a collection of very loosely related tidbits about recent life in Die Gurke Haus
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The girls recently started up swimming lessons again. When I mentioned this to Mom B., she seemed very surprised at first, until she realized that all the rec center pools around here are indoors. :) The girls are regular little fish. They love swimming, even Katie, whose teeth begin chattering after about 15 minutes in the water. Her lesson is 45 mins. long, and whenever it's over she BEGS to stay in longer and play, even though I can barely understand her for the shivering. Because I'm mean I usually say no and make her take a hot shower to raise her body temperature back up a couple degrees.
I accidentally signed Katie up for a class that's a little too hard for her -- I misread the class description when I was signing them up (I really need to stop making important decisions after 10pm!). But because her class is so small (only 1 1/2 other students -- one of them is only there half the time) the teacher said she'd be willing to keep working with Katie at her level. This means that while the other kids are learning to do crawl stroke by themselves, the teacher has to hold Katie all the time so she doesn't sink to the bottom of the pool. I need to start feeding her more bacon or something -- the poor child doesn't have enough body fat to be able to float unassisted yet.
For a while I was concerned that Miriam's class might be too challenging for her -- they spend the whole time swimming laps back and forth across the pool, practicing their strokes. She hasn't figured out how to breathe while swimming yet -- she keeps pausing to tread water and catch her breath. But she's loving her class, challenges and all. A lot of families around here do swim team in the summer. So far we've resisted joining, mostly because I selfishly don't want to be chained to a swimming pool for hours every day for a month. However, the pool we're joining this year (we've been convinced to switch) is popular with many of our friends (the ones who convinced us), so I would be spending that time socializing with other moms. Hm. We'll see. I'm just happy our kids love the water so much -- it was such an essential and enjoyable part of my childhood that I want to share with my kids. And speaking of spending hours every day chained to a pool in the summer, thanks, Mom!! :)
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You can never have too many bookcases. Actually, with us it's more like you can never have ENOUGH bookcases. No matter how many we have, we always have books double-stacked. Recently we were getting to a point though where ALL the shelves were double-stacked, plus the floor in the living room was perpetually littered with puzzles and toys that didn't fit anywhere. So we picked a Saturday and made one of our favorite family day-trips to IKEA! I know this store of happiness is not a favorite among some of our readers *coughDaveandKatiecough* but our kids LOVE it. We parents love the fact that their breakfast is super-cheap: for $11 we can feed the whole family on eggs, bacon, potatoes, french toast, juice, chocolate milk, and coffee. We like to go early, have breakfast, then do our shopping while everyone is feeling fat and happy.
I used to love furniture stores when I was a kid. All those different rooms! It was like walking through a mansion. Now I love all the possibilities for prettying up my own house. I love the fact that every wall space in the showrooms is utilized. It gives me inspiration for decluttering my own home and getting stuff up and out of the way. When you're fighting a constant battle against STACKS on every available horizontal surface, it's a good thing to be so inspired.
So one obvious solution to the war against STACKS is shelves. Sadly, IKEA discontinued our favorite bookcase series. They looked nice and seemed really well made (unlike some of the crap I'm willing to admit they do sell, like the bookcase we had the misfortune to buy for the kids' toys downstairs. hate that thing). So we had to spend time choosing another model that wouldn't clash with the other bookcases, since plain brown seems to be out of fashion. Fortunately the kids were happily mesmerized by The Cat in the Hat which was playing on a TV in one of the living room set-ups while we discussed. We finally chose a black one that looks well next to the piano, so to make everything work we did a major derangement of the whole living room. It took us a week to get everything moved around, cleaned, and organized. There was only one bookcase that didn't get moved. We had stacks of books all over the house (which became loose piles of books as the resident toddler decided he just really had to read THAT one right down at the bottom of a stack).
I loved it. I love getting new things for the house and being able to organize the things we do have more efficiently. I find it so fun to rearrange things, get a fresh perspective, plan our living spaces differently. I also found a charming little red bookcase on Craig's List to put by the front door, to serve as our new Launching Pad / mitten storage. (In the summer it will probably hold sidewalk chalk and hats.) Now we've got plans for new lighting, as our lamp table finally crashed spectacularly, after wobbling precariously for months.
I guess in some ways I'm still a little girl playing house.
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So after we had moved the piano in our Great Living Room Derangement, I really got to see what color the carpet used to be, and compare it with what the carpet looks like now.
Ew.
Or, I let my baby crawl on THAT??
