Feelin' hot hot hot

Clarification: Not hot like sexy. Hot like 100 degrees. I sweat sitting still; I'm pretty sure that's the anti-sexy.

Updates!

The biggest update is in regards to our house - it's getting improved! Ken, who redid our kitchen last summer, has been back fixing up our bathroom and finishing the remodeling of the kitchen since clearly we were never going to get around to finishing it on our own. The tiles and the old yucky crumbling drywall in the bathroom around the shower has been removed and replaced by new drywall and a tall, fancy tub surround. As God as my witness, I will never scrub grout with a toothbrush and Lime Away again! (In this house.)

Honestly, that could be a deterrent for future home purchases, too. The house might be perfect, but if there are a hundred tiles in the bathroom...that could be a deal breaker.

Anyway...

The kitchen has baseboards and a transition piece on the floor from the kitchen to the hallway/living room. We also have holes and weird gaps all nicely patched up and brand new paint in both the kitchen and bathroom as of yesterday. I will take pictures as soon as I get a new memory card for my camera; my old one is dead, which means I can store all of 7 pictures on my camera at a time. Hence the very few pictures here...

Meanwhile, I've been cleaning and organizing like a crazy lady. The biggest accomplishment was that I took our downstairs bedroom which we have used essentially as a storage space since we moved in and turned it into an office space/spare bedroom. I'm happy to say that the room is not only inhabitable, but actually quite awesome now. And it only took 5-1/2 years.

More cleaning is in my future, but for now, I'm feeling accomplished. Pat on the back, me.

Other updates...we've been on quite a few weekend getaways this summer! Three weekends in a row, actually. First to my dad's cabin with the whole family and Uncle Paul, and then up again for 4th of July weekend. Having just been up the previous weekend, Romelie was excited to go back to swim and hike and look for bugs, and Cori was just happy to sit outside and get attention from Grandpa. Then the following weekend Chason went out of town with some buddies, so we headed up to my mom's for a couple nights. We went and picked strawberries (freezer jam!) and then headed to a county fair. Romelie was all about the rides, and I was all about taking a nap afterwards. Hello, too much sun!

On to kiddo updates...Cori now sits up AND pulls herself up to standing. This is both useful (yay sitting up by herself!) and a bit dangerous (she is completely unsturdy on her feet but determined to stand up as often as possible). And she's added "mama" to her vocabulary, but only when she cries, so I'm not sure how I feel about that. Dada when she's happy, mama when she's upset...and really, neither of these are really words, she's just babbling, but it makes me smile.

We are only 2 days away from her big appointment with the pulmonary specialist. I got a description of what to expect in the appointment, and I'm more than a little nervous. Not only does she have to get another x-ray, but she has to have an upper GI test which involves feeding her barium and then pushing it through her body to check her digestive tract. The entire appointment is up to 3 hours long. I don't think anything is going to be painful, but I think everything is going to be uncomfortable and, because she won't know what's happening and why, I'm sure it's going to upset her. Prayers that all this leads to an actual diagnosis and/or treatment would be much appreciated.

I wish I had tons to say about Romelie, but the changes in a 3 year old are more subtle than they are for an 8 month old, I guess. We have our good days (yesterday she cleaned up toys and put them away without being asked) and our bad days (3 time outs on Sunday afternoon and she screamed and cried and banged her head on the wall through all of them). We're still working on listening, using manners, doing what you're asked/told the first time, using nice words, sharing...all the stuff you have to do with pre-schoolers, I guess. And she has good days and bad days.

I have good days and bad days too. Sometimes I can sit and calmly try to help her to make good choices or calmly explain why it's not okay to blankety-blank, and sometimes I lose my temper quickly and yell and swear and storm out of the room. I'm not proud of this, but if I can point out all of Romelie's flaws on this blog, I should acknowledge mine, too. I'm working on the not-swearing thing, and I'm trying to figure out how to better keep my cool when Rom tests my patience. It's pretty ridiculous when you find yourself screaming at at pre-schooler to be quiet.

That reminds me...if you haven't heard of this book yet you should definitely check it out. Even better is the audio book, read by Samuel L Jackson. It's pretty fantastic.