It's good to feel good again! No more blacking out on my way up the stairs, no more puffy Prednisone face, no more falling asleep in Devon's bed at 8 and waking up in the morning. Thanks to all who said prayers and expressed concern over my illness. I'm pleased to report I am feeling almost all better. I have a tiny bit of rib and shoulder pain lingering from spending so much time sedentary and coughing, but even that is much better today.
Mid-Atlantic temperatures are topping seventy for the first time since we moved, so we are enjoying the sunshine and outing options. This weekend we went to Kilby Cream, a local dairy that makes homemade ice cream.
It's pouring down rain this morning, so we hope that it clears off in time for Easter Egg Open Season. We've had our first egg hunt at MOPS already, right after a nice meeting day when Devon presented Mommy with a flower he potted himself.
This is pretty much how it went:
1. Kids rush out from sidelines onto the gym floor where eggs are waiting.
2. Each picks up an egg.
3. Joy ensues as they realize that the egg has a single chocolate inside.
4. They sit down, slowly and methodically unwrap the chocolate, and eat it.
5. In no rush, they get up, move on to the next egg, and repeat.
We'll see how the next two or three go. By Easter Sunday we'll probably be pros.
All that candy means we have to do our Aah's and Ee's. Is it just me or does it take a good year of shaking a brush at a toddler's face before brushing feels like a meaningful activity that is actually protecting your child's teeth? Before that, there's a lot of tantrumming, restraining, and biting the brush so nothing can be done. So glad that all three kids are on a good brushing schedule, and so glad that our bathroom mirror has a lip on top just wide enough for the toothpaste to be way up high as all three would eat it right out of the tube if given the opportunity.
Our main excitement for the week is that our house has been quite the construction site. It's been the largest home improvement project we've ever had to undertake, so we're glad that it didn't involve any DIY. It started last Tuesday when the kids crowded the window in the mudroom to watch the big red dumpster get dropped off.
The crew arrived on Wednesday and started stripping old shingles off the roof.
The kids watched the activity from the den.
Late mornings found us getting outside for a walk or drawing on the driveway with sidewalk chalk. It was an intricate and complicated dance to keep everyone in the yard and yet far enough away from the roofers so they could work uninterrupted.
Spring lunch picnics were (are) awesome! We had a small army of black Maryland ants test the waters in our kitchen this week. Remembering our two-year daily struggle with Sweet Ants in Florida, I panic texted Craig "I can't live like this again!!!!". He went to Home Depot on his way home from work and purchased a single can of spray that knocked them out. This morning I was mopping up their little bodies with a sense of morbid satisfaction. They're apparently a small problem here in the spring, but not too hard to kill.
Devon (around the sucker in his mouth): Mommy! I found pine cones. You can take a picture of me holding my pine cones!
It was a bit of an unpleasant surprise that the house needed a new roof quite so immediately after moving in. Five days after unloading a seam on one of the upstairs dormers let in water that created a large, ugly stain on the girls' ceiling. We had someone out to look at it and flipped back through our home inspection trying to see what we had missed. The problem is, roof problems are a bit hard to diagnose. We could've fixed the seam and a few loose flashings here and there only to have another completely new problem a few months later. Bottom line: our house was 20 years old and had a 20-year roof on it. We could wait until water leaks slowly spoiled all our ceilings and then re-roof or we could do it right away. We got three estimates, one that knocked our socks off and two that were consistent and seemed fair. One of the estimators said that it was the biggest residential roof he had ever measured, a dubious honor. Our roof is "architecturally interesting", meaning that there are a lot of steep sloping planes and gorgeous but not very spatially efficient features. That adds up to a lot of square feet.
We were blessed to have chosen the right contractor for the job and a shingle color off the sample board that turned out to be just what we wanted. It looks amazing!!! Not what I would've chosen to spend money on right away, but since we had to I can at least enjoy the end result.
It rained the day before they started the job and it's raining a day after they finished as I sit here and write this from a deck chair at the YMCA while the kids play in dropoff.
Let's review the last six weeks:
1. Sick self
2. Potty Training
3. Sick self, sick family
4. Doctor visit, meds with unpleasant side effects
5. Long recovery
6. Roof
Yep, it's been an interesting time. My parents fly in tomorrow and the metaphor I'm using to describe my mental state is "crawling across the finish line". Sometimes when everything is as it should be and things are getting done, life is still just so full it kicks my butt.
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