Life in the Boot

As I write this, hubby is singing "Pick it up!" to the tune of Disney Frozen's "Let It Go" in a (feeble?) effort to get the kids to tidy their rooms before stories and bed.  He'll do bedtime for five kids all by himself, and then come down here and do the dishes, clean up the kitchen and tidy the rest of the house.  After that, I wouldn't be surprised if he goes down to the basement to work on the playroom he's building for the kids and the laundry room he's building for me.

Meanwhile, I'm chillin' on the couch, sipping soda and playing on the internet, and attempting to crochet this yarn into "10 minute booties" (for the last hour) for Jack.

This would all be fantastic, IF it weren't for this:

Yup.  Broke my ankle.  If you knew how skinny my feet normally are, this would REALLY freak you out.

Even though I slipped on ice over two weeks ago, my leg is still a bruised and mangled, achy mess.  It's not excruciating pain, but it's constant, and draining.

For the next few weeks, my life will be hobbling around in this thing:

With crutches.

(End of pity party.)

House Update

Wow, it's been a long time since my last post.  Sue me, I've been busy.

Matt's been busy with house projects practically non-stop!  So far we've completely remodeled the kitchen, retiled the bathroom, straightened a crooked garage, built an awesome play set in the back yard, a garden, and painted about 70% of the house.

Matt's current huge project - finishing the basement, one room at a time.  At this point I have a playroom and a laundry room wired, framed and drywalled!  I'm over the moon about that.  He even added a light switch for the kitchen by the hallway entrance.  It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it IS.

Here are some pics!

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

 After:

Before:

After:

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Matt put a pedestal sink and tile down in here (it was linoleum):

Old Roof:  

New Roof:

The jungle gym that Matt built:

Is Buying A Fixer-Upper A Trick Or A Treat???

Yesterday (which happened to be Halloween), our family went on a walk-through of a house for sale.  A house that's been for sale, apparently, for a while.

The Back Story

This house was owned by an older woman until about 5 years ago, when she kicked the bucket, leaving the house and a hefty mortgage to her kids.  After a couple of years, they were able to unload it on a guy looking to 'flip' it.  He did a lot of awesome stuff to the house, a couple of really dumb (ugly, IMO) things, and there are a lot of instances where a $5-$25 dollar repair/replace/fix would finish off a room perfectly, but they aren't done.  Therefore, every room seems unfinished, even though, in one bathroom for example, the only thing it needs is a toilet paper holder.  Everything else is perfect.  WTF?

Anyway, this guy bought at the top of the bubble, poured a ton of $$ into the reno, and then was just way over his head when the bubble burst and the market continued to stay crappy for a good long while.  Now it's 3 years later, and the bank owns the house.  A year or two ago, they turned down a $300,000 cash offer.  Now they have it listed at $275,000, and still can't unload it (going on two years now).  Why?  Apparently, financing a house that needs work is tricky.  I won't get into the speculation on that though, it's too much mystery.  We won't really know until we try.

What Works

Here are the things we liked about the place.

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Great deck with a built in grill.  I'm not crazy about the ugly square columns or the weird, 1.5 foot tall wall around it, or the fact that it takes up a lot of space I'd rather have as yard, but it's still a great deck.

Bike riding space, decent garage.

I like this entrance.  There's a huge coat closet to the right of this pic, and I like the double door thing.

Balcony of the master bedroom - something Matt's always wanted.  It's ugly now, but wouldn't take much to make it nice.  Don't like it on this side of the house, though.

Nice big room.

Awesome little closet.  I'd totally take off the door and make a little reading nook for the kiddos.  All the closets were pretty big.

Big family room.  All this downstairs level looked pretty nice.

Cool fireplace!  (I know it's sideways.)

Love the new flooring here.  Another big family/living space.  The dining room is through that opening in the back, and it's similarly appointed.

Hey, a wet bar!

Nice big kitchen, with a bay window perfect for a breakfast nook (something I've always wanted).

What doesn't work

Turns out, THIS is supposed to be the third bedroom.  In the front, lower level, light years away from the other bedrooms, plus it's as big as a NYC bedroom (maybe 9x11) - in Fairfield, CT, that's called a closet.  Let's be generous and say this room can be a 'sun room' at best.

Really unfinished basement.  But apparently the guy fixing it up planned to put an awesome bar down here.  Potentially awesome, but for now, ugly, ugly, ugly.  And not safe.

What is just silly

One uncovered outlet?  One?  Really?

Toilet paper holder.  That's all it needs!  

Conclusion

So far in life, this is the closest I've ever come to buying a home, and I'm already mentally backing away.  I just can't bring myself to the idea of owning a home.  It seems like only something my parents can do.  Surely we're not old enough to do this, right?

