Category: Uncategorized

Elliot will be 2 in 2 weeks. Hard to believe. We still think of him as our baby, but I guess he is not. I think he will seem a lot older when he stops nursing all night.

Andrew slept in his own bed a few nights this week, even going to bed by himself. I think he got bored with it and is now back to going to sleep with us and sharing a bed with Mari.

Mari is still a little challenging, but she is showing signs of pulling up out of her funk. I think that she is beginning to understand a little more about her actions. She has also taken a great interest in the kitchen lately, enjoying helping whenever she can. Every morning she wants to help make the oatmeal by scooping it into the pot, stirring it as it cooks, and then portioning it out into our bowls. She is also in charge of distributing raisins for our oatmeal – a handful in mine and hers, and a few on the table for Elliot.

We had some good weather today, so we decided to take the new bike trailer out for a spin. Since Susan doesn’t have a bike yet, we attached the stroller converter, loaded in the kids, and went for our first family walk in the new neighborhood. It was a nice walk followed by a grill-out/hang-out in the backyard. We had a fire in the fire pit and a fire in the grill.

The kids played in their recently completed ‘snow house’. We started building it a couple days ago and Susan and the kids finished it today. It is cool, but in the traditional American style I want to build a bigger one next time. They also put together a nice snowman in the back yard, whose name is Andrew Mari Elliot. Both the house and the snowman should last a while, as temps are supposed to be pretty low over the next few days.

Also, someone stole one of my license plates. I guess I have to get my IA plates now.

We went to a fun craft event at the Ames Waldorf School this morning. It was about a 45 minute drive up, but definitely worth it. Susan needle-felted a mouse, and Andrew and Mari worked on some needle-felting projects of their own. I assisted and Elliot played with the toy kitchen.

Hopefully we will be able to attend more of their events. It felt great being in a Waldorf classroom again.

It seemed like we were finally getting things under control. The house was coming together, the laundry was done, I was getting some work done, and the kids weren’t totally crazy. I was innocently working in my office and Susan brought Mari down and said, “Rob, Mari was itching her head so much that it was bleeding and I looked and I found bugs in her hair.” After closer inspection, it was lice. Awesome.

So we spent a couple of hours cleaning out Andrew and Mari’s hair. Mari had a hard time sleeping last night, so I spent a lot of time in their bed. Rather than take my chances, I shaved my head. If lice shows up again in Andrew’s hair I would like to do the same to his. Susan won’t let me shave Mari’s, but if I had my way I would.

Now we have a lot of laundry.

Since moving to Des Moines a lot of people have been asking me how work is going. Work is going well. It was a little bit of an adjustment, but I feel like I am starting to get into a little bit of a rhythm. I definitely miss going to an office and interacting with all of my coworkers. I was spending a lot of time in meetings before, which I actually enjoy, and now I am spending a lot of time sitting by myself in front of the computer. The nice part is that I am able to get a lot of work done, and I think/hope that I will get better at using the phone for that personal contact.

Working from home has been great for my home life. I have a very short commute/walk to the basement, which has helped free up time for other things, like hanging out with the fam. I have also been working on Eastern Time, basically from 8-4, which I have enjoyed. I get done in time to run some errands or do something useful before dinner.

Here are some pics from our new house:

We did not take any before pictures from our bathroom, but luckily Nate had taken a couple from the inspection. I think you will get the idea.

The closet is not quite as yellow as it looks here. It is more like the color of the cabinet that you see in the foreground.

Also no before pictures of the closet, but here is what it looks like now that we have it out. We still have some flooring and wall work to do, but it definitely helps open up the space.

We got a lot of snow last night, and I did not even know that it was supposed to snow. Part of the reason for that may be that I never interact with anyone or anything outside our house, other than KCMP. I think that another reason is that snow is just not as big of a deal here.

I managed to make it to the store this morning and there was plenty of bread and milk.

I wanted to get up some pics of our bathroom tonight, but the kids took forever to get to sleep, and I was just annoyed. Maybe tomorrow.

Today we took out the closet in our dining room. It was the only closet on the first floor, and we liked it, but we didn’t like that it took up a lot of valuable square-footage. The best part is that when they put the closet in they cut out the original hard wood underneath and the wall behind it, so now we have to get that cleaned up. Nice.

