Happy Birthday to Me

So, Roxanne has really really been into singing the birthday song lately. Our family has a lot of fall birthdays, so I guess she's just been hearing it a lot, too. Mine was most recent, so Justin taught her to sing me the happy birthday song, which she kept singing after my birthday, too. To try and explain that it was not my birthday any more, I told her it would be her birthday next, and told her she could sing "Happy Birthday to Me!" and apparently it caught on. She just sings it at random times. Some of her other new favorite phrases are "I did it!," "I'm so scared!," "I busted it,"What's going on?," and her newest, "I want candy, Mama!" Thanks Halloween. She is less of a parrot these days and more of a little person. She puts words and concepts together in a really neat way. On Monday morning (our first morning waking up in the house) she ran into our footboard and hit her lip. She told me, "I am busted my lip mama." When I put her on the phone with people, she is getting pretty good at making conversation. Today on our drive home, she was talking to Nana on the phone, and I told her to tell Nana where we were going, and she said, "Roxanne go get Dada." It's funny how sometimes she talks about her self as "I" but other times says her name.

In not so nice news, I have been having a lot of trouble with her biting. She doesn't bite me, just Ben. They bite each other, but it's still bad. It's especially frustrating because she is verbal enough to tell me or Ben why she's upset. She tells me all the time "I want to play with Ben's car" or "Ben take it away," but when they get into scuffles, she loses control. She's only bitten him 3 times, but that's enough for me. She's tried to bite him many more, but I've caught it in time. Of course, one of those bites was a result of Ben putting his finger in her mouth. But one of the bites I found out about much later. Apparently, his grandparents noticed he had a bite mark on his little booty. Sigh. I guess I missed that one.

She has been having a lot of fun re-meeting all of her old toys. She really missed them all. And she got lots of new ones from Mimi and from Chloe and Ella, and Nana. She's so spoiled! Honestly, we now have enough toys for three kids. But Justin and I both really like the play room that we'll have here. One advantage of a small house is that she can be in the playroom and we are in the kitchen or living room and we can hear her perfectly. And in two steps, we can see her. We do need to find a good storage solution for in there though. Right now there are still lots of boxes everywhere.

Oh, and because I'm constantly overextending myself and taking on projects that I can't complete, I set up a house blog. I wanted to make sure that I didn't spend all my time on Roxanne's blog talking about the house, like I have been. And I'd like to have it as a record for later. If you want to check it out, the URL is www.atomiclilly.blogspot.com and I'll probably put a link up for it on this blog. So, if you are interested in that stuff, check it out. It's still really stripped down for now, but some day I'll spend some time making it look better and put up some links to other design blogs I like. My mom told me about one in particular written by a young guy in Athens who is renovating his first mid-century ranch. And while I don't like some of the choices he makes, it's nice to see some of his projects. So yes. I'm off to try and get some work done. And charge the camera! We finally found the charger! Yay!

Halloween Photos!

This is my first post from the new house... I'm just doing a quick one because we are all exhausted and Roxanne is going nuts. We're going to watch some TV on our computer, thanks to Mike setting up our network for us! Thanks Mike! And thanks Nana for keeping up with Roxanne. She has been walking around since Nana left a little while ago saying "miss Nana, Mama. Miss Nana, Mama." Awww. And thank you to Mimi and Kaitlin for visiting this morning and paying lots of attention to Roxanne. She needs it. And thanks to Ariel and Luke for coming over today with food and helping lots and lots. And thanks to Kendree and Chloe for coming and helping so much yesterday. We truly are so lucky to have such a helpful and loving family. We still have lots of work to do. But it's coming along nicely.

Anyways, I'm posting some photos Mike took of us on Halloween. We went trick or treating with Roxanne in Nana and Mike's neighborhood. Roxanne had a great time and is demanding candy as often as possible. I made Roxanne's owl costume. Hopefully it doesn't look to cobbled together. We had a great time.

I know, I know...

I'm such a bad blogger lately. We've just been so busy. As I'm sure most of you have heard either via my neurotically frequent Facebook postings, or via e-mail, we closed on the house last Friday. We've been working really hard to get the house up to snuff before moving in, so we are working on the house but still driving back to my mom's at night. We are hoping to move into our house this weekend (ah, our house!). We've had a lot of help from our friends and family and we really appreciate it. This week, Justin was at the house on Monday and today working all by himself to finish up the painting. We had finished up the priming over the weekend, and today, Justin finished most of the painting. We still have the hallway and kitchen to paint, but they aren't as urgent to us. And the basement still looks like a mess for now. I'm trying to keep our focus upstairs for now. But I'm pleased with our progress for now. My stepdad took some photos for us, and I'll post those soon (the same as the ones I posted on Facebook and e-mailed to a few of you). Once we start getting moved in, I hope to add some more photos showing our progress. We LOVE the paint colors we chose. And I can't wait to finish up the kitchen. I have to get that paint off the cabinets and we got new hardware for them. At some point, we have to address the tile backsplash, too. It's not in great shape.

