Long Weekend

This was the first long weekend for me because I don't get "Family Day" off. It was gorgeous (albeit a little cold)!
We didn't do a whole lot, but it was nice. We hung out, cleaned up the house, and re-arranged our upstairs room, and I even got most of the double-doors done for the shed.
In the upstairs room, we took the love seat out and put it in the basement for the time being, and then moved the coffee table and other shelving unit against the wall near the windows. Basically, it's been turned into a large play room for Violet and friends.

We also bought some new things for the front entrance. A big mirror and small bench seat. We're unsure of the bench, but like the overall look. I think a leather bench will look better and perhaps, more importantly hold up to Echo's slobber a lot better than a cloth one, so we'll see.

I'll get some pics of the updated rooms soon.

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Marn has been harping about moving back into the city for some time, and over the last few months we've been getting new listings emailed to us by our real estate agent (a buddy that Marn grew up with). A house recently came up that is on the street that she specifically pointed out to me as one that she would want to live on. It backs onto the same forest as her parents old place (now Candace and Dave's house), but on the opposite side. It's a fixer-upper, but was still expensive. We went to look at it, and after that first viewing, I was set against it as I thought it needed too much work for me to "like" it, but she persisted. It's a large house, but the best feature is the yard and backing onto the forest. It's about 35 years old, and looks like it hasn't been updated significantly in the last 25 years.... so that should give you an idea of the decor. Also, the exterior is butt ugly. Yellow and green.
Anyway, we sort of put it off as "too expensive/too much work" and left it alone.... until it came up again with a lower price. So we went to the open house to have another look. I do admit that I liked it a bit better that time around, but it still NEEDS a lot of work inside and out. Again we put it off (or I did, at least).... until it came around again with a lower price. uggh! Apparently we're not the only one's who think it needs a lot more work than it's worth as it would have surely been sold by now -- but it hasn't.
So Marn and I have been talking about it some more I've been slowly coming around to the idea of that house. We've been putting together idea's on what we would "like" to do with it, both short and long term, and in the long term (and a lot of money later) it would be a great house. It's big(ger than we need), has a great private yard, oversized double garage, huge largely unfinished basement and has lots of potential. But it's still a lot of money when you consider the reno costs! (it doesn't NEED reno's immediately, but does for us to like it -- we're talking longer term here). We would also have to put a fence in right away to contain the beast...
Anyway, we are going to see it again on Thursday this week and I've asked my Dad to come along for his opinions on whether the reno's we're thinking about are doable, or if he thinks that it's too far gone/too much work/too expensive endeavour. If we do put an offer in, it will a low-ball to see how serious they are in selling. Our real estate agent thinks they likely bought another house and NEED to sell it, which is why they've lowered the price twice already (albeit only by $20k from the original price). Our agent is coming over tomorrow morning for a market assessment on our house. We may end up putting in hard wood on the main floor if he thinks it will help sell, or increase the value. And just for the record, I like Baden, our house, our neighbours, and our (current) mortgage!

Here is the house;
http://rex.mlxchange.com/EmailView.asp?r=664315415&s=KWR&t=KWR
or
http://www.realtor.ca/PropertyDetails.aspx?PropertyID=8172942
the funny "wall" at the front entrance is actually a little courtyard... strange, but could be neat - very European.

Implant Date

I have a date for my tooth extraction and implant.... June 3 - three weeks today!
I'm nervous and excited, and I hope they can place the implant during the same procedure as the extraction. I don't want to go back in 3-4 months.

Sports

Winter sports are finishing up, and right around the corner, literally, the summer one's start!
Tonight Men's Volleyball finishes up. We are in the semi's, and then hopefully finals to end the year. Our co-ed league finished 2 Monday's ago with a disappointing loss in the semi's. We should have made the finals.... our team is cursed. We "should have" made the final's for the past 3 or 4 years but haven't yet! We seem to always come up with a stinker to finish the year.

Ultimate Frisbee started last Sunday which we didn't go to (I was out getting food poisoning at Teresa and Branko's house. mmm, raw chicken!!). We're actually not sure if we're going to play this year. We've never liked the fact it was on a Sunday evening, and the team is starting to become a little too serious for our taste. We are not "Ultimate Frisbee people", like some people on the team. I can't blame them, it's what they like - the same as Volleyball for us. But we just liked to get out, be competitive and run around. These guys are becoming too serious wanting to run set plays and practises. We're not sure yet. We haven't paid yet, so no commitments yet. It would be a shame to not play, though, because we were one of the original teams that started with the league (most of us had never played the game before), so we've been around it for 6 years or so.

Baseball (slo-pitch) starts next week for me with a bang - 2 nights! Tuesday and Thursday. It's normally just one of those nights, but occassionally each team has to play both. I'm looking forward to getting into that again. I really miss playing good baseball. I'm not very good anymore, but it's still fun.

And marn is playing in a co-ed 4 on 4 beach volleyball league on Wednesdays which probably starts up at the end of May.

