shortstack

Little by Little

weekend before last, brett and i purchased our living room set and our dining room set.

yesterday, we did a pre-walkthrough of the house (pictures below).

today, we purchased our washer/dryer (sold my “old” washer/dryer to my mom when she moved into her townhouse) and our new fridge, and did a bit of packing.

i got my closet cleaned out (except for my clothes), and finally emptied out the downstairs closet (which was an absolute nightmare, this is a good example). brett and i are getting rid of both of our computer desks and buying a new L-shaped one for the downstairs, so we cleaned out our desks tonight before we get rid of them.

cleaning out my desk meant finally getting rid of my “mean green machine”. the very first computer i ever built back in high school. my first gaming computer, and also my night light for a few years. it had glowing green cathode tubes and fans mounted in it before i maxed out the power supply. it was this site’s first web server for a while before i converted to godaddy. my buddy grainger and i built it together, and i remember being so excited to finally have an awesome (well, back then it was awesome) computer to bring to all our LAN parties.

yes, it still has a floppy drive. i haven’t used this thing in… many years. but up until now i couldn’t bear to part with it. i was really sad to see it go this evening. caylin and i waved byebye to it when brett took it down to the garbage.

brett also sold his very first self-built computer last week. he claims he didn’t use it enough. i helped him build it after he ordered all the parts about a year ago. i MADE him take a picture of it for nostalgic purposes. i want him to remember building it with his preggo wife, a billion pieces strewn about on our living room floor, sweating while trying to get his ungodly large graphics card seated correctly. it’s all about the memories.

it’s sick how much i attach myself to things like this. i still have the wrapper from a saralee cheesecake i ate at my very first boy/girl party in the 7th grade at my first boyfriend’s house. it’s in a shoebox with about 900 other little memories. i’ve since filled up 3 more shoeboxes, and will continue to do so until the day i die. and then caylin, if she’s like her daddy, will be going through my crap like, “why on earth did she save this? this is garbage.” and if she’s anything like me, she will totally get it. and she’ll probably have a shoebox or 3 of her own in her closet.

as promised, pictures of the house. since the last time we went, we have a painted accent wall downstairs, and some landscaping done. carpeting, lights, mirrors, etc. it’s so close!

side note: i suck at taking pictures of our new house. jesus, these are terrible.

anyway, tomorrow we have our walkthrough with the builder. we made a list of things to fix when we went saturday, so hopefully we will get this wrapped up soon! one of the things on that list is to paint the upstairs balcony door black to match the downstairs. i don’t know how or why that got left out to begin with, but i’ve been bugging them for weeks to get it fixed. if i’ve learned anything, it’s that building a house is frustrating. i’m ready for this process to be over.

Too Much Nostalgia Lately

between caylin growing faster than i can keep up with, mother’s day, and moving soon, i feel like a basket case. it doesn’t help that our townhouse (up until this week when we tidied up a LOT) was starting look like a shell of a home. boxes everywhere, walls slowly becoming bare, caylin’s old clothes all boxed up.

the older i get, the more i realize i don’t deal well with change. which is crazy when up until 2 and a half years ago, that’s all my life consisted of. i moved 9 times between 2005 and 2010, but the difference was most of those moves ended up with me moving back to boone. or somewhere else in boone. the last 3 were in charleston, and each move was less than 2 miles away from where we’re living now. our little corner of the world, with everything we’ve ever needed nearby. my first big girl apartment out of college on my own is 1/4 mile from here–the first apartment brett and i lived in together when he finally came to charleston. then we moved down the street. and then we moved here.

so much has happened since we’ve lived here, and so many memories:

• planting our first garden
• our first fight
• buying crappy patio furniture so we could sit in the garage with the door open and drink scotch together in our pajamas
• getting engaged
• hosting UFC fight nights with friends
• frequenting our favorite friday night dinner spots (the mexican place down the street and king street grill) together before caylin was born
• stopping at food lion on my way home from work, where everyone knows me now
• trying to sunbathe in a lounge chair in the bed of my truck
• learning to cook
• date nights at the awesome bar down the street
• buying crappy walmart bikes to go ride through the trails behind our neighborhood
• finding out loki had a tumor, crying after her surgery, hoping she’d make it to our wedding. and then caylin’s birth. and now to the new house.
• great times with our awesome neighbor
• taking shots with brett over the kitchen sink, chasing them with giant steroid grapes from food lion
• finding out we were pregnant, crying, panicking, and driving to walmart to buy more pregnancy tests
• getting married
• our awesome disney honeymoon
• piecing together caylin’s nursery, little by little (i never knew it then, but i absolutely loved making that room perfect for her. god, that was awesome.)
• watching all our shows in our cozy living room, it was always the coziest when the christmas tree was up
• bringing caylin home from the hospital
• having the time of our lives getting to know her over the past 8 months

i could go on forever.