Clearly, we'll look at more homes, we'll see what our 'options' are, but there are a lot of factors at play, and most of them make me want to avoid this whole process altogether, and just sign another lease.  Downstairs neighbors be damned!

Gratuitous Kid Pics

Of course, we went trick or treating in our would-be new neighborhood!  I told the kids 'burb candy was way better - and I was so right (I write, as a snack on a stolen Twix)!

New Year's Resolution Check-in

At the beginning of the year I made a few resolutions...what's new, right?  However, this year I'm trying to hold myself accountable with a monthly check-in (okay, the monthly check-in was Matt's idea).  So here goes.

Resolution 1:  Blog on my campaigning blog weekly.  Yeah, that hasn't happened.  I've done one post in 2013.  And I'm afraid it's going to stay on the back burner for at least a little while longer.

Resolution 2:  Keep the grocery budget at/under $600/month.  That probably seems like a lot, but in New York City, for a family of 6, it's tough.  That $600 includes not just groceries, but diapers, shampoo, etc. as well as any eating out or babysitting or basically anything that's not a monthly bill.  I have yet to accomplish this.

Resolution 3:  Read the Bible daily.  No specific amount, not trying to finish in a year, just read it.  I'm happy to report that I've managed to read the daily readings EVERY DAY IN 2013!  So far, at least.  I just get them emailed to me from Catholic.org.  I also started reading the book of Job in December, but haven't found time to pick it back up.

Resolution 4:  Really pray.  This is something I know I don't do enough of.  Does anyone, really?  I find myself often saying in my head, 'oh, I should totally pray about that/for that person,' and then it gets relegated to a mental to-do list that I never think about again until the next time I add stuff to it.  I think I can give myself at least a check for this one, as I've been making a point to utilize down time on the train or pushing the stroller to chat with the Big Man.  I'd like to step it up to more formal prayer soon, though.

Resolution 5:  Read a new book each month.  I rocked this in January.  February, not so much.  I just haven't had time to even pick one out.  I'm counting all the reading I did in January to make up for it, though.  I finished 3 books that I'd started and just hadn't gotten around to finishing - one of which was Quietus, a fantasy genre book by an old friend of mine!  It was so nice to escape to another realm for a while.

Resolution 6:  Get fit enough to pass the PT test.  This is a big one for me.  It's hard enough to lose weight after a pregnancy, but rebuilding muscle that's atrophied from lack of physical activity is even harder.  And now that I'm not active, no one is holding me to a higher standard, so it's up to me to push myself.  Sit ups are going to be the worst part.  Honestly, I haven't even started working on this, which is upsetting.  I'm tired of feeling weak and run-down because I don't exercise.  Of course, I don't exercise because I feel weak and run-down.  And I have 4 kids.  And spend 4 hours going back and forth to their school.  And am planning the end-of-year fundraiser, among other things. And, and, and...

Resolution 7:  Eliminate yelling/swearing.  I was doing okay with this one in January.  Things have just gone downhill with everything in February.  I've really gotta straighten out in March.

Resolution 8:  Schedule time away from the family twice a month.  I think I've kept this one up, but not as well as I should.  Usually, I only leave Matt alone with the kids when I have (paying) work to do that I haven't finished during the day, and even then I only stay gone long enough to do the work and then hurry back.  As much as I know I need to get away - for their sanity as well as mine - it's really hard!  Every little kid I see reminds me of my own and makes me homesick for them.  I need to redouble my efforts here and use that time for Resolution 1.

So that's it.  Looking at it now, I don't think I've done all that well, but at least I've reminded myself and can hopefully do better moving forward.  I'll let you know how it goes.

5 Years...

Photos courtesy Joe Plomin Sr:

Minivan Adventures

Man, it's been a busy morning.  And the first weekday with the new minivan!  I'm still not keen on being a minivan driver, but it's exactly what we need right now.  Loading/unloading the kids is proving to be a lot easier than one might anticipate.  Thanks to the stow-n-go feature, we've got one of the middle seats folded all the way into the floor, so the kids just climb into their seats and I can click them all in, 1, 2, 3.  And Reagan sits in the other middle captain's chair in a detachable car seat.

Parking was a hassle today, but I think it was worse than it should be due to the weather.  We'll see how it goes the rest of the week.  These are the lessons learned (the hard way) so far:

1. Always wear rain boots when there's any sort of precipitation.  I keep learning this one over and over, and yet I still tell myself tennis shoes would be better...big mistake today.
2. Have food on hand at all times.  I think I'm going to get a couple boxes of breakfast bars to snack on in the car.  I didn't eat breakfast this morning and was ready to eat my arm by the time I got back.
3. Stock the car with toys.  Max got rather bored and agitated on the way back home from school drop-off.  
4. Bring a bag to gather trash.  There's already fruit snack wrappers out of control in the back seat.