It's only been recently that I learned that cleaning one's carpets was something one should do regularly, even to the point of maybe even owning one's own steam cleaner. Who knew! So, for the first time since moving into this house (please don't judge me) I rented a steam cleaner from the grocery store, got the extra-large bottle of cleaning solution so I could use the amount recommended for "heavily soiled" carpets and not run out halfway through, and threw in a bottle of high-traffic pre-treatment for good measure. Mr. Pickles, bless his husbandly heart, had vacuumed thoroughly and moved the furniture while I was out shopping, so as soon as the boys were napping I could get started.
It went very well, despite the fact that Daniel woke up just as the machine ran out of solution and I had only two passes left for the living room and Joseph needed a diaper change and he never fell asleep (although he stayed in his room like a good boy) while Mr. Pickles was off at a friend's hockey game with the girls. After taking care of everyone's needs I finished cleaning the rest of the carpet with Daniel on one hip. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by how lovely the solution smelled. Our house now smells like a combination of bacon and flowery freshness. (There's something for everyone at die Gurke Haus!) I'll be honest -- there's not really a noticeable difference in the carpet -- at least, not as dramatic as I was expecting. But to judge by the color of the dirty water I was pouring out, again, ew. Later that night I actually did another pass over the worst spot in the dining room (where the high chair usually sits -- WHO in his right mind puts beige carpet in a dining room?????). It does look better now -- it's a slightly lighter shade of gray than previously, but not quite the original color. However, I have been inspired to scrub the worst spots occasionally over the next few weeks, so that when the spring cleaning bug hits me later and I want to steam clean again, it should look even better. Hopefully.
The whole point is try to avoid hiring a professional. We'll do that for sure whenever we move out, but right now I'm trying to see if my own elbow grease is effective enough to keep our home comfortably clean.
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Speaking of handing over buckets of money to professionals, I just got my first root canal last week. Just to be clear, lest you judge my oral hygiene, it wasn't cavity-related -- I had an abscess on my root which annoyed my dentist. So to ease his conscience I scheduled an appointment with an endodontist -- a guy who for his profession sticks needles and drills in people's mouths. I was in the office for 2 1/2 hours, 10 minutes of which was spent on the actual procedure. (I had to wait a very long time while the endodontist treated a couple patients with emergencies and then had to spend ten minutes explaining to one emergency patient why she was expected to pay her emergency bill that morning.) The good news is that my root was so dead that they didn't even need novocaine to numb me up. (I hate that numb feeling -- I associate it with waking up from anesthesia after tooth extractions and feeling out of control of what's happening to me.) The bad news is that while testing the tooth for root sensitivity (by pressing a freezing cold q-tip against the tooth), we learned that several other of my front teeth have no feeling either. (This explains why drinking ice water or hot chocolate doesn't hurt until it reaches my cuspids...) Which means, according to the endodontist, that I will need at least three more root canals in the near future. Because another x-ray showed that the canals have started to calcify, so if it's not done soon he won't be able to get in at all, which would mean oral surgery later.
Sigh.
Okay so the REASON why all the roots of my front teeth are dead? So some of you might remember that one summer when we drove way out to
Tehachapi for some day retreat with the
MI? And the host family had a trampoline in the back yard? And someone was teaching us how to do flips? And we were all having great fun until one of my flips ended terribly, horribly wrong, and I was so glad to be wearing braces because it kept my teeth from falling completely out of my head?
Yeah.
It is so totally NOT FAIR that the stupidity of one's youth should be visited upon one when one is much wiser and wayyy more paranoid.
(But man, that trampoline was fun!)
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Speaking of spending tremendous amounts of money on teeth, this revelation about mine came just a day after we were told by the kids' dentist that Miriam is a good candidate for early orthodontic treatment. Here I must take a moment to confess one of my pet superstitions -- namely, that totally breastfeeding my children and not giving them pacifiers or bottles would guarantee that they wouldn't need braces later in life. (I'm not sure exactly where I got this idea -- most likely from reading too much into claims made by
La Leche League and the
Weston A. Price Foundation.) Well, THAT treasured belief was dashed into little pieces. Both girls have very small mouths with lots of crowding. (We've been flossing at the dentist's recommendation since they were about 3.) In a word, Miriam's mouth is a mess. Her bottom teeth are coming in all crooked b/c there's just not enough room. So the dentist recommended we begin "Phase 1" -- which is basically a retainer that widens the palate enough to make more room for her teeth. And since she's homeschooled, she can wear it longer each day, which means it can work faster.
Naturally, they want to start this sooner rather than later, like, within the next three months. And it will cost about the same amount as one of my root canals.
Sooo... anyone have $3000 lying around that they're willing to part with?
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