the last 8 months, all we wanted was to move into a bigger place. a house where caylin and loki could have their yard. our future home. but this HAS been our home for the last 2 and a half years, and i guess i never really thought about it until it came time to leave. and now we have like, 3 weeks left in this place.

maybe it’s hormones, or maybe it’s because i missed working out for 5 days when i was sick, but this just sucks. it’s exciting and awesome and i love that we can give caylin such a gorgeous home in a great neighborhood, but part of it sucks. i wish i could take it all with me. i wish that i could print a photo of every single memory and get it framed and stick it on a wall in the new house without it costing a billion dollars to do so. i don’t want to forget a single bit of it. ever.

also, i wish caylin would just stop growing and that might make this all just a little bit easier. she wore size 18 month pajamas to bed tonight. it makes my heart hurt. i revel in the very few nights she wakes up crying and i get to cuddle her.

for the love of god, i can’t take all this at once. no one told me parenting would tug at my heartstrings so much, dammit.

For My Mom

it’s not mother’s day yet, i know. but i felt the need to write this. especially after the last 8 months. even more after the last few weeks. and even more after the last 2 days.

we pay my mom to be our full time nanny, but on top of being absolutely amazing at that, she takes care of loki and thor throughout the day. she cleans out the litter box. she does our laundry. she does caylin’s laundry. she still folds it perfectly. she gets our mail. she vacuums. she shampoos our carpet when one of the animals pukes. she cleans the bathrooms. she turns off the crock pot when i forget. she buys more crescent roll dough when she has a craving and eats all of ours (really, mom. you don’t have to buy us more. we should be buying YOU crescent rolls by the truckload for all that you do).

we’re moving in less than a month. so over the past several weeks, my mom has been bringing empty boxes and tupperware to our house when she comes over every morning. while caylin naps, she starts packing and cleaning. she started packing up our entire house, box by box. little by little. carefully. meticulously. wrapping breakables in leftover tissue paper and dish towels. the woman has more patience than i could ever hope to have, and puts forth so much effort to make sure things are done right. of all of the admirable traits i could get from her (and her mom is the same way), i especially wish i had gotten these.

the last 2 days, i stayed home sick from work. there’s a bug going around our team and i finally caught it. my mom let me sleep in yesterday morning, and took care of caylin. when i got up, i took over taking care of caylin, and my mom started cleaning and packing. scrubbing stains out of the carpet. dusting. hanging pictures up to cover up nail holes and ripping dead flowers out of the front yard so it won’t look so bad when they show the house to potential renters. she took care of caylin when i needed to work. she ordered us a pizza for lunch, and hung out with me and caylin all day.

today, she showed up with her carpet cleaner, her vacuum, and magic erasers. she spent most of the day cleaning the carpet on the stairs, vacuuming the stairs, scrubbing the downstairs floor, and scrubbing scuff marks off our walls. for hours, she did this. hours.

this is my mom. even when i was in college, she would come visit and she’d clean my bathroom, and make sure i had everything i needed before she left.

to this day, i regret fighting with her as much as i did in high school and college. two hormonal women living under one roof alone is never a good combination, and i’m sure it happens to every mother and daughter. i’m sure it will happen with me and caylin when the time comes (this kills me thinking about it). but that doesn’t change the fact that i hate how mean i was, when after all that, she is still this good to me, and even better to caylin.

our trips to get frozen yogurt together. splitting domino’s pizzas. watching big bang theory and everybody loves raymond and under the tuscan sun. disney on ice and broadway/off-broadway musicals. our awesome trips to disney (there are more to come!). watching the partridge family and i love lucy and bob newhart. listening to “oldies” radio. these are the things i will always remember and love. i already make sure caylin gets a regular dose of 50′s/60′s music. these are some of the best memories i have.

i couldn’t ask for a better mother, a better woman to look up to, a better person in my life. i’m horrible at being mushy and affectionate in person–brett will tell you the same thing. but it doesn’t mean that i don’t KNOW that i am so lucky to have someone so amazing in my life who takes such good care of me and my family.

i don’t know what i’d do without you, mom. and i don’t know what i’d do if you hadn’t moved to charleston. i love you so much. thank you for being the best mom in the world.