Having Your House on the Market Blows

So our house finally was listed on Thursday, right? We had 3 showings on Thursday where Maelin and I couldn't come home from work right away. Luckily we live near a Wild Oats so we went over there and just walked around looking at stuff.

Friday we had 3 showings but they were here while we were at work, so that was no big deal. However, you need to remember that Maelin hasn't been sleeping great lately so we've been exhausted and the last thing we want to do at night is clean up.

Saturday we had to leave for the whole day. We had 6 showings scheduled so we just took Maelin and all her crap over to Jeff and Kat's and hung out w/ them all day. We had a great time: we took Maelin to the park where she went down the curly slide all by herself and we took naps in their 2nd bedroom and Maelin got to crawl all over their apartment because they have carpet!

Got home last night and had a message that someone was coming Sunday (today) from 5-7pm. That's no biggie, I thought. I can spend Sunday cleaning and doing laundry and then we can go get dinner and get out of the house.

Wrong. Just got called and 2 people are on their way. They should be here between 11-1pm. So now I have to quickly hide all my laundry, I haven't showered yet but there's no time so I quickly laid Maelin down for a nap, Kevin is showering and I'm cleaning and we're going to take off again.

Maybe I can get a shower in between Maelin's 2nd nap and the other showing....wait, I told Christina I'd help her paint today!!

Having your house on the market blows.

The Life of a 2nd Grade Teacher

So as I was getting some work done this morning, one of my former students (she's in 4th grade now) comes up to me and says, "Mrs C, do you want a kitten?" I say, "Why?" and she unzips her coat and out pops an adorable TINY baby gray kitten!!!

Whoa....I think. I ask her why, how is that kitten here in school? She says it was in the middle of the road last night and she ran out from her house to stop a car from running it over! She brought it in and her dad said they couldn't keep it and to just bring it to school in the morning so the teachers could take care of it.

Nice...thanks dad. Way to pass the buck.

So I take her and the kitten (who is sooooooooo cute!!!!) into my room after telling my principal the story and getting a thing of milk from the cafeteria. We close the door and my student is crying because she doesn't know what's going to happen to this little kitty. I tell her it's okay: I'll call animal control and they'll come pick her up and someone would love to adopt a baby kitty.

I call animal control and the baby kitty is running around my room exploring and mewing...it's is DARNED cute. So tiny.

All my kids come in when the bell rings and I warn them about the kitty and tell them to stay quiet. Easier said than done when you're talking about Autistic kids and ADHD kids and there's a cute kitty exploring the room! They were really good and tried not to disturb the kitty.

I called animal control and they said they would come soon. I tried to get the kids to read while we waited, but no such luck. The kitty was way more entertaining! (I don't blame them...) Finally, the PE teacher came in and she said, "OOOOOOOOhhhhh...my husband and I were talking about adopting a kitten!" I told her take this one...you'll skip the adoption fees! She said she had to call her husband and she'd let me know. I told her to hurry cause the officers were on their way.

Happy ending...the PE teacher IS taking the kitty home today and she'll have a great home with them. It doesn't always end up like that. I talked to the kids about how you can always take unwanted pets to the shelters and you should never just let them go.

Suffice it to say, we didn't get much done today. Now I have to cancel other stuff we were going to do this afternoon to make it up. At least one homeless kitty in the world now has a home!

Maelin's New Attitude

I remember when I was pregnant and I was talking to my sister about how badly I wanted a girl and why. I remember what my sister said (who has 2 boys), "Keep in mind that girls seem to have way more drama than boys do..."

I didn't pay that much attention at the time...

Little Miss Maelin has developed QUITE the attitude in the last few weeks. She is sassy, naughty, stubborn and very vocal about what she wants and doesn't want. Here's a few examples of our little princess' behavior:

*This morning I got her up as usual and laid her on the changing table as usual and she HIT me and then started crying and arching her back and shaking her head "no" at me (remember when I thought that was so cute???? not so cute anymore!) So I said "NO" to her in a loud voice because it is NOT okay to hit mommy just because you're mad. She looked at me like I had beat her with a broomstick and started crying her head off with tears and sobs and sucking her thumb. Jeez, I just said "no"...I didn't whip her with wet noodles!

So I picked her up and calmed her down and laid her down again and guess what? She hit me again! So I said "NO" in a loud voice. More crying and sobbing and hiccuping and sucking her thumb. I felt like a terrible mommy at this point: I only get about 30 minutes w/ her in the morning before I have to take her to daycare and this is how we're spending it? So I laid her down again and gave her one of her favorite toys to occupy her while I changed her. What did my little angel do? She THREW the toy across the room and hit me again!!!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I said "NO" again and just let her cry while I changed her. The whole time she was screaming and sobbing and hiccuping and it was like I was boiling her alive. As soon as I was done, I picked her up and she immediately stopped. She was totally fine and saying "Da-da" and waving at Kevin and laughing.

