We need a pet.

Maybe this is my fault, for not letting Abi tear down spider webs or kill beetles. But this morning I saw an ant in the kitchen and attempted to smush it with my finger. She pleaded "No mom! That's my ant friend! You tried to kill my ant friend. It is okay if ants want to live with us!" Now my daughter has an ant crawling on her, and she is talking to it. We need a cat.

How much is a fresh espresso really worth?

This is Luke here and I bought a newer espresso machine a little while ago and upgraded to the Ascaso Dream. Great machine, looks cool and makes a pretty good cup of espresso. My thinking was that if I bought even one espresso drink a day at $3/day it would definitely pay off in the long run. However, when we moved this past winter I failed to properly empty the water reservoir and with the cold weather the water froze and broke the internal parts. While we were off on the ship I had it fixed and now that we are moving again I wanted to make sure to empty it properly. So began the most traumatic experience with my espresso machine thus far. I read the instructions online and it said to run it until it was dry, then wait for it to cool, lay it on its back, open up the steam wand and turn on the coffee pump, then rotate up and back down. Strange but I thought how hard could this be? Apparently the waiting until it is cool is the most important part, and even though I had waited a while it was not cool enough. How do I know? Well, when I turned on the pump and opened up the steam wand (pictured with the red arrow) hot lava temperature water came shooting out and although I had a cup prepared to catch the water, I was expecting more of a gradual poor, not a laser beam of skin melting water to come shooting out and assault my left nipple. The Ascaso Dream was quickly turning into a nightmare. I screamed, the family and kids were wondering what I was doing, I felt the searing pain of a 2nd degree on/near a part of my body that while not that useful is very sensitive. In the matchup of Espresso Machine vs. Nipple, the espresso machine certainly wins hands down. This week the redness on my chest turned got nasty as the skin came off…I spare you with the details but luckily the most sever part of the burn missed my vital body part and is still intact. I’m still looking forward to using my espresso machine in Charlottesville, but this event has caused me to rethink the cost of a fresh cup of espresso. Had I lost my left nipple my equation would change to something like this: $3/day vs. cost of espresso machine + beans – (loss of nipple X severe pain) = one really expensive cup of espresso. It’s something to think about if you are in the market for an at home espresso machine.

Obsessive-Compulsive Clean Think

So...did I mention sometimes I obsessively research things as a way to deal with stress? (Both good and bad stress). Well...we're about to move into our house, and I'm about to be at home all day with children. This has me obsessing over the daily routine. I think this is with good reason - if you have ever experienced the sublime thing that is a "perfectly scheduled day" with children - you know what I am talking about!

In the past, when working most of the day, my main focus was feeding my family a good dinner and making sure we made the most of the hours between 5-10pm. However, if I am actually going to live in my house all day every day, I need it to be clean. We are so accustomed to moving every few years, I have quite honestly never cared to clean behind appliances or remove accumulating dust from high places. If we are going to live in a place for several years straight, I want to aim a little bit higher. I found this cleaning calendar online and thought it was well designed. Wanted to share it with you, because I like it.

What I like most is that there is a "catch up" day every three days designed to keep you from ever feeling "behind" on the chores. Each month has an area to focus on as a "challenge", so over a years time you are sure to declutter closets, deep clean curtains, etc., without having to schedule your whole life around it. It is also based around the premise that you will do your daily cleaning throughout the day and at times that make sense - tidying the bedroom and bathroom as you walk out the door in the morning, straightening the house in the afternoon, and making sure the kitchen is "reset" every evening.

Do you have a favorite cleaning schedule?

Countdown to Reality

Today Luke and I went to the moving truck and put up the plywood retainer wall that will separate our stuff from some commercial load that is Virginia-bound. We are officially one week away from stepping onto an airplane headed back to reality. (In this case, reality is Charlottesville, VA).

After four months of life on a ship, and two months of living with Luke's mom in Salem, we're off to start our ordinary day to day life up again. I'm anxious and excited in equal measure. Floating out here in non-reality, where both of us stay at home all day with the kids, where we pay no bills, and where the kitchen really does seem to clean itself magically if you let stuff sit too long, I have been able to avoid the fact that we are about to be in a completely new place making a completely new life. I think we are headed for a big shock.

The craziest thing for me has been the reality that I have no idea what I might do in Charlottesville. Starting a career from scratch in a place I am so unfamiliar with sort of makes me feel like I am without bearing - it is really overwhelming. I have a feeling it may be awhile before I get settled into something, but I just keep telling myself that in five years I will look back and say, "now see, that all worked out for the best, didn't it?" So, score one more point for Melanie Jones and her magical thinking.

