WARNING!!!!!!

If you do not want to see a dead animal then you should not scroll down to the picture below!!!! If you don't mind then you can take a look at our former roommate.
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Personality Development

We went to dinner tonight and Rosalind decided to be kind of...full of herself (read: bratty). This video isn't the best example from the evening, but it's enough to get an idea.

He's All Grown Up and Living On His Own.

Ask And Ye Shall Receive...or Something.

Yesterday I asked if things could improve. Today, my daughter feels much better and slept all through the night. A police officer called to tell me he had found my purse. The phone and $7 were long gone, but all my ID's, credit/debit cards, and keys were still there. My employer decided to pay us a half week early because...I don't know but there was great rejoicing. And Retha came to town to stay with us and brought us this gift.
He is two days old. He is asleep in a bucket in our kitchen. He is exactly the same size as Eliot. We call him Winston.

This Last Week Can Just Kiss My Rear.

So cosmic forces took a look at that post where I was all, "we're moved in and things are okay," and decided we needed a reality check. "Ohhoho," cosmic forces laughed, "let's just see about that!" And then our pipes froze for three days. And we stayed in town with friends one of those nights so we could shower, but Sergio's briefcase was stolen out of our car while we were there. And I couldn't get to work because our keys were in that briefcase. So I went back and got Rosalind from daycare and took her home because she seemed all sick and miserable. She seemed to get better. Our pipes unfroze without bursting. Sergio's briefcase was found tossed in a field behind the neighborhood, though the person has yet to return it. Things seemed to be looking up. Then last night Rosalind woke up at midnight completely inconsolable. It took us awhile to realize she wasn't just being a brat. I think it hit home when we had been up with her over an hour and I finally just put her down on the floor hoping she would find something to make herself happy and she just crawled around the floor wailing and flopping over. She wouldn't take any medicine, she wouldn't drink anything. It was almost 3am and we had been up since midnight. I turned on the tv, made her a pallet on the floor and fell asleep while she watched Rugrats. She finally puked a few times and promptly fell asleep on the floor.
She woke up this morning just as inconsolable as last night, but I had to go to work. I dropped her at daycare and asked them to call Sergio if she couldn't stay. BUT! I couldn't find the truck keys and had left Sergio at home with no possible way to get anywhere. 30 minutes after I got to work they called to say she was vomiting. I found a sub and left work only to find a sleeping baby at the daycare, left her there, drove home and got Sergio, and came back for the baby. Went straight to the doctor. And yes, I found the keys to the truck about ten minutes after picking up Sergio. In my purse. Shut up.
Rosalind has some horrifying version of an ear infection that involves blisters in her ears? And also a ruptured eardrum. That is why the vomiting. A mixture of constant dizziness and pain.
We all came home this afternoon and took a family nap. Rosalind is heavily dosed on tylenol and ibuprofen and an antibiotic. She must have felt a bit better by lunch because she scarfed her mac and cheese. However, just before that she EXPLODED all over the table while I ever so helpfully held a napkin under her face. She has been much happier ever since.
I have been to work only two full days in the last week and two days. Two snow days, one holiday, and two sick days. But I'm exhausted. Can things improve now?

Snow day...

but not enough to go out and play in. Here are some other pictures instead.

Comfy Cozy.

So, we have been in the house for a week and this is our first weekend in a while (November?) that one of us hasn't worked nonstop. We both worked, but we also watched tv and cooked food and stayed in our pajamas all day (okay, just me). There is still an endless amount of work to be done, but we felt that Lowe's had enough of our money for now. We are sleeping in our living room and Rosalind's room still needs to be trimmed out. The kitchen still has no proper ceiling and we have yet to paint it. Our laundry has been set up in the kitchen for the foreseeable future. We need new trim in the living room and to paint all the window frames (replace them). Plastic covers a majority of our windows. We still have piles of stuff to be thrown out all around the house. The upstairs is blocked off by a piece of sheetrock and there is still a water heater where our bed will eventually go.
And best of all, we are the reluctant owners of the world's smartest rat. It lives between the kitchen and living room. Despite our best efforts, it eludes us. It seems to know exactly how to set off the trap without harm, and then eat whatever we have used as bait. It thinks we are a convenient buffet that also warmed up the house. My students, being kind and loving souls, told me that rats eat babies. And they like me. Can you imagine if they didn't?
BUT, let me also talk about what has been accomplished. All of our doors close, lock, and keep the weather out. Our house has been heated and closed off to the elements. We have running water. Rosalind has insulation, a new floor, and painted walls in her room. We installed all new faucets, pipes, shower heads and a new dishwasher where there has never been one. The cabinets have been doused in bleach, cleaned of mildew and mold, and lined with clean laminate. Our roof has been entirely replaced. Our house is entirely free of dead animals, old nests, and layers of old dirt. Our yard has been mowed and our sidewalks found. Our hallway has been ripped out, insulated, and resheetrocked. Our bathroom now has a mirror and a toilet and shower we aren't afraid to use. We replaced the old breaker box with a new one and moved it from the bathroom to the hallway. We installed all kinds of new outlets. We have replaced rotting outlet covers with new ones. We have fixed all the leaks. We have three heaters (two gas and one electric). We have the stringers for the stairs in place, but can't finish until we move our furniture up. We are as moved in and cleaned up as we can be until we finish the upstairs and our house is already quite a bit better than the rental we just left.
There have been times (many, many, many, many...many times) that this project has overwhelmed me to the point that I would simply sit down and stare off into space. I should point out here that when I said "we" all those times above, I meant Sergio, our dads, our moms, my brother and sister-in-law, and some of our friends. Especially Sergio and our dads. They took note of my sitting and staring panic attacks and stepped in to make this place livable. I could not be more grateful.
I can safely say now that we have reached this point in the process, I am quite pleased with where we are. I look forward to continuing to work on things now that the projects can be taken a step at a time. We have come a long way already from the weekend we put on the new roof, and I stood in my daughters future room downstairs (which had no walls and was covered in old dirt dobber nests and dust and spiderwebs) and looked straight through her ceiling, into our room, and straight through our ceiling to the sky above and thought, "we're idiots."

Pictures to follow this week. Keep in mind that these are just the "make livable" renovations and not the ultimate plan.