Sunday, March 17, 2013

Updates on three things

1. We met with our realtor for three hours on Thursday night. She wants us to have our house listed in two weeks. We have so many little projects to do, and most of them are things I can't do while knocked up. Andy and my dad spent the weekend working on two good-sized projects while my mom and I wrangled M and did things like cleaning out the linen closet and coat closet and packing a huge amount of various nonsense. Basically, our house should be as close to empty as it can while still being livable - like a hotel, really. My parents have a huge empty basement, so much of our stuff will be being boxed up and sent there for storage until this place is sold. It is very frustrating to me to be tired out so quickly. I know that if I don't take adequate rests, I'll burn myself out and either get sick or be unable to be productive, but it makes me feel like a dick to be sitting on the couch sipping water while Andy and my parents bust their asses.

2. M's dad has attended two visits out of eight since court. Tuesday marked 14 months since M entered foster care, and in our state they can file to terminate parental rights at 15 months. We'll see if this goes anywhere. M is the funniest, silliest little girl and has turned into a very small scientist with very bad methods: What will happen if I hit the dog in the face with a bamboo coaster? What will happen if I keep trying to close this door, even though I am fully aware that my fingers are preventing it from closing? What happens if I drop this cloth toy into the dog water bowl I'm not supposed to play with? Let us find out what Mama will do if I maintain eye contact with her and do exactly what I was just told not to do. She does all these naughty things with this look of intense concentration and really seems to be trying to find out how things work. It's a good thing that she is absolutely precious, because the kid is exhausting.

3. I'm entering my third trimester this week. The baby inside me is now approximately 15 inches long and just over two pounds. She's big enough (and I'm small enough) that I can frequently see her moving around, and I'm starting to be able to tell what's what - like oh hey, that's her foot that she keeps pretty much permanently lodged in my bottom right-hand rib. I find myself doing that pregnant lady thing where I am frequently touching my belly without noticing it. I'll just look down and find my hand there, even when I'm not thinking about the baby or pregnancy or anything. I find myself thinking thoughts to the new baby, as if I'm talking to her, which is bizarre because as far as I'm aware pregnancy doesn't come with any sort of psychic/ESP abilities. My belly button is getting more shallow by the day and there's pretty much no chance I'll make it through the whole nine months with an innie.

I'm planning to go to bed at 8:30 tonight, which is pretty exciting. Living my best life, and all that. This year's St. Patrick's Day was a little less exciting than some I've lived, but I really like where my life is right now. ...I do miss Smithwick's a lot, though. And lots of other beers. I miss beer.

What tips do you have on selling a house? Any advice on dealing with a very intelligent boundary-testing toddler? Is that "talking to the fetus" thing totally normal, or am I a weirdie?

Thursday, March 7, 2013

I still hate titling these.

Hello, hello!

We spent last weekend in Maryland hanging out with my sister and her family. Her new baby is so lovely and snuggly and perfect, and my twenty-month-old goddaughter is spunky and so freaking smart and very awesome indeed. It was a very nice visit, if way too short, except that a cousin we saw while we were there managed to spread his cold to me and M and the new two-week-old baby. Being pregnant suppresses the immune system, so a cold I used to be able to shake in three days now hangs on for two weeks, and M is also cutting some molars, so she and I are not at our very best right now.

Nothing new to report with M's case, other than that her dad has attended two out of six visits since court. Oh, and the worker told us she was chatting with the law guardian, who reported that she loves working with us and wishes she could clone us (which was nice to hear). Our worker gets my sense of humor, so I told her it was nice of her to say that, but we've actually been working on a plan to flee to Canada with M really soon, and in the meantime we're just really good at getting the white people in charge to trust us. The worker yelled, "I knew it!"

We're starting to look at houses again. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but we live in a Cape Cod, and our upstairs is two huge bedrooms and one very small bathroom, and the downstairs has a whole bunch of cramped rooms, including two very small bedrooms and a narrow living room. When we moved in it was just fine, but it's hard to entertain since everyone wants to hang out in our (small, eat-in) kitchen, and if we continue to foster it will be weird because opposite-sex kids can't share a room after age three in our county. So we're starting to look at houses that would suit our needs a little better. We've narrowed our search to two towns not far from us. I have to admit that I have no visual/spatial intelligence, so it's hard for me to look at bad paint or really outdated decor and see past it to the bones. Luckily Andy's good at that, so I'm confident we'll find something that works!

I'm pretending that the idea of doing the minor things we need to do to our house to make it more marketable (almost entirely cosmetic) and then packing and moving while pregnant or with a new baby isn't freaking my shit out. Was it convincing?