*Here's another example: She was trying to crawl into her room the other day and she got stuck on the rug. Kevin lifted her up and moved her about 2 inches over the rug and she acted like he had thrown her across the room: she cried and screamed and put her head on the floor and kicked her feet and it took (soooooo not kidding here) about 8 minutes for us to calm her down. She was mad because she didn't want to be helped: she wanted to do it herself!

Some friends have suggested making a "Naughty Spot" for her but I'm thinking she might be too young for that. I think we're just going to have to be consistent and pick our battles and realize that although adorable and sweet, our little angel seems to have quite the stubborn mind of her own. Wonder where she got that from?

Some Pics of Baby Maelin...maybe

As promised, I'm trying to post some pics of baby. However, I'm having computer problems. I'm using Kevin's computer to get online but for some reason (that even Kevin can't figure out) the internet doesn't work on my computer...and of course that's where the pictures are stored. I'm going to try to network the two together so I can try to get some pictures up here but I can't promise it'll work...

Let's see....



Okay, so they're crooked. I don't know how to find the edit tool on Kevin's computer and I don't feel like messing his computer up, so you're going to have to tilt your head to look at them. I promise we'll get this figured out soon!

MaeMae Has 3 Teeth and Other Thoughts

I know, I know I said I would put a recent pic of MaeMae up here but I can only do that at home and I just haven't had the time this week. I promise I'll get some up here this weekend, so if you're waiting for that, please check back!

Kevin is finally back in town. He had a good trip and we missed him. Maelin kept saying, "Da-Da" and then she'd look around the house for him. He missed her too...I cleaned up the house last night so he could spend some quality time playing blocks with her and watching her knock them down over and over again.

The house is going on the market today!! Our realtor (Kevin's cousin) is coming over later to put the sign up and give us our lockbox for the key. I had to clean up last night and we're expecting to make ourselves scarce on the weekends so they can show the house to whoever. Good times.

Maelin has 3 teeth now! She just got one in on the top...could explain why she's been so fussy at night lately. Poor baby. Oh, she's also going through a very stubborn stage. I remember how much I used to love her stubborn streak but now it's turning into so much drama! Our little drama queen does NOT want to get her pants changed, stop walking around, sit in her car seat, eat her yogurt, etc. She cries real tears and screams and arches her back if you try to get her to do something she doesn't want to do. It's pretty impressive.

I also have to give a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Uncle Jeff today. We love you and we'll see you later at dinner. Hope you all have a great day today and I promise I'll get some pics up of the baby this weekend.

Catch You All Up List!

Boy...so much happening. I'm at work right now and for some reason I can't upload pictures here but I'll try to get a current one of Miss MaeMae up soon. She's so cute lately. She's discovered the word "NO". She really likes to use it by shaking her head back and forth at us whenever we're doing something she doesn't like...diaper changing, trying to get her to eat, pick her up before she tumbles down the stairs, etc. It's sooooo cute but kind-of annoying at the same time. Where did my sweet, agreeable baby go???

We got the house ready and it's going to be listed on Friday! Those of you who know where we live can put in our zip code and you should be able to find it on recolorado by typing in our zip (or address, whatever) You can look for it starting on Friday! Be sure to tell your friends!

We were going to list it today but Kevin is out of town for the week (in Palm Springs, lucky duck) so I didn't want to have to get the baby ready for work every day by myself AND keep the house in showing condition so it'll be listed when he gets back. We weren't able to price it as high as we wanted because of the current mortgage crisis, but we're going to start it out at $239,9000 and see what happens. That gives us some bargaining room.

One crazy thing...remember how I told you about the houses being torn down right next to us? Our realtor Marcus told us on Saturday that those lots of land are being sold for 5 MILLION dollars!!!! Can you believe it??? We live RIGHT next door to 5 million dollar land...land only!!! Hopefully that will help us get our asking price, or close to it.

I have to go get homework folders ready to go and make a zillion copies so I'm going to leave for now. I'll try to get some pics up of baby Maelin soon...she couldn't be sweeter!

Thank Goodness for Good Friends

Ahhhhhhh...what a crazy few days. So after my painting accident, I called my realtor and she made it pretty clear that we need to repaint the entire living room.

Luckily I was taking Thursday off of work anyway to finish some stuff up on the house so I took baby Maelin over to Sherry's house and she got to play with the twins all day. They had a blast! Sherry said she couldn't believe what a stubborn little girl Maelin is!! Tell me about it...

