Friends

CG and I arrive to Z's classroom's "Thanksgiving Feast" right on time but it seems all the other parents got there early. Z runs to me, clings to my legs, hopping up and down.

The room is small and filled with small furniture and small people so with E strapped to my chest and my big bag full of rolls and cranberry sauce on my back, I feel like a giant trying not to crush any woodland creatures. Parents have already begun filling their plates and chatting in small groups and I sweat my way through getting our contribution on the buffet and peeling Z off of me every two minutes.

I notice all the parents and kids are wearing adhesive name tags, something that we suggested might help at school events and I start scanning them for the names I recognize from Z's stories. Z sits at her spot at a low table, eating nothing but rolls and butter. None of the kids at her table speak to her. Two of them I don't hear utter a word the whole hour CG and I are there.

At the table next to ours, four girls bounce in their seats, chatting over top of one another, laughing and trading food. I recognize their names as "friends" of Z's from her stories. I also note that they are clearly at the older end of the age range of the classroom and clearly have strong friendships with each other.

"Z? Do you want to introduce me to any of your friends?"

"No."

"Okay."

At another neighboring table, more kids are giggling away, with their moms chatting above them. I try not to think about what I'm wearing when I glance at the moms' suede boots and highlighted hair.

The center director, obviously remembering me saying that we were having a hard time meeting people here, brings one of the suede booted moms over to me, introducing us to each other, although we've met before.

"Your daughters are the same age! I thought maybe Z and A would like a playdate sometime!"

The mom smiles faintly at me and we both stammer a bit about didn't we meet at back to school night?. She says something vague about her group of moms that get together and doesn't she have my email already?

I don't remind her that I've already emailed her about it. Twice.

On the way out, we pass one of the little girls who features prominently in Z's stories of the playground. The girls pass each other without comment and I replay some of Z's stories in my head, suddenly realizing that Z doesn't include herself in her stories of silly, happy playground activities.

----------------


I arrive at the movie theater on time and scan the concession stand where I'm supposed to meet these moms from the large Meetup.com group. There are no clusters of mom-like people at concessions so I stand there for a few minutes, sweating, before continuing on to the theater which is already full of teenagers and moms and couples debating the relative merits of Edward Cullen and Jacob Black. I realize scanning faces won't help since I don't know who I'm looking for and consider sitting by myself before turning on my heels and going back out to the lobby, trying not to let any tears escape. Two women aren't far behind me and when we arrive at the concession stand, all three of us are scanning faces.

I try to smile like a normal person as I approach them and can't help shooting a quick glance at their feet.

No suede boots.

Where Rilke and the Beatles conspire to make me crazy

We have been living here for over two months and BOY HOWDY I am getting tired of living half-unpacked. There are still boxes everywhere and many things are not quite put away and those things that are put away have been put away only temporarily because we needed to put them SOMEWHERE and there is as good as anywhere for now.

I've been trying to be all Rilke be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart about it and you know what? THERE ARE STILL TOO MANY BOXES AND TOO MUCH STUFF AND TOO MUCH UNSOLVED IN MY HEART.

The feeling of not being settled in one's home is not one that I'm all that good at just accepting. I want to DO something about it. I want to organize and hang things and buy organizational hohas that might transform the crap into ORGANIZED CRAP. And there are these two little people around who are conspiring to keep me from getting anything done above the most basic oh-hey- let's eat off of CLEAN PLATES okay?

I've been trying to accept the clutter, to just let it be and you know what? WHERE IT BE IS ALL OVER MY FREAKING HOUSE.

I have one setting at the moment: desperate to get things done before the long cold Little House on the Prairie winter OMG MUSKRATS ARE BUILDING THICK WALLS.

Poor CG. The work-week is a wash; we basically try to keep our heads above water. So we get to the weekend and I'm like YAY! WEEKEND! LET'S GET STUFF DONE! and CG's like YAY! WEEKEND! I NEED A BREAK FROM GETTING THINGS DONE! because, of course, he has one of those pesky job things where all week long he is pressed and pressed to get things done and then he comes home to ME. INSANE GETTING THINGS DONE WOMAN.

