When I say my house is messy, I really mean it.

We finally managed to get our recyclables out to the street today before the truck came. When we lived here before they came once a week so it was no big deal to miss. Now they do it once a month and we missed (the) last (two) month(s).

(A great way to encourage people to recycle! Make it impossible!!)

Getting rid of all that crap stuff piled next to our fence was nearly enough to make me do a happy dance. Except it was about the only bright and shining moment of the morning (well, that and the fact that Andy let me sleep in a bit).

And if you don’t believe me, I present to you Our Morning:

(Alternate title: Proof that Three Preschoolers Can Wreak Utter Destruction in Five Seconds Flat)

See what I mean?

The reason there are no children in any of these pictures is because after they tired of their merry messmaking, they went and jumped on the rain-soaked trampoline (I was in the shower).

Notice Adelaide is wearing only a diaper and her pajama shirt. (Where is your mother?) All three of them are soaked. And you can’t tell, but Madeline is wearing a jacket but no shirt. About 2 seconds after I snapped this picture, she got pushed off face first into the mud. (She was walking around the outside of the net, which is actually forbidden.)

Of course she came in screaming, covered with wet dirt and leaves. I felt sorry for her but it really was the last straw. I started laughing uncontrollably. It was an impulse that I COULD NOT HELP. (Which was weird because actually I felt like crying, myself.)

They all got baths after that.

Yes, I know it’s all fodder for a What Not To Do post. Guaranteed to make you feel better about your own disarray! And you older moms thankful you’ve outgrown the toddler clutter. (I’m only here to serve.)

But I can post those without shame because A) my identity is not tied up in how clean my house is and B) because now it looks like this:

Let’s hope I have something more interesting to post about tomorrow.

Before and After: Girls’ Room

Welcome to my edition of

I’m using my girls’ room for today’s carnival simply because it is the only room that has actual ‘before’ shots.

(Which is convenient for a ‘Before and After’ display.)

A little background info in case this is your first visit here; we just moved back into our house after being away for a year and a month. Adelaide was a newborn when we left and still sleeping in the cradle (which was placed strategically in the guest room next to ours).

My son and daughter were 3 1/2 and 2 at the time, and shared the third room. Drew now has his own room and the girls are together.

You ready? Good!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

The full decal swirly thingy:

Madeline’s bed sort of reminds me of Baby Bear’s bed from Goldilocks:

Notice the rug:

This next shot is to give you a closeup of the trim. Our renters ripped out the carpeting in two of the bedrooms (don’t ask) and so I had to nail down quarter round to fill in the space between the baseboards and the floor. (Also why we even had to purchase that rug pictured above.):

(Sidenote: Target and Homegoods should pay me for this post. Nearly everything decorative and all of the bedding were purchased at one of those two stores.)

A few closeup shots of some of the fun little things:

And I just love these whimsical fairies:

…and this butterfly:

The windows at the last house were shorter, so I added the pink fabric to make them longer:

And, just for fun, presenting the Inmates:

(Madeline above, Adelaide below.)

Thanks for stopping by! For more Before and After fun, head on over to Boomama’s!

At long last

When we lived in this house before, there was this massive, not-very-nice-looking mantel and gas fireplace right as you walked in the front door. Seriously, HUGE.

The fireplace never worked, so it served only as a receptacle for seasonal decorative items, as well as all the junk we routinely unloaded as we passed by coming inside.

(Let’s just say it was USUALLY piled high with quite the assortment of books, keys, clothing, CDs, purses, backpacks, and whathaveyou. You know, clutter.)

We sort of planned on having it removed someday, but then never actually did anything about it. It stayed, season after season after season, and then we moved. And not surprisingly, we didn’t care much about the non-functioning fireplace after that.

Out of sight, out of mind.

This summer when we moved back in, two of our friends helped us take the entire unit out. The fireplace sat on our front walk for, oh, several weeks, and the broken-down mantel wood is still propped up on our backyard fence.

We like to do things in stages, see.

Anyway, I had the piano placed where the mantel used to be. The only problem is the gas line still stood about six inches above the floor, so I couldn’t put the piano exactly where I wanted it. Durn those superfluous gas lines.

And, same old story, I’d remember I had forgotten to call the gas company to come and remove it – again – as I lay in bed each night, mentally putting it on tomorrow’s imaginary list. Weeks of this! Pathetic, I know.

The good news is I got a rep from the gas company to come last Thursday. The bad news is they don’t do anything with the actual pipes and that I needed to call a heating and air guy. Great.

Fortunately, the heating company I called was able to send someone that very afternoon, and within an hour of his arrival the line was gone. I jammed a cork in the hole in the floor (thank you Steve Lewin and your genius ideas) and was able to slide the piano over to its new home.