In the less fun areas of the house, we've got to get the roof replaced ASAP. Apparently all of the flooding in the metro area has led to roofers being in high demand. Even getting a company out to give us an estimate was tough, and the first company we asked just didn't show. The second came today and seemed good, but we want another estimate to see how they compare price-wise. Sigh. We've got the new locks, we had pest control come out, all the utilities are finally on, and we had the estimate from the security company. We still haven't decided what to do about that. It's going to be more than we wanted to pay in order to get the security system. We'll see.

In Roxanne news, she is talking like a little person these days. She still sings all the time, and she is becoming quite the dancer. She is starting to throw tantrums more frequently though. We're thinking a lot of it has to do with all of the back and forth and late nights. It will be nice to get settled. But of course, part of the tantrums are also just her age. Her and Ben fight more often these days. She tried to bite his foot yesterday when they were scuffling over a toy. Whew! I'm trying to keep that curbed. Of course, he bit her on the arm last week. Twice. It's the baby jungle some days. Baby eat baby. She is really into stuffed animals these days, but she only sticks with the same one for a few weeks at a time. Although her Jellycat is her constant in her crib. He's really soft and big. She loves him.

I promise to post more often!

Mustache Mystery

So last night, Roxanne pointed at Justin's upper lip and said "mustache." He currently has a beard, which of course, includes a mustache. We were talking about all of Dada's face, like the "nose, eyes, ears, chin, cheeks," etc., and then she pointed out the mustache. Where do they learn these things? We both spent a lot of time trying to figure out how she could possibly know what that is, or where she learned that word. Toddlers are hilarious. The level of understanding Roxanne has is just a constant surprise. It's really exciting to have so much time with her.

So, I think that's it for now as far as news. We still don't have a closing date. We had a second couple of conditions issued this morning from the DCA, which is good since it means that they are working on our loan application, but annoying because we don't know how many times they will come back and ask for something. Hopefully it will be done soon. Our mortgage guy with SunTrust, Marc D'Angelo (in case anyone needs a good mortgage guy, he's pretty awesome) is on the ball, but very matter of fact. And he's not interested in giving us time-frame promises. So we aren't sure how much longer we have. But like I said, we trust Marc and feel like he will get things done the right way. So keep your fingers crossed. We've been hogging up my Mom and Mike's house for a staggering amount of time now. We are so grateful to them! We would have run up quite a bill at Extended Stay America by now. :)

Longest pause ever...

Sorry guys! I need to get back on the blog ball. Seriously. I joined a gym near my parents' house (thanks in part to Mike's good influence and Justin's helpfulness in keeping Roxanne) and I really am starting to like it, but it keeps me busy. My time to write my blog has been transferred to the eliptical machine. Sigh. Anyways, there's not a whole lot of news from us. We still don't have a firm closing date, but we know that our loan is now with the DCA. I realize this means nothing to you guys, but it's good, since it means that we are only a few steps from closing. Our agent thinks it will be next week. We are never as optimistic as he is, but we would LOVE for that to happen! Once the loan leaves the DCA (which should only be a couple of days) it goes to the closing attorneys, and they should only need 24-48 hours with it before we close. So we are at the tail end. Of course, Justin and I have maintained a pretty big emotional distance with this house. This is almost exactly where we were last time when the house falls through, so we aren't going to think anything is done until it's done. We are thinking that we might even have issues at the closing table. You just never know. This has been such a complicated process!

In Roxanne news, she is really turning into a toddler. I'm going to list out some of her new fun stuff:

*About 15 minutes ago, she told me she needed to peepee in her pink potty, and much much much to my shock, she actually did! So that's pretty neat! I guess I'll get started with her now. Ben has been pretty much potty-trained for a month or so. We've already bought Roxanne some Elmo and Zoe "Big girl pants," and she really likes them. I have only let her wear them over her diaper, but she kept asking to wear Ben's "big boy pants," so I wanted her to have some of her own.

*She is really grasping the concept of counting. Don't get me wrong, she does not know how to count; but she lines things up, points at them one by one and says "eight, nine, ten" or some other sequence of numbers. She can count to ten with a grown-up counting with her, but on her own, she just says two three numbers at a time in order. She also can see pictures of numbers and start saying random numbers. Like, she has no idea what numbers are which, but if I'm on the computer working on a spreadsheet, she points to the screen and starts saying "four, five, six," etc. It's really cute.