(AKA. INSANE CAPS LOCK WOMAN)

The sickness aspect of the whole household is not helping. Usually I could have our little neighborhood 6th grader come and play with Z for a few hours so I could get some things done but with Z still sniffling and E still coughing and CG still complaining of a sore throat and me still with bronchitis, we're pretty much still quarantined over here.

Quarantined and NOT GETTING THINGS DONE. ARRRRGGGG.

The right fit

I finally got my wedding and engagement rings resized on Friday. They have been too tight since I got pregnant with Z. I went ringless starting in my first trimester and finally squeezed them back on my sausage-y man-hands about 6 months after Z was born. They were so tight after that that my ring finger wound up with a waist. When I got pregnant with E, I gave up the fight and buttered up my finger (mmmmm buuutttterrr) to take them off. Every time I tried them on since then, they still didn't fit.

Until now.

After picking them up at the jewelers on Friday, I put them on for the first time in over a year and remembered that warm April night when CG pulled out a little box, got down on one knee in the middle of a fancy pants restaurant and told me he needed a little help with his birthday wish, would you marry me? I sputtered and put it on and had to be reminded to say yes.

Yes.

It amazed me then that the ring was the right size. It fit perfectly. This ring, the one that he earned the money to buy by participating in a long, inconvenient, uncomfortable medical study, slipped right on my finger. He thought it would be a place holder until we had one made.

But it fit.

They fit.

(and are apparently quite tasty)

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I bought Z some new uniform pants for her school. I used a much coveted free time slot this weekend to hem them (as she is cursed with her mama's Long Waist/Short Limb Syndrome).

I hope it wasn't a waste of time.

We have yet to meet with Z's teacher and continue to wrestle with ourselves about whether to look for another preschool. I'm trying to not overreact, to calm myself a little bit about my inconsequential knit-picky issues like typos on the promotional material and focus on what really matters: whether this school, this class, is the right fit for our kid.

We want to give her, and ourselves, a chance to adjust to this new school. We don't want to act rashly when there is so much going on that could be clouding our perceptions.

When I try to get the root of my issues with her school, I keep coming back to feeling disconnected from the classroom, like I'm purposefully being kept at arms length. The drop-off/pick-up line (where we drive up and have our child met at the door by a staff member) seems so cold and leaves me with NO sense of the vibe of the classroom that day. I never see how the teacher interacts with my kid. I never see any of the other kids or parents. I feel like Z gets dropped into a black hole for three hours.

So I'm reduced to pretending to be nonchalant as I grill her for detailed information. She tells me about how, at her old school, she could cut any way she wanted but at her new school, she has to cut on the lines. She notes benignly that there aren't any "toys" there, only "works" but seems a bit put off by the conspicuous lack of baby dolls. She complains that some of the "works" that she's interested in are reserved for older kids. I find myself thinking: shouldn't preschool be a magical place where, as long as you are safe and respectful, you get to play with whatever you want, however you want?

Then there's her crazy behavior of late, for which I'm always searching for some external cause. (When she was a baby my go-to explanation was always TEETHING! When she was a toddler it was IMMINENT ILLNESS!) When I pick her up from school, she often screams from unspecified frustration (Z: "AAAHHHHH! I'M FRUSTRATED!!!", Me: "I can hear that. What's frustrating you Z?", Z: "WAAHHHH! I DON'T KNOW!"), refuses to cooperate with anything I say and throws a tantrum at the drop of a hat. It is at lunch time and the school's morning snack is earlier than she's used to. Is it low blood sugar? I always pick her up with E in the car with me. Is it an attention getting/ sibling rivalry thing? This new school is the last of a ton of transitions in her life recently. Was it the last straw? She's three and has been challenging in all kinds of new ways all summer. Is this just the age? Her sleep has been A MESS lately with naps mostly a thing of the past and all of us are unsure if it's better for her to nap or not. Is her messed-up sleep causing all this or is it the other way around??