The most useful thing I've learned in the past six months is that there are scores of things that I don't really need and ultimately don't care about. All of the stuff that we are shipping to Virginia is just stuff. Being separated from it for six months has provided some necessary detachment. I'm sure this will come in handy during the unpacking phase, because we already heard lots of broken glass when moving all of our boxes from the storage unit onto the Virginia-bound truck.

The most exciting thing is that we (fingers-crossed) are buying our first house in Charlottesville. If all goes as planned, we will close on a home on July 8th. This will be the first time that we have had a place that didn't share walls with a neighbor, or that had a real yard with grass. It even has central heat and air. This new development has me completely over the moon, HGTV-obsessed (the cable is free in non-reality, should you ever have an excuse to visit), and watching Craigslist like a hawk for just the right couch to come available in Charlottesville. I don't think I did a very thorough job of nesting with Abi or Lily either one - they were both born at very transition-y times in our lives. Maybe that nesting instinct just goes dormant if you don't fully exercise it, and then explodes all over the first opportunity there is to express it. That's my explanation of what is going on in my mind right now... like we are going to walk into our house and I am just going to blow up and leave smears of fuschia paint all over the girls walls. (It's just a metaphor...don't worry.)

The house-buying process was pretty uneventful, but still one of the most nerve-racking processes we have ever been through together. We were working on a 30 day timeline, and everything needed to happen very fast. I never imagined I could get so emotional over a house, as logical Melanie knows that a house is just a place to sleep, eat, and wash up like a Motel 6 or something. Of course, I also never imagined I could get so emotional over a baby. So there you go. Houses and babies both make me cry and stay awake all night. I guess I am waaaay more normal than anyone ever imagined.

I think that is all for now.

Cupcake Fun

Life being somewhat chaotic at the moment, we celebrated Abi's and Luke's birthdays on the same day - June 25th. Luke really likes Red Velvet Cake, so about two weeks ago I whipped up a batch of red velvet cupcakes and threw them in the fridge. On Thursday, I pulled them out and made up some cream cheese frosting while Abi was on a special breakfast date with grandma. Lily was something close to helpful in the taste testing trials - we decided to add a little more powdered sugar than the recipe suggested. She gave the final result a finger lick and an enthusiastic "Mmmm-mmmm!"

Abi helped with the cupcake frosting during Lily's morning nap. Abi wanted to know if we could lick the knife between cupcakes. A fine idea if you ask me, but we opted to wait when I noted that there would be frosting left over for us to dip Teddy Grahams in. Then I got a cute idea: what if we put Teddy Grahams on top of the cupcakes like happy little dancing bears? I floated this by Abi, but she thought it might be better to put jelly beans on top of each cupcake. So, she completed the final garnish. I think they turned out very nice!

The rest of the party food was a re-work of dinner two nights prior - leftover cuban black beans + cream cheese = black bean chip dip; leftover chicken filling + cream cheese + corn tortillas = taquitos. Ya-Ya added her famous guacamole which was a big hit!

I think we will name this dual birthday party the "Red Velvet Hello Kitty Fiesta". A name that is equally delightful for a four year old girl, and a thirty-three year old man.

Yesterday Abi and I bought a gift for Luke. A bicycle water bottle cage and some of his favorite candy to use as "filler", kind of like tissue paper in the bag. Luke's other gift is going to see the new transformer movie tonight, so I thought movie candy would be in order. We discussed keeping the gift a secret, and Abi has done a masterful job on that count. One fine detail we left out was keeping the hiding place a secret. Abi divulged that one with a simple question from her daddy.

Here are the rest of the pictures from the big event which included Ya-Ya, Lydia and Tyler, Sully and Natalie, and our family:

60th Birthday Party

Last night we had a 60th birthday party for Luke's mom. There was a great turnout, and I think she was really impressed when the limo showed up to whisk her downtown to her favorite restaurant.

Luke's sister and I spent the morning cooking at a friend's house in the neighborhood. This was perfect. Each of us had two kids that were five and under, so the six kids played together and ruled the neighborhood all day. After the party, while we all cleaned up and returned everything we borrowed, the kids ran around in the sprinkler naked and ran from house to house imagining they were pirates, babies, and monsters. I am so excited because thanks to the party Abi now has friends her age in the nieghborhood and she couldn't be more delighted about it. I think this is going to be a fun part of parenting. I like having friends over!

Happy Feet

One of my favorite things about Lily is how she is starting to express her little emotions without words. The best is her "happy feet". If she likes dinner, her right leg starts kicking rythmically in delight. On a walk in the stroller, her little leg gets to going so fast while she just smiles and looks at the world around her. I remember doing this same thing in chairs before my feet could hit the ground. How many times did mom or a teacher ask me to stop kicking when I was full of energy and anticipation?