I called my friends to come over for a "Painting Party" and got some wine, beer and frozen pizza. They showed up and we painted the entire living room the new color. It took about 3 hours for the 4 of us to knock it out but it's done now and looks great!!! It would have taken me all night tonight to finish it, but now it's done.

So thank you Katey, Christina and Emily!! I don't know what we would have done without you!!

OH MY GOSH....You are not going to believe what I just did!!!

Okay, so we're getting our house ready to stage, right? The realtors are coming on Sat (in 2 days) to take pictures so the house has to be ready to go by then.

We installed a digital thermostat a while ago and whoever had the house before us hadn't removed the old one when they painted. So after we installed the new thermostat, there was about a 3 inch perimeter of white around the new one. Kat and I went to Home Depot the other night with a bit of the wall chunked out (of course the old owner didn't leave what color the wall was so we could buy the exact color) to see if they could exactly match it.

There was a crazy lady there who said we hadn't brought a big enough piece of wall so we just got a bunch of samples and laid our piece of wall on it and we thought we found a dead match.

Jeff was over tonight playing with the baby so I pulled out the paint and w/ Kevin's help, we painted around the thermostat and it was a dead ringer exact match!! WOW we're good! So I went around the whole room fixing little spots here and there...around the entire living room (which is huge with tons of windows and crown molding. The room is probably about 20 feet by 10 feet.) I sure am making this house look good for Saturday I thought!!

I went to get Maelin ready for bed and came back out about 15 minutes later and OH MY GOSH...the color is too dark!!! So now, around the entire living room are little blotches of the wrong color here and there! It looks like a kid finger-painted in here!!!! I'm going to have to friggn' repaint the ENTIRE room before Saturday!!!

Can you believe what a dumb $#$@$ I was to not check one spot first?????

So I'm going to try to bust out a big piece of wall tomorrow and take that to Home Depot and see if they can match it and then go over my lovely handiwork. Please keep your fingers crossed that it works or you-know-who will be pulling an all-nighter on Friday night...

2nd Grade Field Trip Drama

To give you an idea of the types of things teachers have to deal with on a daily basis besides actually teaching, I have some tidbits about our upcoming field trip. We are going to the Museum of Nature and Science in a few weeks and I sent home a note asking for $1 to cover the cost and some parent volunteers to go with us.

First off, the parent who is always lurking in the halls watching her daughter..every day she comes for lunch and FEEDS her daughter lunch really wants to go with us. She showed up a week ago and gave me $1 for herself. I said no, she didn't get to go because she went on our last field trip and it's only fair to give other parents a chance, right? Well, that's just NOT okay. She called our principal and complained that I wasn't letting her go on her daughter's field trip and she wasn't going to let her daughter go if I didn't let the mom go. My principal totally backed me up and said I was going to give other parents a chance and if she chose to not send her daughter, that was her choice. I laughed at that one...we'll see if her poor daughter gets to go.

Secondly, I have another parent who never sends her son to school...I think he missed 24 days last trimester alone. (we have 50 days in each trimester). Anyway, I pulled him aside the other day and told him I couldn't send him to 3rd grade if he didn't start coming to school every day because he's so far behind...(I can't really retain him for that, but that's another complaint for another post. Why we aren't allowed to hold kids back is beyond me.) Anyway, he went home and told his mom I said he was failing and I wasn't going to send him to 3rd grade or the field trip. Well she got mad and left me a nasty message on my voice mail and then called my principal again to complain that I was mean and wouldn't let him go on the field trip. She wasn't mad about him possibly not going to 3rd grade...she was mad about the field trip.

My principal totally backed me again and said if he wasn't coming to school regularly, then he doesn't get to participate in extra activities. She hung up on her. Guess who hasn't been in school yesterday or today? Yup...joy boy.

I have one student who says she's not allowed to go because she hasn't been doing her chores at home. I have another student who started crying and said his mom doesn't have $1...(I'll pay for him myself of course). I have another student who keeps losing his permission form: I've sent home 6 of them so far. I have another student who says he can't bring a lunch...they have no food at home (that may actually be true so I'll buy an extra lunch for him just in case.) My autistic boys need one-on-one chaperones with them so I'm trying to schedule that with the special ed department but they are busy with their kids taking the CSAP and they won't be able to provide me with coverage. I'll have 2 autistic boys by myself to deal with...

Why can't I just schedule a field trip and everyone turns in their slips and money and the parents show up smiling and we all go and have a great time???