Is this school the wrong fit for her? Is the classroom so structured that frustration builds up in her until it is safe to let it out?

She does tell me about older kids helping her out; one girl reminded her to use a tissue, another helped her up when she fell on the playground. She asked to bring some cookies that we made at home (mmmmm coookkkies) to her teachers. She proudly shows us her "work" that she brings home at the end of each week. She got upset when I had to pick her up early this week for a pediatrician appointment because she didn't want to miss playground and music time. She tells me repeatedly that she wants to be a "full dayer" like some of her friends.

She has moments of anger and frustration and INSANITY on the weekend that are just like when she gets home from school.

Color me confused.

Time to make an appointment with the teacher.

-------------

Today (YOU ARE MY WITNESSES) I am taking the girls to a local moms' meetup. I've been lurking around their board for weeks now. Today I will try my hardest to be Normal Friendly and pray that I find some other moms that I hit it off with.

It is so hard to be looking for friends at this ripe-old age. So far there have been very few opportunities for me to meet other adults. Mostly I try to chat up moms at the playground with my usual Strange Friendly I've-been-at-home-talking-only-to-children-under-three style. Not surprisingly, this has not been too successful yet.

I feel like I'm still at the very beginning of building a life here.

I hope I find a good fit.

Clueless But Hopeful Mama's Top Ten Tips for Moving Across the Country with a Preschooler and an Infant

(What's that you say? No one but me is crazy enough to do this? So these tips are useless to anyone but me, circa two months ago? Pshaw!)

1. Don't be so concerned about how hard it's going to be to move with an infant. Your 2 month old infant is basically a heavy, liquid-producing-and-consuming piece of luggage. She will make you a bit more tired, and require you to sit down and pay attention to her at somewhat regular intervals, but mostly, she'll smile a lot and sleep a lot.

2. Your three-year old? The one that whines, requires constant stimulation, and is prone to fits due to changes in her SNACK CHOICES let alone changes in everything and everyone in her known universe? That one? Yeah, that's the one you need to worry about.

3. When buying your house without seeing it in person (What's that you say? NO ONE but me does that??), it's best to avoid studying the pictures too much lest you spend the first few weeks in your new home with a bad case of vertigo from walking around inside what you KNOW to be a two dimensional scene.

4. Definitely go to your daughter's new preschool "social". Definitely don't spend most of it alternating between staring at your shoes and smiling strangely at people when they pass you by.

5. Join a mother's meet up group. Spend hours lurking in their online message boards. Try to imagine actually, uh, MEETING UP.

6. Don't feel too guilty for feeling just a wee bit relieved that you no longer live in the crazy wildfire zone (or The Big One zone, for that matter).

7. Get to know the neighbors. Try very hard to keep an open mind, even though you think the previous owners of your new house were almost definitely a-holes and you know which neighbors were friends with them and which weren't.

8. Decide to stop fighting the previous a-hole owners over the stuff that they were supposed to fix but BROKE WORSE by trying to fix themselves. Your life is too short and your current life is TOO STRESSFUL to add lawsuits to it.

9. Smudge your house tomorrow whenever the baby is asleep and the preschooler is at preschool to rid house of all the bad juju that must be in here.

10. Understand that one day, you will stop feeling like you are on some very strange, very stressful trip that will end with you back in Pasadena in your old house with your old life. This is your new life and it will only get better, richer, fuller once you really start ACTUALLY UNPACKING living it.

Bright orange, soft yellow

When we were planning the move here to Virginia, we made floor plans, chose which furniture to buy and which to sell, and picked paint colors from the alarming array of choices in the THREE (!) Benjamin Moore paint fan decks. (I'd do much better with a palette of, say, 50 colors to chose from.) All of this was based on CG's trips here, my feverish study of the many photos he took and our combined sense of what colors match our stuff and are pleasing to live in.

