary goodness.

It's a vicious cycle.

Playroom Makeover

One of the best parts about becoming a homeowner is actually getting to paint our walls instead of dealing with boring old white everywhere. After seven years of renting, we were itching to get some color up on the walls. 

The first room we decided to tackle was Ella's playroom. Technically it's supposed to be the formal dining room. Seeing as we don't have a formal dining table and have no plans of getting one soon, we thought it was more practical at this point to have a space on the main floor of the house where Ella can play without getting into (too much) trouble. Eventually we plan on switching it over to a dining room, so we wanted to pick a color that didn't scream little kid and that would look nice enough that we don't necessarily have to re-paint when that time comes. 

Without further ado, I present our first sort-of big project as homeowners. 

Before:

And after:

View from the kitchen hallway

View from the French doors. Bonus points if you can spot Ella in this picture. 

Her reading corner. 

There is still a little work to be done before it's totally the way I want it, including figuring out some way to organize her gazillion stuffed animals. I also want to hang some artwork and such on the upper walls (of course, that would entail finishing unpacking the boxes of paintings upstairs). Our next project is building a little table and chairs to go in her playroom. Even though she's still a bit young for them now, I foresee lots of tea parties in the future with my girly girl.

Ummm, wow

Two very momentous things occurred yesterday. 

1. We became homeowners

and more importantly, 

2. Ella turned one! Watch out, world, Ella is officially a toddler. 

This photo is a little blurry, but I love the way she's holding up her hands like that before digging in. Too bad you can't see the crazy grin on her face. 

The many stages of eating a birthday cupcake

We are still attempting to recover from the craziness that has been the past 36 hours. Friday we closed on our house at 9am, had the movers come at 10am, and in the midst of that, threw a mini-birthday party. Most of our family members were able to video call in via Google Hangout so they could join us in singing "Happy Birthday" and watch Ella destroy eat her birthday cupcake. 

Even though Ella won't remember, it definitely was a 1st birthday that we will never forget. 

We love you, Eleanor Mary, and we can't wait to see what the next year will bring! 

30 Days of Thanks: Day 23

One of the hardest things is to be thankful when things don't go as planned. This time last week, it seemed like everything was falling into place. Then we got the inspection report back on the house we wanted to buy.

Foundation repairs needed. Mold. Presence of past water damage. Radon levels questionably high. The list went on and on.

We made the decision that as much as we want to buy a house and be settled, this house is not the one for us. So now we are back at step one of the home buying process. Ella's first birthday will be spent in some sort of temporary housing situation. There won't be any decorations or Christmas tree for the holidays. I'm more than a little bummed out.

In the midst of my disappointment, I'm trying to remember to be thankful. The home inspection ensured that we were aware of the multitude of problems, and won't be buying something that will be a constant source of stress and money down the line.

::Sigh:: Perhaps we'll be in a house in time for my birthday.

30 Days of Thanks: Days 10-13 (yes, I know I'm cheating)

We've been on the road again, this time back to Oklahoma for more house hunting. Since it's a bit hard to update my blog with no internet access (yes, I live in circa 2002 with no smart phone or latest Apple thingy), I'm cheating a bit and combining several days into one post.

Before we left, Ella was kind enough to share her illness with us. Nothing quite like getting on a flight looking like you are carrying the Black Plague. I'm sure everyone was thrilled to have us there.

To keep everything short, 14 houses and one entire package of DayQuil later, we figured out which house we wanted to make an offer on. Monday morning we made the offer, they countered while we were at lunch, and before we got on the plane to head back to Chicago we managed to come to an agreement with the sellers.

Even though I feel like I'm cheating by not having separate posts for the past few days, I think that a house is big enough to cover four days worth of thankfulness.

30 Days of Thanks: Day Four

Nothing quite like having the furnace break (again) to make you appreciate having heat. As we were heading off to bed last night, I told Jim that the house seemed awfully cold. He checked the thermostat, and sure enough, it read out 68 degrees. After several valiant efforts to get the furnace to kick on, we decided that as it was already after midnight, we would put on some warm pajamas, pile on the blankets, turn on the space heater, and have Ella sleep with us for warmth. By the morning the thermometer read 53 degrees. Brr.

Our furnace repairman was able to make it out here by 9am, and restored heat within about fifteen minutes. So today, I'm thankful that we have our awesome furnace repairman and that we once again have heat. Although as great as he is, I really hope not to have to see him again.

You win some, you lose some

It's going to be a two-for-Tuesday here at Two Nerds. Jim and I both finished up a couple of craft projects we've been working on (although I'm sure he would apply a much more masculine word to describe what he's been doing out in the garage for the past few weekends).

My project was to make a trick-or-treat bag for Ella. Originally I was planning on buying one for her. Then my thoughts about consumerism and mass-production, coupled with Pinterest and pictures on Facebook of cutesy little bags other moms had made, convinced me that I would be failing my daughter if I did not make her a Halloween bag.

I found this tutorial while browsing Pinterest. It looked cute. It looked easy. It looked like it could be accomplished during a baby's nap. All excellent points in my book.

Somewhere along the way, something went wrong. Here is a picture of my finished product.

I think the main problem is that the proportions are off somehow, and that it probably would look okay if it was a Frankenstein design instead of a pumpkin. Or maybe if the face was bigger, or if there was more of the green stuff along the top. Perhaps it's simply that it's closing in on a decade since I last used a sewing machine. Definitely took me significantly longer than 40-60 minutes to accomplish. (Note: This is in no way a reflection upon the original tutorial. The fault definitely lies with me.)

You know it's bad when your husband tells you things like, "Well, it's made with love" and "You tried hard." Now instead of mom-guilt about having my daughter carry around a mass-produced trick-or-treat bag most likely made by child-labor in a developing country (holy hyphens!), I now have mom-guilt that my child will hate me for making her carry around such an ugly trick-or-treat bag. 

Jim had significantly more success with his project. This crappy picture doesn't do it justice, but he built me an amazing butcher block for our kitchen. It's not 100% finished yet- he still wants to add on a towel bar and a wine rack, and possibly more shelving or drawers (that's one of the best parts about doing stuff yourself- you can always change things up). Even so, I think he did an amazing job, and I'm incredibly excited about it. 

   

Some (potentially) big news

Once again, I've sucked at keeping up with this blog. This time for good reason. A few weeks ago Jim interviewed for a position down in Oklahoma, and a few days later he got the phone call saying he was offered the job. 

Like most people, my initial reaction to the thought of Oklahoma was, "eww" (no offense to anyone who is from Oklahoma). When he first started talking about this position after the ACS conference in August, I told him if they offered an interview to go ahead and take it, but there was no way I was moving there. 

Now that he's been offered the position, we've started re-evaluating potentially living in Oklahoma. The job itself would be fantastic- that part is a no-brainer. The town is significantly smaller than where we are currently living- perfectly fine with me. There is potential for me to actually get a job in my field. It's a low cost of living area. We could have the big garden we've always envisioned. I could raise chickens. 

I guess the one huge thing I'm getting hung up on is that we really want to move back to the East Coast, and taking this job would mean moving in the opposite direction. Leaving the Chicago-area would mean that we really would have no family anywhere near us. 

Then again, I am the woman who decided to move up to Chicago at 18 years old, having visited once, and knowing absolutely no one. I made it work then, and if we decide to move to Oklahoma, I can make it work there, too. 

Right now we are about 95% sure we are going to take this job. We fly down there this weekend to look at houses and make our final decision. Currently we are in a whirlwind of talking to realtors, navigating our way through obtaining a mortgage, and figuring out how to say goodbye to the people and places that we've made home for the past seven years.