Moving...Update

So thanks for the comments and suggestions! (Christina...you had great thoughts!) I talked to our realtor (Kevin's cousin...gotta keep the moving in the family!) yesterday and she wasn't very concerned. She basically said the same thing that Christina said.

Her thoughts were that if our property values were going to go up, it would take a while...like 2-3 years. If we want to wait that long, we should surely be able to sell the house for way more than we could now but as Christina said in her comment, we can't wait that long. We need more room for baby Maelin NOW. She also said that she didn't think the developer would want our land because there are 6 of us on it that he would have to buy out.

She thinks that anyone who wants to move to Wash Park won't be put off by some construction. Especially because they are building luxury townhomes very quickly and only during the work week.

So moving is going ahead as planned!! Hopefully we'll get everything done tonight and tomorrow night before the cleaner comes on Thursday and we'll be ready for Saturday!

Moving...It May Actually Happen!

Wow...we have been crazy busy but our house is almost ready to put on the market! We've spent the last 3 weekends and countless evenings after Maelin is asleep cleaning and packing and boxing and moving boxes and moving furniture, pictures and stuff over to multiple people's houses.

My piano is at my friend Dan's house, our furniture and clothes are at my dad's house and our random boxes of pictures and crap is at our friend Keith's house. Kevin has taken two days off of work: today he's home cleaning out the basement so it looks more presentable. I'm taking Thursday off and taking Maelin to Sandra's house so I can finish painting and cleaning.

The cleaner is coming on Thursday...we're paying her $100 and for that we get...ALL windows cleaned inside AND out, baseboards cleaned, crown molding cleaned, floor swept and waxed, everything dusted, and kitchens and bathrooms cleaned. Not a bad deal considering I have NO time to get all that done (and no interest, if I'm honest about it...)

I can't believe it's actually getting so close to us moving!! One more step closer. Our realtor is coming on Sat afternoon to take pictures and then the house will be listed next week.

One problem that has popped up: we live in the middle of our block. On our side of the street, 4 houses down from us, a developer has come in and completely torn those houses down. They're gone. This weekend, our neighbors were moving out. Our other neighbor told us that she heard from someone that the developer bought out the 4 people and is planning to tear down all the houses and build $400,000 - $500,000 townhomes all the way up to our property line. The problem with this is this:

1. Is anyone going to want to buy a house right next to construction even though they don't work on weekends?

2. Should we wait to put our house on the market because as soon as those are finished, our property values should skyrocket.

3. Should we wait to list the house in the hopes that the developer wants our land too and hasn't contacted us yet? (I think the developer would have contacted us by now if they wanted the land, but Kevin isn't sure)

Can you believe it? We've lived here for over 3 years and the SAME week that we are planning to list the house is the week the construction starts. What should we do? Any thoughts?

Happy 11months Baby Maelin!

Can you believe it??? Baby Maelin is 11 months old today! Almost a whole year old...where the heck does the time go???

We are in the midst of planning her birthday party. It's going to be at a park near our house on April 5th. If it rains or snows (which it very well might), we're moving it to a friend's house that's nearby because our house will be on the market then and having a party there while trying to keep the house clean is the last thing I want!!

She is so cute these days. Her new favorite trick is to play peek-a-boo with us (especially me while I'm driving...). She doesn't quite do it right...she puts both hands on her cheeks and grins at us while we're saying, "Where's Maelin?" then she puts both hands down and laughs... So cute.

She also really likes to walk around. She gets really mad if you don't spend enough time holding her hands so she can walk. She marches...both legs straight out and her tummy sticking out. She looooooves to walk so that's another reason we need to move...baby girl needs more room!

So happy 11months baby girl. You are the love of our lives!!

Maelin's Busy Weekend

Hello everyone,
We've been sooooo busy trying to get the house packed up and everything...I haven't had time to breathe, let alone post anything, so here is a quick hello to you all. We had Jeff & Katey's engagement party on Saturday and Maelin sure had a great time! She was crawling all over the place and trying to walk (hanging on to people's hands) and really liked the cake! She was just a pumpkin.

Then yesterday she had a busy day playing all day long with either Kevin or I while the other one packed up the house. We actually got quite a bit done. We went to dinner w/ Aunt Kat and Uncle Jeff and poor uncle Jeff slipped on the ice and fell down WHILE holding baby Maelin's carseat!! Luckily, he had the instinct to have her fall straight down while he took the brunt of the fall on his back, poor guy. Maelin was just scared...totally fine but poor Jeff is still pretty sore.

Right now baby is in her crib yelling, "baba yaaaaaa....da da da da da da!!!" and trying to stand up and crawl around. She says hello to you all!! Here's a picture of Maelin playing her new favorite game...peek-a-boo in her box!