Good times! More reasons to not get things done around the house! ;)

A girl on the move

She's not crawling yet. I predicted she would start this week, but I may be off by another week. Violet is rolling around like crazy now, often using her rolling skills to get from one side of the room to the other in order to grab something that she wants to play with. This is not very graceful yet, as she struggles to so do, but she gets the job done! Marnie likes to claim that it's the beginning of the end for her sanity during the days and I have to agree. We will need to spend some time in the next week "baby proofing" parts of the house. Things like putting locks on certain cupboards and getting toxins out of the bottom shelves, covering the electric outlets, etc. We did start a little bit of that already with a funny install of a baby gate on the top of the stairs. Funny because I had trouble finding wall studs to secure it on one side, and on the other had to fashion a wood plate to the wall to secure that side. It's not pretty, but it works. I think I drilled about 50 small holes to find studs -- I don't know how the heck they built that wall, but it is NOT standard! Even my handy stud-finder was confused. I was 5 minutes from ripping the drywall right off. ;-)

This weekend, we're hosting a Mother's Day brunch on Saturday morning. It should be fun. We're making a furtata (sp? It's an Egg, Potato, Cheese, Spinach baked dish - yum), Teresa's bringing fruit salad, and Lisa, some kind of baked goods. Mom just has to bring herself. One "conflict" about tomorrow morning is, there is a community garage sale going on in one of the "rich" neighbourhoods in Waterloo. You can usually find some good stuff! (we've gotten the white lamp in our living room and 4 oak bar chairs in the past). We had planned on going in the morning, but I don't think I will now thinking about it. People are to be coming over for 11am, so I would be better off making sure the house was clean and maybe taking Echo out for a run while Marn did that. We'll see (it's also supposed to rain). I won't have time to do much tonight as it's the last night of Men's Volleyball for me (our co-ed league is now over as well).

We'll be going to Candace's house probably on Sunday for dinner, so again it will be a jam packed weekend. We need to spend some time outside weeding, cleaning and getting mulch for the garden. That's the one big draw-back for the size of gardens we put in. LOTs of maintenance that neither of us have time for! I like to do it, but don't have (or make) the time right now. The goal was to have it filled in with plants, but that usually needs a few years of growth before it happens. I also have to finish the shed at some point (Stain/paint and make the double doors and steps). This summer is shaping up to be another whirl-wind!

Tooth update

Not on Violet, on me (although Violet seems almost ready to bust another one).
I had the specialist consult on Thursday last week to find out about options for this front tooth (probably eventually both). Since the actual tooth broke while on vacation in BC, the logical next step is to completely remove it, get an implant, and new crown. Sounds expensive, right? It is. Likely over $3000 when all is said and done. For one tooth. Yup! If I had known that the crowns were not going to last 4 years, I would have opted for this from the get-go (to be clear, there's nothing wrong with the crowns I received, or how they were put in, it's the tooth that's the problem). The implant is about 70% of the cost. Apparently my current crown can't be re-used...
At this point, we're not sure if dental insurance is going to cover any of it, but I do get a "flex" benefit from work that can be used for dental, or anything else not covered by my or Marn's plan, so that will definitely help, and if I can some how get the billing split up between now and July, I will be able to submit twice (my flex renews in July).

This is basically a 3-stage process. Remove the tooth, then heal. Screw in a metal implant, then heal. Get a new crown for the implant. Sometimes, and the dental surgeon is hopeful, they can extract and insert the implant at the same time which will save me 2-3 months of (healing) time. Between extraction and crown, I will need a "flipper" denture that will also help protect the implant. Not really looking forward to that, but it's a necessary evil.

So anyway, at this point it looks like I will be going this route. We'll have to make that decision soon as I would like to get in for surgery before July. 2 months should be lots of time to get in.

That could be me soon

Our little miss

It's official, Vi has become our little miss.
For the first time last Wednesday, Violet cried when I took away something that she wanted. She looked right at the toy, right at me then started to wail. I didn't know she had it in her and truthfully I wish she wouldn't do it (I know, I know, it is a developmental milestone, yada yada yada). Now she does it all the time. Ugh.
She is progressing with her eating habits, opening her mouth now...most of the time. She does make this face (above) every time she has something with a little bit of texture (other than rice cereal) and it makes me smile, every time still. She loves baby mum mum rice crackers. Yesterday she tried them for the first time. I was nervous when she bit off a larger piece and tried to take it away, she cried, and cried until she got it back. Ugh. As much as I don't love the fussy, it is fun that she has a new way to communicate with us. She is always telling us what she likes and doesn't like through smiles and cries. She has also started a very high pitched squeal. Cute right now, but I think over time it might start to hurt the ears.
She does the face scrunchy nose breathing ALL THE TIME. I think it has to do with her nose being stuffed from being sick. At least I hope that is what it is from as you can't go 5 minutes without hearing it multiple times. She thinks it is very funny if I imitate her noises, loud nose breathing included. On a less happy note, we also had a day of thinking biting mommy during feeding was funny. Tried the pushing her head into my breast to discourage her...she thought that was the funniest, laugh out loud thing. So I tried the 'you are hurting mommy' face, still quite amusing to my little one. I went to the firm NO. Don't know if it worked or she got tired of the feeding interruptions but she has stopped (I know this might just be for now, but let me ride with it as the biting hurts so much it made me cry).
She is also a little woman on the go. She can easily roll from front to back and back to front. She turns herself in circles on the floor (time to move the crib down) and rocks back and forth when she is on her hands and knees. She has pushed herself back a few times but mostly she just gets frustrated right now and plops down on her belly to interact with all the toys. She also loves to fold in half to chew on her socks (while they are on her feet still). It is a bonus if she gets them off and can bring them to her mouth. Too cute.
Vi loves reading now. She has started to really look at all the pictures and she looks up at you when you are reading to her.

Carey brought Mya over last week and I was not fast enough with the camera to catch the initial interaction. I sat them down, far enough away from each other (or so I thought) and gave them some toys. As I was walking to get the camera I turn to see Vi yank the soother out of Mya's mouth and see Mya latch her fist on the Vi's hair. Ahhhh, her first fight! Just kidding, I think that Vi was curious and Mya likes to grab hair and is not allowed to touch her sisters!

Oh and just if anyone was wondering, it is not fun cloth diapering when they start eating solids. It is not fun and I can't bring myself to stick my hand in the toilet. Is that so wrong?