Zoe, of course, insisted on having her room done in her two favorite colors- orange and "lello"- and we managed to get her to concede to 3 white walls, 1 bright orange wall and a bright yellow closet (CG's stroke of brilliance). It looks crisp and bright and fabulous, just right for our big girl, and she's so at home in it already. (Plus, if and when she decides she hates orange, we have only one wall to repaint.)

Unfortunately, Eliza's much smaller room was mistakenly painted exactly like Zoe's, despite our instructions to the painters to leave it its original off-white color. When CG found this out, we were still in Vermont. We could have insisted that they repaint it but I couldn't picture the room, couldn't decide on another color, couldn't DEAL. So we just told the painters that it's fine, leave it as it is.

When we arrived here last week, I felt a little ill every time I walked into Eliza's room. It's a small room and the bright orange wall was just too much. I tried to like it, telling myself that it was perfectly painted, in pristine condition really, and I would get used to it. Most of all, we had signed off on it. It made no sense to pay to have it repainted or add one more major project to our three page to-do list.

Until it made even less sense to leave it as it was because it was making me so sad.

You see, Zoe is bright orange. Her voice is clear and loud. She often walks right up to strangers and asks them their name and if they have a penis or a vagina. She makes her presence known and has since the day that she was born.


But Eliza is soft yellow. She is such a grub of a baby still, so much about who she will be is unknown, still forming. But the differences between her and her big sister have been blatantly obvious since day one. Zoe hated baths, loud noises, her nightly massage and was very opinionated about when and how she would sleep, eat, and be held. Eliza loves the bath and her weekly massage (ah yes weekly, she is the second baby), doesn't mind loud noises or being held/put down/carried in whatever way we feel like. She is easy-going, sunshine-y, placid.

I lay awake at night wondering if this is who they are genetically, determined from the moment CG's seed met my egg (which, by the way, is our answer to Zoe's question about how babies are made. Our answer to her follow-up "but HOW??!!": "Hey, wanna cookie!?!?"). It also seems possible, though frightening in the inevitable self-recriminations, that Zoe gained some of her hard-charging, bright orange ways because of our parenting, specifically my mothering. She is, after all, the first born child of a mother who often feels really, truly clueless and struggles to chose hope over fear. Did she absorb all my anxiety as a new mother? Is her psyche forever shaped by the maternal inexperience and naivete that she struggles against every. single. day? Does Zoe never shut up because of who she innately is or because I was so lonely that I talked to her ALL DAY, EVERY DAY as an infant? Am I really seeing who these children are, their essential and true selves, or do I only see what I want to see, what I expect of them, what I project onto them because of my own baggage?

Do your kids have a color, one that they chose or one that you see in them?

(Where was I? Oh, right, Eliza.)

At this moment in time, in my eyes, Eliza is soft yellow. The bright orange not only didn't fit her room, it didn't fit her. That's what did it for me.

Luckily CG agreed, even though he had every right to say "but you said it was fine!" and "that's another expense that we just can't justify".

Now it has been repainted a warm, soft yellow.


And all is right with this little corner of the world.

The next chapter

We are here.

Our mailbox has a roof.

Zoe's bedroom has a bright orange wall, just like she wanted it.

Her closet is yellow, just like she wanted it.

My favorite spot already: our kitchen's blogging eating area, complete with skylights and a view of Zoe's "play structure" in the backyard.

Zoe seemed to figure out our crazy new fridge before I did. She will lose interest in making ice at some point, right?

This is the one corner of our bedroom I can show you without moving a metric ton of CRAP.


The one thing missing?

Our first girl. Who arrived Thursday after her flight on the brand new pet airline.

The family is all here.

Our stuff is all here (somewhere).

Now the real fun begins.

Postcard from Vermont: Seeing is believing.

