View from our porch at dawn:



View from our porch of K's and my bedroom (guess who's sleeping, and ignore the crazy fabric, I'm making proper curtains soon)


View of my most adorable daughter in her rocking chair and the Dog That Shall Not Be Named


I think K. had a lot of fun with Annaliese yesterday. She sat on his lap and handed him pieces of wood as he installed a missing pane of glass; she straddled his hip as he worked on the shower; she sat on his lap (with ear plugs in) as he mowed the safe flat parts of the yard. periodically, she'd pull a plug out and chuck it, and then they would halt, get off the lawnmower, and look for the bright orange earplug together.

Then, after working together happily all evening and spending a pleasant half-hour looking through old photos, K. and I went to bed and had an hour-long argument about me occasionally giving Annaliese the honey-coated spoon that I've just used to put honey in my tea, or on my cereal, or whathaveyou.

The man who sat on the couch eating cinnamon doughnuts not a half-hour earlier finds that unacceptable.

Anyhow.

Happy Thursday, all. We've got a good friend coming to spend the weekend with us, and here's hoping that they can figure out how to get the Merc's ac working, or at least more than 1.5 windows to roll down.

ah, blogging. How I've missed you.

It is a mystery to me where the hours and days go. But go they sure do.

We are more-or-less moved in; K's 3-day-5-night illness has meant that not too much else has happened, other than we had a lot of fights about how I treat him when he's sick.

I am at the wake-multiple-times-a-night uncomfortable stage of pregnancy (month 8! woo! next visit the midwife gives me a birth kit!) and Annaliese has had an ear infection, a 12-hour-fever, and has currently moved onto a chesty cough, as well as two molars pushing their way through, so the past ten days has been a bit worriesome as a mother (Me, four a.m.: what if she has meningitis? If she does, then her legs will hurt. Okay, go into the nursery and move her legs. Even though she's asleep. Is anyone else kind of anxious in the wee hours?) But as always, I reassure myself that if she's going number 2 and eating, we're probably okay. And at those two activities, Annaliese excels.

But other than the faint stink of dead animal wafting over from the rental house next door (I think something is under their foundation) and the fact that Dido is now gone more than she's home, due to 1. her hatred of our family 2. her love of our neighbors and 3. her escape-artist tendencies, all is well.

Pics later.

Taking It Easy Playing House

Somehow I forgot that after K. does a big push, he collapses. He's in bed right now, where he will be all day.

That's okay. He deserves it.

In the meantime, I'm writing a grant that's due on Monday for the farmers' market of our town (which I manage). That and the mountains of things left to do inside and out is keeping me busy.




But not so busy that the Adirondack chairs haven't been hit up. There's been a few naps in the sunny bedroom; a few tussles with Annaliese on the daybed; quite a few soaks in the claw foot tub.



Turns out you never grow out of playing house.

We're In.

Annaliese and her Papa on Easter morning, last Sunday.




Annaliese grabbing a catnap on the bare floor in our old house, yesterday afternoon.



And me about five minutes ago, in our new house.

Full gallery here.

p.s. We also have our new phone number. Email me (!) and I'll send it to you.

Mama Bell

So it turns out that when you wake up on a Saturday morning and check your email and find that you owe AT&T $427 because the international calling plan you THOUGHT you'd signed up for didn't go through and so you've been charged $3.68 a minute instead of 9 cents, so you call them and plead and say but I've been a customer for 2+ years, always paid on time, and I really truly thought I'd signed up for your worldwide value plan, and then when they refuse to help you out, get pissy and then say, well fine, then go ahead and disconnect me because I will NOT be paying nearly $200 for a single less-than-an-hour phone call to my sister...

they will.

Even though it's the weekend.

New phone and wireless at the new house this weekend. Expect Easter pictures (Annaliese looked ad-ORABLE) as well as new house pictures.

Sunday again?

Well.

This spring is flying. Last week, three people asked me my due date and upon hearing May 31st, remarked something like-- well, that's not too much longer!

At which point my hands fly in the air and I say no, it has to be forever away. There's too much to do.

Despite my waving hands I'm nearly 32 weeks pregnant. Out of 40. And I've begun to slow down a lot; I sleep like I've been hit on the head and dropped into a well, I really, really dislike picking things up (a big disadvantage in my house), and when I push myself too hard, leg cramps, headaches, and contractions ensue.

So I'm trying to achieve some kind of balance between the gardening fiend-new house mania-toddler mama and the need to take care of the new bebe. There are daily naps. Vitamins. Healthy food. Lots of water.

All of which mean I can keep doing about 1/20th of K.'s workload...

The floors are nearly done.

That sentence doesn't reflect the several stages of sanding, wood puttying, painting with a roller AND a brush, and four-- mmhmm, FOUR, coats of polyurethane per room.

He's over there right now, in fact, poly-ing away.

What's really fun is to see K. stand on the front porch when cars go by. He waves at them all, and the man is a Vermonter-- not a sociable waver like most southerners. He points out he has to wave because everyone's cars are slowing to look at the house.

It's come a long way...

In other news, my father sent Annaliese a ginormous playhouse. The huge plastic kind with a slide and a little door and enough room inside for at least four little girls to play house. There's a stove with burners, a cabinet, a cordless phone on the wall...

K. assembled it in about an hour last week (because he's a genius, would have taken me the rest of my life) and it's a big hit. Especially the slide. She's got a system worked out and gets herself up the two levels, sits at the top, and slides down with a huge grin on her face.

I never would have bought one but it sure is nice to see her having such a good time.

Lastly, I think Annaliese has chicken pox.

This is less momentous than I remember: she's been vaccinated, and so if she does indeed have it, it's really, really mild. Like a scattering of red bumps that don't seem to itch on her trunk and a few big ones under her chin. But she's had a cough and runny nose and has been sleeping super-hard with a low-grade fever, all of which are symptoms. And a kid in her daycare came down with it week before last (incubation time? 12 days. Mmmhmm).

So I'm about 80% sure that's what's going on.

She's eating like a champ and happy as a little clam though, so I'm just making her miso and tea and letting her rest whenever she seems tired and giving her Motrin at night. (UPDATE: Maybe not? The bumps haven't changed and aren't like sores at all, more like a rash? I don't know-- why did I think mothers know?)

The weather's been fantastic, though I'm waiting to put my tomatoes in until this cold front passes through-- supposed to get to 30 degrees Mon and Tues nights, quite a change from the balmy 70s high and 50s low we've been enjoying. Spring and fall really are superb down here. The wisteria is blooming, wild purple clumps hanging from the trees all over the place. And azaleas and redbud and dogwood and all sorts of pretties.

So that's the news! Next Sunday's post will be the last from this house. The Sunday after I'll be waking up in my sunny white southern-facing bedroom, in the house we own free and clear* thanks to K's thriftiness and what we called my dowry.

(*Sort of. We are so frickin' broke right now. The only pictures I took this week were of stuff I'm selling on Ebay. And we totally opened one of those interest-free-for-six-months Home Depot cards to help us through the renovation/cash crunch time. If we pay a dime of interest come October, you all have permission to kick me in the ass... man I hate debt).

So Happy Sunday all! Sorry about the pictures... I'll do better next week.