*She has learned several new songs. She likes to sing the ABC's most often, but she also likes "You are my sunshine," and the "Yo Gabba Gabba" theme song. Thanks to Nana and Mike's DVR, she's been getting to watch some episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba, and I can't tell you how much she loves it. She gets ecstatic. She calls it "Don't bite your friends" because that was her first exposure to the show (although she saw the characters at her friend Evie's house and Evie's awesome Yo Gabba Gabba birthday party!). We would let her watch the clip of the show from their website, which was the song "Don't bite your friends." I also found a Yo Gabba Gabba boom box at Target, and she has been wearing it out. I'm almost regretting that purchase... But it has this feature where you can "spin" the songs, and it's pretty cool.

*This morning, completely out of the blue, she told me, clear as a bell, "I like your outfit mama." Wow. I have no idea where that came from. I know I tell her that every once in a while, but I guess maybe I say it more than I thought. So yeah, that's not super exciting, but she just sounded so grown up. It was so funny.

*Roxanne got her first professional photos taken last night with Ella and Chloe. She was very very good for the photographer, in spite of the fact that it was 8:00pm when we were there. This is probably in part due to the awesome photographer, who was great with kids, and the fact that she LOVES Ella and Chloe. She told me she missed them this morning. In any case, we got some really cute photos of the three girls, and I bought a few of just Roxanne. They are really cute. The only drawback is that Roxanne has a bruise on her face. I thought about paying extra to get the bruise airbrushed out, but I decided that it was appropriate to leave it. So some of you will be getting some charming photos of Roxanne for Christmas in which she has a shiner. I'm tempted to go back to the store and order some more. I only got two poses. I think there were like 5 of Roxanne. And a couple of the ones I passed on were hilarious. She looked WILD. They keep the photos for a year or so I think. Or maybe 30 days... I can't remember.

I'm still cameraless. I am almost positive that our camera charger is packed. Boo. Roxanne is going to have this weird gap in her childhood photos. Oh well.

So I leave you with some sage advice. Don't bite your friends.

Cheesy bagel versus Mama bagel

Whew. This morning, Roxanne and I got into world war three this morning over our bagels. There was no yelling or crying, but there was ordering around and tattling. My mom got bagels for breakfast (the Sunday morning tradition) and I got Roxanne her favorite "cheesy bagel" and cut it into four sections for her. She ate one section, and then starting ordering me to give her my "mama bagel." I had a wheat bagel, and for anyone who has done or is doing weight watchers, you know that once you have the points value figured out for the food you are eating, you want that food. Making changes just complicates things. But in the end, I swapped a quarter of my mama bagel for a quarter of Roxanne's cheesy bagel. When my mom walked through, I told her what happened, and Roxanne said, "mama take it away." That's the second time in the last few weeks that she's tattled on me. Sigh.

In other news, we got our appraisal back, and it came in over the sales price. So that's great for us. Things are moving along with the loan, but I've apparently got to do a lot of really tedious paperwork to prove that my income is handled correctly. Ugh. On the flip side, this time around, we are much less involved with everything, and it's just less stressful.

We hope everyone is doing well!

Our singing baby

Roxanne is really into singing these days. We are often treated to medleys of "eensy weensy spider," "ABC," "raining pouring," etc. etc. Roxanne's talking is just really taking off (singing included). When she's hungry in the car on the ride home, she asks me for whatever food pops into her head, so it usually sounds like this: "want bacon mama...cookies mama....popcorn mama...turkey mama...cheese mama..." and on and on. I promise, that is not all she eats, but she is a tough eater these days. I've been cooking with the kids out of a Sesame Street cook book, but they are most excited about the chicken nuggets, pasta dishes, and smoothies. Oh, and they will eat the sweets, too. Shocking. She can ask for specific books to read, and she is learning her colors pretty well with crayons and blocks. Her favorite book of the moment is "Little Hoot." It's a really cute book, and she asks to read it EVERY night. She says "lil hoo, Dada!" It's so cute. She also has a 70's book I bought at a consignment sale about a baby duck called "Butterball." She likes that one a lot, too, and calls it "bayaba." So yeah, I understand her most of the time, but I realize that some of it sounds like gibberish to the untrained ear.

We don't have any house news for now. We are waiting for the appraisal to come back, which will probably take another week, and we will really be relieved once that is done. Because of our loan program, the house has to appraise for at least 1% above the sales price. So if it comes in too low, we will be in trouble. The good news is that we were able to lock in our interest rate at 4.875% and our mortgage banker thinks there is a distant possibility that we might close on our closing date of October 7. Justin and I aren't buying it, but we're hopeful. At this point, as long as we close by November, and close at all, we'll be thrilled. Over the moon thrilled. In the meantime, we are still enjoying living with Nana and Mike and Leah (can you believe they haven't kicked us out into a hobo camp yet?). We house-sat for Ben's family last weekend, and Roxanne was asking for "Nana, Mike and Eah" every once in a while. She's getting spoiled rotten. :)

We hope everyone is well, and for all of our Georgia friends and family, stay dry and safe. It seems like the worst is over with the flooding, but it is really scary.