When discussing the details of our birth plan, our doula told us that a newborn, placed on her mother's chest immediately after birth and not forced to latch on, will wriggle and squirm and latch on themselves. This seemed like some impossible natural childbirth baloney, like "orgasmic birth". (As much as I felt empowered by Eliza's birth, I would have to say that the physical sensations I experienced were pretty much the POLAR OPPOSITE of orgasm.)

A newborn, who has little control over her movements and can barely see, can latch on by herself?? I would believe it when I saw it.

When Eliza was born, after the initial bottle they had to give her because she was so big, the nurses placed her on my belly and left her there. I resisted the urge to move her to my breast, or at least a little closer to it, and just waited. My minutes-old babe, eyes barely open, started to wriggle and elbow-drag herself across my belly toward my chest. My mouth hung open in disbelief as she found her own way onto my breast. All by herself.

--------

Friends had told me that one day, Zoe and Eliza would start to interact without me. That Zoe would be helpful in ways I couldn't imagine.

All I could picture was baby Eliza crying that crazed newborn squawk and my sensitive Zoe covering her ears and adding her voice to the din. "I'll believe it when I see it," I said, ever the optimist.

At the beginning of our time here in Vermont before CG got here, I was fragile, brittle even. One day, I was trying to get Zoe and Eliza in the car and off to Zoe's swim lesson. Eliza was overtired, crying in her carseat. Zoe was dawdling and whining and helpfully informing me repeatedly: "Mama! Eliza's crying!".

I forgot my wallet and ran crazily toward the house, Ellie's crying seeming louder the further away I got. By the time I grabbed the wallet and got back to the car, I was a sweaty, twitchy mess. I opened the car door and jumped in the driver's seat, braced for a chorus of cries and screams.

What I heard instead? Zoe singing a made up song to a silent Eliza. There was only one verse: "Don't cry Eliza, don't cry. It's okay Eliza, it's okay."

I'll give you one guess who was the only one crying at that point.

------------------------

This Wednesday, we finally leave the lakehouse here in Vermont. After two short flights, we'll arrive in Virginia where I'll drive our new car to our new house.

Everyone says it will soon feel like home. That I'll make new friends and find my way around. That all will be well.

I'll believe it when I see it. (I'm SO READY to see it.)

Goodbye. (Hello.)

Goodbye avocados everyday.


Goodbye lemons from the backyard.



Goodbye view of the neighborhood palm trees from my favorite spot on the hammock.



Goodbye mild winters and perma-sun. (Hello seasons and moisture. Humidity and greenery.)

Goodbye breakfast at Auntie Ems and Marstons' salads and Zelo pizza and the homemade smores at Parkway Grill. (Hello.... um, please tell me there's good food in Northern Virginia.)

Goodbye LA traffic. (Hello Beltway.)

Goodbye farmer's market. (Hello Polyface farm.)

Goodbye tank tops and cotton cardigans all year round. (Hello wool mittens and hats and scarves and rain coats and boots and ...... )

Goodbye City of Angels. (Hello City of Obama.)

Goodbye Kidspace and Shane's Inspiration and Travel Town. (Hello Smithsonian and, uh, the Capitol?)

Goodbye Venice beach. (Hello.... Potomac River?)

Goodbye four years of my life in LA. (Hello to a brand new life in Northern Virginia.)

------------------------------

I will board a plane tomorrow with my mom (BLESS HER SOUL.) and my two girls. We leave for the airport at 5 am and hope to arrive at the lake houses by midnight. Can't tell you why it's going to take so long; I blacked out after hearing about a 4 and a half hour layover at JFK.
(HOLD ME.)

I hope to be blogging while we're in Vermont but without CG around, I can't promise much. (Though I have one in the pipeline because I finally got a Basic Blogger 101 understanding of a "scheduled post").

See you all on the flip side.

Moving tends to make me maudlin

I don't want any more children.

There is a tiny little part of me that will probably always want more babies. Especially sweet, easy, sleep-through-the-night, put-downable babies. Especially my babies.

