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September, 2009:

Remember when E was this little?

Do I remember E at C’s age?  That’s the question of the morning.

Not entirely.  I know E didn’t start crawling until 10/11 months.  C has gotten to that a little quicker and seems like he is ready to start walking any day (even though his balance is way off)  Thankfully we have pictures … and lots of them.  So I went to see if I could find two around the same age, doing something similar

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There are some obvious differences between the two.  E looks a lot different today than she did then, particularly since she has more hair now.  I can’t wait to see how C changes.

Looking back at those pictures reminded me of some things.  Some things that we did with E that I need to do with C.  Memories of doing it all together.  We did the pumpkin patch with E around this time 2 years ago and I am planning to go with both of them this coming monday, weather permitting.  I also have a great picture of E stuffing her face with a gerber biscuit … food everywhere.  I wonder if they still sell them.  I need one just like it of C.  I bought some of these gerber wheels (that’s what he’s eating in the picture above).  I figured it might make a similar mess but either he’s a clean kid or it just isn’t the same.  And pictures in the tub.  Fortunately I have some of both of them … super cute and almost identical

Another TOUGH day

It was really nice outside.  It might have been the last nice day for a while and I didn’t get to enjoy it. 

I was exhausted from the night before.  That probably didn’t help.  I just needed a quick nap and the kids wouldn’t cooperate. 

They fell asleep in the car on the way home from the grandparents.  I expected C to fall asleep but not both of them.  So I drove around for a 1/2 hour extra. 

I really wanted to enjoy the day outside but it just wasn’t going to happen.  It’s so hard to balance the responsibility of managing two little ones by myself.

It’s going to get easier, right???  It’s gotta!

If they only would have napped at the same time.  C has such a hard time staying asleep during the day.  And he didn’t seem to drink enough.  Being sick might not help.  They still have runny noses.  It doesn’t seem to be getting better either.  E’s cough this morning didn’t sound good.  It’s probably time to get to the doctor.  Each day it seems like we’re making progress and they do sound better at night.  But since it’s still hasn’t gone away I do need to get them in. 

I’m going to find someone to come to the house during the week to help me out at night.  Someone other than fam.  Someone who I can fire if it’s not working out…not that that’s the plan but I need that option…and I do need the help.

Milestone: Sitting up

I haven’t been able to get video of it yet, but he’s doing it.  On Saturday my mom asked, “Did he just sit up on his own?”  Neither of us saw the actual action but he was sitting on his butt and we didn’t put him there like that.  Yesterday I caught him doing it a number of times.  So I broke out the video camera but he never wanted to cooperate.  He wouldn’t do it again until I put the camera away.  Oh well, there will be more opportunities I’m sure.

If I could just keep dreaming

I found out yesterday that my brother and wife are expecting they’re first

Maybe that’s the reason or part of the reason for a dream that felt so real and so difficult to wake up from.

Cari was there.  Really there.  I felt her.  We talked.  We were enjoying each other.  It was so real that when I finally woke up it took me a while to realize it was just a dream. 

It had been a while since I last dreamt of her.  Even longer since I had this type of dream.  Most of the recent dreams/nightmares involved some sort of argument.  I usually don’t remember all the details, but this time one thing was for sure, this one involved us expecting our 3rd.  It’s probably partly because of the news I received yesterday that my brother is expecting, but it wasn’t like our expecting replaced his.  In my dream they were still expecting.  The whole dream, the topics, her touch, all made me  just want to go back to sleep.  Unfortunately that didn’t happen.  It’s the start of another day … a day in which the kids (the sick kids) slept until 7.30a instead of 5.30a for a change.

Rental pains

When you get calls from all the tenants at the same time it’s probably not never a good thing.

And it was water related.  I hate water.  Water doesn’t mix well when it ends up outside the places it’s supposed to stay.

This time it decided to come from a leak in a shower drain.  It could have been the kind of thing that was there for years.  But it reared its ugly head because the drain in the tub was clogged for an indeterminate amount of time and the tenants appeared to be just dealing with standing in nasty water.

A slow random drip probably dries before it becomes noticeable but because water had undoubtedly been sitting in the tub for a while, it eventually flooded the area between the 1st and 2nd floor bathrooms.  The result of which was very wet drywall … and a major mess.

It’s hard enough to deal with these things when you have two kids and a wife but now it’s nearly unmanageable.

Maybe I need to move away from rentals

I don’t mind dealing with most of the stuff.  Maybe I can focus on it again some point down the road but for now I don’t know if I can balance it all.  This is the 2nd major happening in the past 4 months.  1st the garage starts on fire and now a major leak in the house.

I figured Cari had something to do with the garage but I doubt she had her hands in this one.

The only bright note is that I happened to have a contractor at the house looking at the garage and he has some contacts that will at least come in and do the plumbing.  He wanted what seemed like an exorbitant amount of money to do the drywall too.  But when I have no time to do anything, maybe I just need to pay.  Hanging drywall sucks anyways so I might as well just open up the checkbook.