Which means I was also able to finally hang the picture over the piano, put the entryway table in its new and permanent place, and hang its shelf over top. Lastly, I bought a dark leather bin for our shoes that actually fits underneath that table (the old basket was the wrong color and much too large).

New and improved piano location:

The rest of the room (tiny, I know):

(Like my child-proof lock on the DVD cabinet?)

And here’s that entryway table:

Wala! The room is done.

Finally

Introducing Drew’s room, new and improved.

When Drew came home from preschool and saw it he exclaimed, “You fixed my room, Mommy! I LOVE IT!” and then ran over so he could slap me a high-five.

Laboring Away on Labor Day

When we moved in two months ago, I worked frantically to get the house at least acceptably livable. And then I took about a month off. I just could not get past the decorator’s block or whatever it was that plagued me.

One of the big jobs on my list was getting Drew’s room finished. The renters (who did have permission to paint) had painted it from its original soft yellow to a dark gray-blue. And the paint job around the trim and ceiling was atrocious, to say the least.

Anyway, I woke up yesterday morning and actually felt motivated to tackle the paint job awaiting me in his room. Nice to have Andy home the entire time, being a holiday.

Before:

After:

I’ll post another picture once I get the curtains and wall deco hung.

(Whenever the motivation bug bites again.)

Free Stuff and Finished House

A friend from church invited me to go with her to this children’s clothing exchange that was held tonight at her in-law’s church. There was a whole lot more than just clothes, oh yes ma’am. Anyway, we walked in to this huge fellowship hall overflowing with people, tables upon tables piled high with clothes, gear, shoes, toys, and every kind of kid item you can well imagine.

Best of all, it’s all free.

FREE. Did you get that? FREE.

So I jumped in to the madness and started grabbing and bagging. A lot of the older sizes were not worth much but a lot of the newborn to 6 month stuff was new or gently used. Since I don’t have a baby in that category (although I did pick up a bag full for Adelaide and several random things for Madeline) I just started bagging things for a local friend that just had a baby girl. She can just throw out what she doesn’t like because hey! it was free!

And I’ll be doing the same after I go through what I got for us because I really wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention beyond hey! it’s all free! Just grab and sack! I mean, who really knows what ended up in those bags.

I also picked up an exersaucer for Adelaide – because it was free – and because we didn’t have one. I borrowed one for both Drew and Madeline but never thought it was worth actually spending money on. So now we have one for the two months Adelaide will use it.

And, on a totally different subject, I’m happy to report that the curtains I found at a warehouse on Saturday (for $8!!!) match our living room perfectly. I could not be more thrilled. About curtains, at least. A few more finishing touches and the house will be finished.

I thought I’d never see the day.

Y’all come over now, ya hear?

Oh, and…

Did I ever mention that we don’t have a dishwasher at this house? First time in my married life that we haven’t had one.

Figures.

No kids – dishwasher.

Three kids – no dishwasher.

Is that some sort of cruel joke?

OH! MY! WORD!

A nightmare, of sorts, just passed through this house.

I was finishing up putting together the upstairs bathroom this afternoon, all three kids asleep. I hung a shelf, a few pictures, the curtain rod. With all the drilling going on, there was quite a bit of dust so when everything was in place I also cleaned the bathroom. (Which I hadn’t done yet, I admit.)

But then.

BUT THEN.

I went downstairs to put the cleaners away and to throw away the rest of the trash. About half way down the steps I noticed a black, watery, foul-smelling pool at the bottom of the stairs. I had no idea what could possibly be happening but jumped over the puddle to find it had leaked all the way down the hallway from the bathroom off of the kitchen. And I found a bubbling, overflowing toilet oozing black sewage into my house.

I’ll pause a moment for you to gasp in horror.

I frantically went looking for my phone. I was finally able to get a hold of the landlords, who called the builder, who called the plumber, etc.

And we (the kids and I) left straightaway after naps to a friend’s house for pizza. Because like I’m going to stay within a mile of a house overflowing with sewage.

[Also, they apparently had sewer problems before we moved in; this was a surprise but not an utterly complete one. We obviously have very old lines that need some, uh, modernizing.]

Long story long, we stayed the evening over at our friend’s house and Andy even came and ate and helped with kid control (she was also watching two neighbor kids as well as her own four). A lot of the time we were also on the phone with various service people and the builder to get a plan figured out.

Once the plumber was finished, the cleaners were supposed to come and do their thing. HOWEVER, at first they said they weren’t going to make it until 10 pm and then around 9 they said they couldn’t make it until first thing in the morning.

Did I mention we’re talking about standing sewage in our house? Like an inch and a half worth and it was seeping through the living room carpet that is, oh, barely TWO WEEKS OLD?