I shudder at the thought of going through any more pregnancies.

I wouldn't mind feeling a baby flutter and kick me from the inside, just one more time.

CG and I know the limits of our patience, our money, our time and our abilities. Two children is our limit.

I will never know how much more my heart could expand with another child (and another). (And another.)

I will tire of diapers and temper tantrums and stomach flu.

I will never tire of first smiles and first giggles and first kisses. First "ma ma ma ma ma"'s. First discoveries. First time holding my whole hand instead of just my finger. First questions which necessitate careful, vague explanations beginning with "well, when two people love each other very, very much.....".

I don't want to stop time.

I just want to hold it in slices, preserve my favorite moments for a later date. When Zoe is off to college, wanting little more than a credit card and several loads of laundry done when she visits, I would take a smidge of her, age right now, and watch her run and skip across our lawn, right into my waiting arms.


I want to open a jar of Eliza, age right now, when she's 13 or 17, when everything is difficult and she won't talk to me and I'm desperate to bridge the divide. I would just hold her in the crook of my elbow, one last time. Stroke her downy hair, squeeze her thighs, make her smile with heart stopping joy just by smiling at her first.

Moving on

I leave this house a week from tomorrow.

When Eliza, Zoe and I leave it, it will look like it does now. Like our home. It will be full of our things and our lives. It will look like we could come home to it at any moment.

I will pack only a suitcase (or two).

While Eliza, Zoe and I spend a month at my parents' lake houses in Vermont, CG will be helping the packers and movers, flying to Virginia to paint rooms and unload furniture and make beds, coming to Vermont for a week of much deserved vacation before we all arrive in Virginia toward the end of August, ready to start our new lives there.

I wonder how long it will be before it really, truly sinks in that I will not ever be coming back to this house. Even when our furniture is set up in our new house in Virginia, I don't know if it'll ever register that there isn't still this house, just as I see it now, stuffed with our things, waiting for us to come home.

The changes have been coming for a long time now. We've known "Virginia", "small town", "new house" were all in our future. We've had months and months to prepare. I've spent countless hours studying pictures of our new house. I've planned color schemes and sewn duvet covers. We've picked out paint colors, ordered some new furniture and mentally repurposed our bookshelves and rugs and lamps.

I still can't wrap my head around it.

This home, our first home, will no longer be ours.

I've been weepy about leaving for weeks. It is too small. We're outgrowing it; we'd need to move anyway I tell myself as the tears roll down my cheeks.

I remember walking into our living room for the first time, its robin's egg blue walls- and ceiling- greeting me like a boisterous HELLO!


I was wearing a robin's egg blue shirt that day. It seemed like destiny (though we did repaint it a slightly lighter, calmer shade of blue).

We brought our first baby into this home when I had our second baby in my belly.

We brought our second



and our third babies home to this house.



It feels like this house contains their babyhoods. In my photos and memories, their important moments are colored by the walls behind them, by the view past their faces to the walls and floors and spaces we have loved and banged our fists against and wept on.

I will miss so much about this house. The lawn we replanted (twice) where Zoe learned to walk (and steal dog toys).

Also, the hallway where Zoe learned that Sweet Dog prefers the blue sippy cup.

I will miss even the things that drive me crazy, like our sole tiny bathroom, where Zoe was potty trained, where I labored with Eliza, where Zoe sings whatever top 40 song we've been dancing to lately while she washes her hands. (Though I don't think Beyonce sings "and then you squeeze them, squeeze them".)



I know that a bigger, in many ways better, house awaits us in Virginia. I just hope it doesn't take too long to feel like home.

Meant to be

Thanks for all the congratulations on our simultaneous house selling/purchasing! It looks like we are proceeding along in both buying our house in VA and selling our house here in CA. What a roller coaster! What amazing LUCK! Am I really this lucky?!?! I couldn't have planned it better if I tried!

Have I used up my daily allotment of exclamation points?!?!

