Monday, June 20, 2005

Teething Pains

Patty’s beautiful flowers

What is the sound of a bag of baby food jars hitting concrete? Surprisingly, it sounds like a juicy thud. Don’t ask how we know.

Well, we’re back to the routine after a nice week and a half of luxurious togetherness. We weren’t thrilled about spending the day apart, but it went okay, especially since we were on the phone with each other every five minutes trying to figure out how to pay various bills. It felt really good to get a couple of credit cards out of the way, including one with a 26% interest rate(!).

We found out today that the seller of our new house accepted our latest request for repairs following from the inspection. We basically let him know that we were through negotiating and that he could either do the repairs or give us an allowance with the price of the house. We might not have been such sticklers about it had he been reasonable about the requests from the beginning, but he had sent our requests back with "no" written by all but one item even though he had accepted our bid with the right to request repairs. We are still going to have a bunch of things to do once we move in, with the tree trimming/removal and retaining wall repair the most important and the most of the rest cosmetic, but the things he is going to do will really make the house ready for us. We can’t wait; one month exactly until our closing. Woohoo!

Gabriel had a pretty tough day today. He was tired, achy, cranky, and clingy all day. Nothing got done all day because he needed constant attention. It seemed that he was eating from sunup to sundown, and when he wasn’t eating, he was crying. He had 3 naps today, but it seemed somehow like he was awake all day. It’s always the hardest our first work day back from being with family because he has to adjust from constant stimulation to playing on his own.

Chip knocks on wood

He did have many happy moments, though. In this photo, he is "knocking on wood," as the song goes. We were watching Casablanca (still are, actually), and when Sam started singing the song, Mommy knocked on the table at the appropriate places in the song, and Gabriel joined right in.

The next thing we have to look forward to is Dad, Gail, and Mike visiting us in less than 2 weeks for the Peachtree Road Race. We don’t think we’ll be prepared for the race, but we’re going to do our best. This will be the first year Gabriel doesn’t run; he did a great job last year, even though it was supposed to make him arrive early and didn’t.

Our new printer is great. It has slots for various cards, and we can put the card from our digital camera in and print a contact sheet. We can fill in the circles under the photos we want to print and then fill in the circles under the format (4X6, six wallets, etc.). Then, we scan that sheet back in and it prints exactly what we want. It’s really neat.

Okay, enough blogging for tonight. Time for some family time.