Thankfully, there is a family in our church that owns a cleaning business. Andy really didn’t want to leave the house overnight in such a condition so he called the man to ask what we should do. It ended up that he and Andy cleaned up the entire mess themselves. He’s Our New Best Friend.

It only took two and a half hours.

I now have a clean upstairs bathroom, and a VERY clean downstairs bathroom, kitchen floor, and hallway.

And I’m a little scared to flush the toilet.

Kids’ Rooms

However, do not be deceived. There are other parts of the house (i.e. my bedroom) that are still a huge and confused mess.

Drew’s room:

Girls’ room:

(I still haven’t finished that last curtain in the girls’ room, but at least the rod is up.)

Also, since we are the first renters, I got to choose the paint but I didn’t in fact paint the rooms myself. Lest you think I’ve been slaving away with a paintbrush.

Hitting the Moving Wall

Moving is frustrating, there’s no way around it. Well unless you’re the queen and all the little worker ants move everything for you and all you have to do is show up, eat, and look pretty.

Anyway, I’m now to the point where I feel like I’m walking around all day asking myself, “now what am I going to do with this?” And after the, say, forty-seventh time, this house is starting to get on my nerves.

Have I mentioned I like things neat and tidy?

Andy sent me out for a much-needed break tonight and he put the kids to bed. And since the kids are asleep, I’d better get back to work since this kind of quiet time is, well, precious.

"It’s like a birthday party in my mouth."

- said Andy about the supreme pizza we had for dinner tonight. (Hafta check out all the local eateries, obviously.) He was giving me flack for my dislike of all things mushroom.

AND!!! The ‘room darkening’ roller shades came in the mail today. As soon as we heard that merry news Andy drove straight over to his parents’ house and picked them up. You can bet your bottom dollar they are already installed and hanging happily in Drew and Madeline’s bedroom windows.

SLEEP IN, MY CHILDREN, SLEEP IN.

See?

Here’s what our living room looked like this morning:

Here’s what it looks like now:

I’m going to bed.

[Also, that hideous brown pole - the painters forgot to paint it so sometime soon it will match the walls and hopefully blend in.]

Update: Day 4

Welp, we moved. Mostly. A lot of our stuff is still over at Andy’s parents’ house, which we are collecting here and there.

I’ve moved a lot of times in my life and this was probably the worst. As hindsight is always 20/20, we should have waited a week to move and inspected the house first. It wasn’t quite ready for inmates. Since we’ve been here, we’ve had the shower worked on twice (imagine moving all day only to find that the hot water coming from the only shower faucet is a very small trickle), both the vanity light and an electrical receptacle installed in the upstairs bathroom, and we still don’t have any towel bars up in the bathroom. Which is convenient for, say, hanging up wet towels. So the bathroom wasn’t ready when we moved in but it is now, as of today. (Well, minus said towel bars.)

The other major issue has been the utility room, otherwise known as the bane of my existence. We’re using it for a lot of storage, and then it also has the laundry area stuff. This house hasn’t been lived in many many years, so that room had all the years’ worth of bugs, webs, dirt, and grime that you can imagine. Loads and loads of spider egg sacs and even a dead rat skeleton. Yeah, I know.

So basically that room was holding up all progress because everything sitting in the other rooms needs to be stored in there so that we can eventually place all the furniture where the boxes and extra mattresses are standing. We didn’t move the furniture in first thing like normal people, but we sure learned a lesson.

So today my mom-in-law and I scrubbed down the rest of the utility room – used her shop vac (what a blessing that thing has been), filled in the holes and the floor cracks with Great Stuff, wiped down the shelves, sealed the window, etc. Also she scrubbed down the laundry machines because the way they were, well, let’s just say they weren’t going to be cleaning anything. A white shirt would have come out maybe brown.

Now all we need is some body builder-types to come in and move all the junk – I mean stuff – into the storage area and we might see some major progress tomorrow.

Also, this kitchen is about half the size of the one in Ch@ttanooga. So even though a lot of the kitchen is unpacked, I have to pare down and become really organized and efficient. All things I like, so I’m actually looking forward to a streamlined kitchen, even if it is going to be somewhat of a process.

Well I’m sure there is lots more but I need to get to sleep. The kids have been waking up Early. (No shades or blinds on their windows yet and the morning sun hits that side of the house. Makes for one groggy mama.)

Moving: Tomorrow

Pray for us. We’re gonna need it.

Weeding Out

I spent the morning weeding out my kids’ drawers. A huge job. But a job despretely needing to be done. I mean, there were still socks in Drew’s drawer sized 18 months. It was frustrating anytime he wanted to wear his ‘sneakers’ when I would grab a 18 mo. sock by mistake. I mean, it might have covered his big toe.