!!!!!!!!!

The way it all went down is enough to make me say it was "meant to be" and I'm not a "meant to be" type of person. I'm not religious or particularly superstitious and I tend to chalk up strangely perfect events to the random chance of a kooky universe.

But, seriously. This was all MEANT TO BE.

We've been watching the house listings in VA since we went out to visit over the holidays. We had sized up the neighborhoods, schools, kiddie attractions and knew the general areas we wanted to be in. CG had spent a day with our realtor out there every time he's flown out for meetings and saw tons of houses that were okay but just not quite right for one reason or another: too expensive, too big, too small, or too much work to make it "ours". CG asked me if I would consider making an offer on a house that we hadn't seen. I said "No way." MAYBE if he had seen it. But I was convinced we were going to have to just move there and rent for awhile while we found our house.

I should also mention that we were a little nervous to be working with our realtor since she lives and works a little far from the town we decided we wanted to move to. We worried she wouldn't have the local connections you sometimes need to make house purchases happen. But we liked her personally and we knew from buying our CA house with a GREAT realtor, that liking, respecting and trusting your agent are extremely important.

It was late Thursday when we were emailed the listing for this house. It was lovely, the right size, in the right neighborhood AND it seemed underpriced compared to other things we'd seen. It looked too good to be true. So we emailed our agent to see what was wrong with it. She told us that the seller's agent's office was right down the street from her office and she would try to get in to see it before anyone else. Which she did. And she confirmed that this was the perfect house for us, in great shape, on an awesome cul de sac. "One in a million and definitely underpriced", she said, and she's not prone to hyperbole. When touring it, she told the sellers (who have a three year old girl and a 4 week old baby!) about us and they said we'd fit right in with the other young families on the block.

We slept on it. And dreamed about it. And asked her to go back and check on it again.

Luckily for us, our agent knew everyone in the seller's agent's office and is highly regarded there (apparently, they've tried to hire her away from her company for years), so she had inside information about everything that was going down with this house. She told us that there was another serious contender, a couple that had seen it twice already and was writing an offer. She asked us to get someone, anyone, to come and see it for us so we could say someone other than our agent had seen it.

So we called my sister-in-law who has some friends who grew up in VA. Many phone calls later (OMG are you bored with this story yet??!?!) we got the husband of the friend of a friend of my sister-in-law to take time out of his Sunday to spend an hour going through the house with our agent taking pictures and trying to find things wrong with it. (My favorite picture shows a dead bug he found on the floor in a corner!) The man has never met us or even my sister in law and he did this for us! How crazy is that?

We decided we had to make an offer and got our agent to draw up the paperwork which we hurriedly filled out Monday morning. We wrote a glowing letter about why we thought this was the perfect house for us, included it with our offer and sent it off with fingers and toes crossed.

We got the call on Tuesday that they accepted our offer.

Meanwhile.....

We had started to get very discouraged about ever selling our house here in CA. Our neighborhood is a hodgepodge of people who've been here forever and haven't touched their houses in 60 years, people who've been here for awhile and don't care about their house/yard because they're too busy working their asses off or selling crystal meth and those of us who bought in the last 5 years because it was the only neighborhood we could afford and have totally maxed out the potential of our little houses. Unfortunately, it has been especially hard hit by foreclosures. So other houses in our neighborhood have been on the market for substantially less than our original asking price. And we had had lots of compliments but NO serious inquiries in the first two weeks of listing it. We decided to lower our asking price substantially to see if we could drum up some interest and get this thing sold before Lima Bean arrives.

Since open houses traditionally take place during Zoe's EXACT naptime (2-4), we decided to take some day trips to get away from the house in the morning (to keep the house clean!) and have her nap in the car on the way home. Hence Disneyland on Saturday. And we were thinking about the beach on Sunday but were so exhausted from Disneyland that we decided to take up our neighbors on their sweet offer to nap Zoe over at their house during Sunday's open house.

This turned out to be fateful!