Tomorrow I hope that we can get unpacked. We have a lot of boxes in the attic still, and still haven’t located the cloth diapers.

It snowed last night. I was supposed to be 1-3 inches, but I think it was more like 8 – no joke. We have a corned lot, which means we have somewhere around 200′ of sidewalk. I was thinking that we should think about a snow blower, but I probably need the exercise. Besides, who know what would happen with our semi-gravel driveway.

Elliot is still having BM issues, so starting January 1 we are dairy free. Andrew, Mari and I can still have dairy, but we are trying not to have any in our house. So far it has been going well. We have gotten fairly lazy with our food choices again and I have enjoyed being a little more intentional with what we are eating.

Hopefully it will help Elliot. He has been on a stool softener for over a year now and it would be nice if we could get him to function normally.

• We had our bathroom re-done. We didn’t get many before shots, but the after is much better. Andrew and Mari used to think that our bathroom was disgusting, and they were right. It is much nicer now. We still have a little to do, but the major parts are taken care of.
• Next up we are going to be ripping the closet out of our dining room
• It has been cold here, mostly in the twenties. There was snow on the ground for a while, then most of it melted, and the rest refroze, so now it is just and icy mess. I am requesting either more snow or warmer temperatures, neither of which is forecasted
• I was able to get out for a nice little bike ride today. I rode down to a local natural foods shop to get some ear oil for Elliot.
• Did I mention that Elliot has been crazy? Last night was the first night this year that he did not throw up, but he was still up in the middle of the night. We are not sure what his problem is. He has been great during the day. He has also has a cough. We are now putting Vicks Vaporub on his feet before bed and also giving him his ear drops.
• There has been a request to get up some pictures of our bathroom. They will be coming eventually.
• We still have our Christmas tree up. I guess we can take it down now.
• We have a lot of painting to do. When we bought our last house we were a lot more patient with our home improvement projects. Now we just want to get everything done.

We decorated our Christmas tree tonight, and had a fire in the fireplace. We did not have any marshmallows to roast, so Andrew roasted cheese. He got a slice of cheese (medium cheddar), put it in a skillet, and I held it over the fire until it was melted. He ate most of it, and shared a little with Mari, who was a little out of her head.

In other cool news, Susan went to a cookie exchange today, and brought home a bunch of cool cookies.

Also, I am enjoying cooking on a gas stove.

Also, we found a weird hole in our basement floor, about 18″ x 24″, that appears to be full of ash. Weird. I will have to ask someone who knows something about old homes. It does look like there used to be a gas line that ran to it. It had always had this huge wooden shelf over it, which is why we did not know it was there.

I am not sure why this is blog-worthy, but we bought a new dishwasher today. Ours stinks and while we were out looking for new bathroom fixtures we remembered how cheap dishwashers are, so we bought one. It is in Mimi & Papa’s (Susan’s parents) garage right now, waiting for me to come pick it up so I can install it this weekend. That should be an adventure.

• We also plan on putting up our Christmas tree this weekend, and taking care of a number of other things around the house.
• Tomorrow we are beginning our bathroom renovation and also reworking the archways on the main level of our house.
• It is cold, and snowy.
• I want to set up the stereo, but I am short a speaker. The good news is that I have my work PC hooked up to my Aunt Harriet’s old stereo from the 60’s, so I can get some good sounds there.
• Elliot is talking a lot lately.
• Andrew is getting up too early, but is still always a joy.
• Mari has been hitting a lot. We know it is just a phase, but we hope that it passes quickly.
• We still have a lot of boxes to go through. Most important is the box with our winter gear in it, and the stereo speaker.
• I set up a room in the basement as my office. It used to be a tuck-under garage, that was sealed off. It is cold, but I like it.
• Susan thinks that the skull hanging in the corner “does numbers for my office.” I agree.
• I also found an old, fake, electric fireplace for my office. It has nice lights, but puts off no heat. Andrew thinks it is really cool. I think it is cool.
• We are trying to get our hands on some firewood.
• The hot and cold are reversed on our washer. I suppose I should fix that.