Clearly it was time. Also, we might start the move next weekend so, it was sort of now or never. But after several hours of work the drawers are all updated and ready for fall. The attic, on the other hand, is still a huge messy pit. That’s really okay though because I can’t see it. And the door will remain tightly shut. (Until we move, that is.)

Several things.

First, I forgot to mention that we tried out the children’s museum here last Saturday morning. We purposefully bought our Ch@ttanooga membership with the nationwide option, knowing we’d be using it up here as well. (Except, I’ve been putting it off because I was a little nervous about navigating directions into Philly and then trying out a new museum all by myself with three small children. That sounded more like parental torture.)

Well, it turns out there’s another one only ten to fifteen minutes away from our house. Which basically means WE COULD HAVE BEEN GOING ALL SUMMER LONG!

It’s a somewhat painful subject.

The museum itself was fine, if a little older and shabbier. Still good for an outing and will be great for rainy and snowy days. Some of the play areas were really clever – they just need more fencing and a generous dose of sanitizer.

Second – I went to a friend’s baby shower later Saturday afternoon and realized again how confusing directions around here can be. It took an hour to find the church when it should have only taken twenty to twenty-five minutes. It was hot and the sun was too bright even with sunglasses on. Then, the largest mall of the area was just down the street so of course I had to go check it out after I left the baby shower. But I ended up having to walk a lot further than I was expecting. And then I had to search desperately for a gas station and hope and pray I made it to one or I wasn’t going to make it home.

It all added up to being a really wonderful recipe for a splitting headache.

Next thing. I found out sometime last week that Drew and Madeline know quite a few of the children’s catechism answers and Psalm 23. They even have some hand motions. They’ve been practicing in Sunday school all this time and I had no idea. We were sitting in the living room and Andy’s mom asked Madeline, “who made you?” Madeline pointed her little finger up towards the ceiling and yelled, “GOD!” It was precious. And it was the first time I was aware of this whole catechism phenomenon.

This past Sunday was something they call “Rally Day” for the SS programs. I normally don’t go to Sunday school because of the baby’s ‘schedule,’ but I wish I had gone this week after I got the full report of Drew standing up with his class in front of the whole church (hence the title “rally”) and reciting the whole children’s catechism (well, okay, only reciting what he knows up to this point) and Psalm 23 as if he’d been saying them his entire life. Andy said it was like Drew was the star of a show…perfect hand motions and everything.

It’s slightly ironic because the teacher told us he doesn’t really recite anything in Sunday school…he just stands there with his thumb in his mouth and watches everyone else.

He’s a closet prodigy. (Slight emphasis on ‘closet.’)

And, lastly, I walked into the bathroom tonight thinking it sure smelled like orange mango.

(Oh, and cows for today.)

See all those bubbles? Used to be our mostly-full bottle of Suave Orange Mango Outburst shampoo.

Labor Day is Sale Day

Andy promised me that this morning he’d do everything for the kids and I could sleep in. (Really it was his well-laid plan to sweet talk me into him hanging out with the guys after church last night.) So today started as a “Happy Labor Day” to me.

I did not feel one ounce of guilt about going back to sleep when I heard the usual “Mommy! Open the door!” coming from the peanut gallery.

The kids got both Daddy and Grandmom to take them out for a walk. Two walks in one morning, must’ve been a holiday. I did finally get up, got myself ready, and re-dressed Madeline (I knew that would be necessary when I saw what she was wearing and Andy said “look, I dressed her like a popsicle!” …he was referring to her various brightly-colored items of unmatched clothing) so that she would be presentable when we made our daily appearance at Target.

Of course we had to go, it being Labor Day and all.

Oh, the Labor Day sales, y’all. I had finally narrowed down my search of an acceptable TV cabinet and what better time to buy something than when it is on sale? We’re moving again soon, which I may have mentioned before, and so Sale Day was also the perfect time to pick up the kid bedding for the new rooms. And some fall clothes. And Q-tips.

It was a shopping day in heaven, as far as shopping days go. Well, except for the part where the Target employees had to actually get the armoire box loaded into my van. It was no small feat – I’ll leave it at that. And then I didn’t realize I had left the back hatch up and started driving off towards the road. I finally realized they were honking AT ME and stopped. A nice man ran over and returned the items that had fallen out the back. I had almost driven off without Madeline’s new quilt.

It was all a touch embarrassing.

After we move and everything is in its place I’ll have to host a virtual tour. And you can just pretend to be interested.

Zoo

The best way to see these pictures is to click on the album and then click on “slideshow.” The second half is, in my opinion, a little more fun.

Philadelphia Zoo