We spent Sunday morning at home, cleaned up the house and headed over to our neighbors with the pack n play for Zoe's nap. Fifteen minutes before the open house was about to start, we got a call that our agent was throwing up and would have to cancel the open house because she couldn't find anyone to take it for her at this late notice. Since we just happened to be next door and NOT at the beach, CG was able to turn around and head back to host the open house.

The first person who came to the open house works at the same institution as CG and the two of them hit it off as CG took him around and showed him all the hidden (GEEKY) details of the work he's done to it over the last three years (you know, all that sunk time and cost and energy that you don't necessarily see but do appreciate once you actually live in a house. And are a GEEK science-type.).

The guy left the open house, sat in his car, called his agent and drew up the contract over the phone. For our asking price. (Our new, substantially lower, asking price but STILL! Our asking price! With our requested time-line!).

So many little things lined up in unexpected ways (our far-away realtor having ALL the right connections after all, the friend of a friend of a sister-in-law being a good Samaritan for people he's never met, the randomness of us actually being around and able to do the open house, the workplace connection that made CG the PERFECT person to hawk our house to our eventual buyer. EVERYTHING.)

It was truly MEANT TO BE.

(See, I did run out of exclamation points after all.)

Home is where the For Sale sign is

It was a sad, sad day to return home from our relaxing, beautiful, energizing trip to La Jolla last weekend. (Fun Fact! When I was growing up in my NO SPANISH SPEAKERS New Jersey suburb, I noticed the ads for weight loss camps at the back of the New York Times Magazine which all seemed to be in La Jolla. And since I pronounced Jose Cruz's name "Joze Cruzz" in my head, I think it was years before I figured out that there weren't actually hard "j" and "l" sounds in La Jolla. I don't think I learned how to actually pronounce it until college. Or possibly after. I still have "taking an intensive Spanish class" on my list of things to do before I die, even though I SUCK at learning languages. [OBV!])

While we were packing to come home, Zoe kept saying "I don't WANT to go to Pasadena! I want to stay here!" and "When we move to Virginia, can we live here?"

Um. Yeah. You and me both, kid.

Though I like to think she was appreciating having two relaxed parents around, the glorious beach close by, and the complete lack of CHORES and WORK for her parents to do, I'm pretty sure she was mostly sad to part with the carpeted staircase complete with railing and reachable light switches.

The term "simple pleasures" sometimes mean different things for kids and adults, doesn't it?

But now it's back to reality here. We've had no offers on the house in the first week and already our agent is asking us if we'd consider moving into temporary housing if we were to get an offer that had a firm 30 day escrow. To which I say: "WTF? Didn't I initially say this was weird, to list our house long before we're capable of moving? Do I really have to rehash why it is impossible to move into temporary housing a week before my baby's due? With a toddler and a dog? Are you crazy?".

Well, okay, what I actually said was: "Um, no."

We're trying to keep our home constantly clean and organized and it's surprisingly hard and surprisingly NICE. I am shocked at how many horizontal surfaces are currently completely uncovered right now. I do NOT normally live like this. I think I'm constitutionally incapable of doing this without the gun to my head of trying to sell the house.

Normally, I'm the one with piles of laundry in constant circulation. Now I must try to schedule all my laundry on one day and PUT IT AWAY RIGHT AWAY. What a concept! It's hard! But FREEING. It gets done for the week!

Normally, I'm the one who "tidies" by shoving things in drawers and closets and drawers and freezers and hoping and praying that they close. Now that we've organized all our closets and built in drawers and kitchen pantries and freezer and THEY ALL OPEN AND CLOSE EASILY AND EVEN HAVE SOME SPACE IN THEM, I find it a pleasure to put things away. (Though I often have to remind myself to put things in there properly and not just shove.)

I hope that I can learn from this and make my next home a little more organized from the get go. (Hahaha. After moving across the country with a newborn and a toddler and a dog and... oh well, a girl can dream, right?)