It will be interesting to see how pick-up goes...

A Day of Firsts

Yesterday (1/25/13) will go down in the family history books.  We accomplished two major milestones yesterday - one could even argue three, since Maximilian made significant progress in his potty training efforts (or maybe I did).

Maximilian

Potty training has been a battle with Max, not because he's unwilling, but just because there's never a good time to work with him on it.  He's gone peepee (and even poopoo) in the potty several times, but yesterday was the first time he spent the entire day pants-less.  

With the timer set for 30 minutes, I rallied support from his siblings, and by the third time it went off everyone stopped what they were doing to cheer Max on at the potty.  He had several successful trips, including a couple he initiated himself rather than by the timer.

Reagan

Reagan took her first step!  As we were getting ready for bedtime, she was aiming to crawl out the door when I called her back in.  She stood up, turned around, and I caught on that she might want to try to walk, so I started with the mommy-voice cheering, holding my hands out to her.  She took one step on her own, then grabbed my finger and triumphantly walked the rest of the way into my lap.  Even though I caught Max and Patrick's firsts, it feels like my first all over again!

Karol

This is it.  This is what we've been waiting for for weeks!  Karol lost her first tooth!  However, what should have been an exciting moment turned into a devastating one, because the tooth was actually lost.  She didn't even notice when it came out.  We searched everywhere, but to no avail.  Shortly before I noticed the hole in her mouth, she'd been eating apple slices, so I suspect she swallowed it.  Karol was mortified, believing that with no tooth to give, the tooth fairy wouldn't come.

After much soothing and calming I think I convinced her that the tooth fairy wouldn't short change her. We determined that there must be some waiver process, since this probably happens all the time, and so I set her to write a letter to the tooth fairy.

To be honest, I think I was probably more upset by the lost tooth than Karol was.  I wanted to save her first baby tooth - and I'm not usually the person who wants to save much for sentimental value - and I really wanted this first tooth losing experience to be perfect.  It seems as though Karol has inherited my luck.  That's why, after bedtime, I was on a serious mission to make the tooth fairy's visit over the top.

Karol received a letter from the tooth fairy, on tooth fairy letterhead and matching envelope, informing her that her tooth was magically collected using her magic wand to pull it out of her belly button.  She also got candy to share with her brothers, a dollar, and a first tooth loss official certificate of authenticity.  I think she bought it.

Now, the other bottom front tooth is wiggly.  But I think she'll keep better tabs on this one.

Patrick

Patrick is coming to the age where he's doing new things all the time.  Reading like a pro, doing addition in school, and he's only just turned 4!  I'm thinking that next year will be kindergarten for him, there's just no slowing this kid down.

It's too (expletive) cold!!!

I'm very serious about the kids' education.  Probably a little too serious (it's preschool, after all).  But weather like this, when it's 19 degrees out, is just too damn cold to go to school.

I don't have many memories from childhood, but one that I remember quite clearly is going outside for recess on bitter-cold days.  And I'm talking about likely in the 30s and 40s.  As far as I'm concerned, we shouldn't have gone outside for recess unless it was at least 60.  

Fast forward to the present, and I hear Karol expressing the same apprehension. "Can you pick us up before play time?" and "I don't want to get to school until the kids come back inside," are frequent requests on even mildly cold days.

Top that with an hour long train ride and walking 3 long blocks against the biting wind...no thank you! Not to mention that going to school with the double stroller (because we're limited to stations with elevators) means a total of 5 hours on the subways, just commuting to and from school for me, and the subways aren't a whole lot warmer than the outside.

Today Matt called to tell me it was even colder out today than it was yesterday - which was nearly unbearable as it was - so I bundled everyone layer by layer, got out the big double stroller and loaded it with the BundleMe and the plastic wind/rain cover, and we headed out.  Pushing against the wind, Reagan screaming, and Max tearing up, not because he was crying, just because the cold wind was that harsh on his eyes, we made it all the way to Lenox & 135th, where the subway is.  However, we were on the opposite corner of the elevator, which meant another 3 or 4 minutes in the cold crossing the streets and waiting on lights.

And this is just the beginning of the trip.  Maybe I'm a wuss.  Maybe I shouldn't have let a little wind mess up my whole day and all the work I put in to just getting out of the house.  But I don't care.

