My Head Hurts!

It’s been a crazy week. We’ve been hoping to refinance because rates are pretty low, but I didn’t realize I would have very little notice for the appraisal – yesterday the appraiser called at 4 p.m. and asked if he could come today at 10 a.m. I looked around the house, swallowed hard and said sure. Then I spent the next 7+ hours (not joking) cleaning, de-cluttering, beautifying the house, in between making dinner, playing middleman to my children who can’t seem to play in the same room without upsetting one another, and making calls, returning calls about an article due Friday. I finally went to bed last night at 1:15 a.m. and was grateful Charlie slept until 6:15 (rather than waking at 3, 4, or 5 a.m. as he has in the last week).

All of the hard work was worth it though – our house looked better than it has ever looked, even if I maybe shoved some things into closets or stuffed things that were on the kitchen counters into drawers or cabinets for the short term… the appraiser was very nice, took note of a few improvements we’ve made to the house, and was gone in about 30 minutes. We’ll hear back by Monday. I’m crossing my fingers for a good appraisal so we can move forward with the refinancing.

I tried to relish in the clean, tidy house… but by this afternoon, Memory game cards were scattered all over the family room, Eli had spilled crackers in the kitchen, Charlie crunched cheerios into the floor, today’s mail was sitting on my desk, and I had a pile of bulky stuff to put away from Sam’s Club.

Oh well, it was nice while it lasted! :) I’d rather spend quality time with my kids than constantly stress about having everything perfect. Just look at this face – Eli can be so sweet (and sometimes such a monster! He changes back and forth throughout the day):

And this funny boy – doing the glazed, blank stare (this was pretty close to bedtime on Saturday):

These pictures are from Charlie dressed up on Sunday… Ben and I smiled seeing Charlie in this little outfit that Eli wore when he was this age.

Two random things to end this post...

Today I returned to the gym. It's horrible that I've been paying for the last few months without getting any benefit. Part of it is that Charlie is not one to keep a normal schedule. Another is that there are always lots of other things to do instead of go to the gym. The last is that I'd much rather take the boys for a walk or jog outside when it's nice weather... but today's 40-degree temps weren't warm enough to do that.

I tried to talk it up to Eli, who had a vague memory of the kids club. "You'll get to go in the BIG BOY room, and Charlie will go in the BABY room! Won't that be great??" (Eli is all about the fact that he is such a big boy, not a baby) He used to freak out every time I left him in the kids club, so I was nervous, but...

It worked!! When we got to the sign-in desk, he actually ran into the room for kids ages 2+. I think he spent the entire time reading books quietly in a corner. Funny boy. Charlie didn't fare quite as well, I think he was tired and hungry. But I got in 30 minutes of solid exercise and hope we can keep going back more regularly.

And finally, check out this picture below – Ben took off our old fire alarm (to replace it with a new one) on the basement ceiling where you go down the stairs, and THIS was underneath – isn’t it neat/crazy?? I love the funky wallpaper!

Enough procrastinating, back to work. Blogging is way more fun than writing about recommended health screenings and vaccinations for women ages 50+ (the latest assignment is for a new web site going live in a few weeks – www.justanumber.com).