A woman at the corner told me to cover up the baby's (already covered) neck.  I wanted to punch her in the face.  DON'T YOU SEE I'M A LITTLE $^#$@ BUSY???  DO YOU THINK I NEED YOUR PARENTING ADVICE???  But of course I didn't say that.  I gave her a terse "Thank you," and turned the stroller around, back toward the apartment.  I bent down to talk to the older kids, "Do you think it'd be okay if we didn't go to school today?"  "Sure!" they responded.  So we pushed back to the apartment.  

It's not that they don't want to go to school.  In fact, they love it there.  It's just the getting there that sucks.  They seem to hate it as much as I do, and even on not-so-cold days they still aren't fans.  So now we're back at home, enjoying a much-deserved cup of hot chocolate and a gingerbread cookie.

 I already have an earache from being out in the cold, how is that possible?

Anyway, we'll undoubtedly make up for missing school by doing a good deal of homeschool while they're here today.  And even though it'll still be horrible out tomorrow, we'll try again, and I'll probably guilt myself into getting all the way to school this time.  On Thursday Matt will be home to help.  It won't make it any warmer, and probably not much easier, but at least I'll have somebody to b*tch to about it.  And Friday - which is supposed to bring snow with it - there's no school anyway (praise God!).  

For all you suckers that don't have the glorious option of just staying in, good luck!

I Love...

Karol's letter writing campaign.  She's writing letters to everybody, and they're all so darn cute.  She always signs them "luve Karol Plomin."

Patrick's slightly flat hymn-singing.  He'll have a beautiful voice when it's trained.  He's only four, we'll give him a break.  It's like the angel choir to a mother's ears.

Maximilian's hilarious grammar and sentence construction.  Earlier today he said "I funny her!!"  He meant he was making Reagan laugh.  This is only about 25% of the time.  The rest of the time he's actually got impressively correct speech.

Reagan's sense of humor.  She's a riot, she really is, which reminds me of Patrick.  She's started to be a little booger, grabbing at my neck and face when she's in the carrier, then cracking up about it like she's just pulled some hilarious prank.  Also, she's recently been making this face where she opens her mouth as wide as she can - this is her 'can you believe that?' or 'isn't that funny?' face.  You can just tell.

Flat Belly Mommy

Since Reagan dumped milk all over my shirt, I figured I'd take the opportunity to show y'all my progress so far on tightening up my midsection.

Exercise and diet is hard with four kids running around.  You'd think between chasing a two year old, lifting 40 lb preschoolers, and nursing a baby, I'd be burning some serious calories, but apparently not enough to budge the scale.  That's why a while ago I started to get serious about losing the baby weight from baby #4.

I really like Jillian Michaels: 6 Week Six-Pack, but the workouts are 40 minutes long, and I just couldn't get through it without a million interruptions.  It's very discouraging when you feel like you have a dozen more important things to do anyway.  So I started doing some 10-25 minute workouts from some of my Denise Austin DVDs and Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred, and I decided I really had to start counting calories if I was going to make any progress.

I looked around and found a Flat Belly Diet 2-week meal plan online.  A handful of the recipes looked pretty good, so I made an investment in some of the trademark MUFA foods they contained and somehow managed to stick to the diet for a good 2-3 weeks, despite Hurricane Sandy and everything!  I also found this family recipe book at the library, making it easier for me to feed us all the same meal Bonus: kids get a healthier diet, too!  I had begun to rely a little too heavily on hot dogs and box mac & cheese, and was feeling pretty guilty about it anyway.

Long story short - I've lost 10 lbs so far!  The results have shown up on the scale, in losing a pant size - back into a 6!  And I'm using the last notch of my belt (and I need the belt).  My stomach definitely looks less bloated and pregnant, although it's still not toned or tightened (working out has seriously gone by the wayside).

Once I hit the 10 lb milestone, I kinda took a break.  We've had guests and (even worse) holiday left overs.  I think for Christmas dinner I might insist on low-cal options only, because my desire to not waste tons of perfectly good food far exceeds my desire to be healthy.

Here the visual results so far:

I had to turn to take the picture so you can see my obliques starting to peek through!  FYI, these jeans are now a size too big, so they aren't that flattering...

And from the front, you can see a hint that there might actually be muscles underneath the flab.  What you can't tell (luckily) is that my skin is still looser than I'd like and not taut.  I figure I have until that linea nigra goes away before I have to stop using the pregnancy excuse for that.

So now it's on to Phase 3 - hitting the workouts hard.  I think I might get one or two more Denise Austin DVDs that feature 10-20 minute HITT/circuit training type workouts in order to squeeze them in, and I might try to talk Matt into hooking up our Wii so I can get the Zumba game for it (Christmas gift, anyone???)  Heck, I may even fit in some visits to the gym a couple of times a week.  If I can redouble my dieting efforts along with the exercise I should be at supermodel status in no time.

Anyway, wish me luck, y'all!