Friday, July 24, 2009

My love is like a green, green pickle.

Today marks the end of the first week at new daycares for both boys. Two weeks ago, their daycare shut down suddenly for financial reasons. This is the third daycare that has closed on us since we started depending on childcare services. I am the daycare widowmaker. To avoid boring you with the suffocating panic I felt the Friday afternoon we got the news, knowing I had no place to take my children the following week, I will simply say, it was not fun. Team Family pulled through, however, and after a week of Daddy Daycare with a few Take-Your-Kids-to-Work days sprinkled in, we found good situations for each of them. I have spent this first week nibbling my fingernails up to my elbows, but as it turns out, Paolo’s best friend from Kindergarten attends his summer camp, and Luca has not eaten anyone.

Sam has been watching the Tour de France for the last thirty-six days. Apparently, during the Tour, five extra hours are added to each day in order to provide twenty-nine solid hours of daily Tour coverage. Phil Liggett and Bob Roll narrate my dreams. Paolo is nearly as rabid as his father. He gets a kick out of the elevation maps and enjoys showing me easy days vs. hard days based on the category and frequency of climbs. I will discuss this further in the divorce paperwork.

Luca has developed his own language, and it is fascinating to me how it differs from Paolo’s verbal development. Paolo was all about animals and animal sounds at this age. Looking back, it wasn’t terribly useful for the purposes of communication, except maybe in a barnyard. Luca knows how to ask for things he wants, specifically, food. Even more specifically, ice and pickles. There is no disappointment, no meltdown, no rage that cannot be cured and calmed by offering Luca ice or pickles.

Linguistic quirks of note:

1. Anything liquid is “juice” (juice in a cup, juice from the garden hose, juice falling from the sky, juice in the toilet bowl).

2. Paolo is Fuh-Fuh. I had been dying to know what Luca would call his brother, just desperate to hear him call for his brother with his sweet baby voice. Paolo called himself Ba-doh before he could pronounce his name, so I figured it would be close to that. Instead, Luca chose Fuh-Fuh. Where did that come from? Is it an approximation of “brother”? I wanted cute, and this is not cute. It’s weird. What the fuh?

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Home Sweet GONE

My new career is really eating into my blogging-at-work time. I'll have to bring that up at the next staff meeting. I have things to say, cute stories to tell, gripes to vent, but I have no time at a computer to bang them out. If there were some sort of technology available that would type up a post AS I WAS THINKING IT, I'd be golden.

So here I am typing furiously when I should be packing up the family to drive to Omaha tonight. In a minute, in a minute! Yesterday, I found out about a house for sale the next street up from us. It was the right size, the right location, and saints be praised, the right price. Yeah, that lasted about 5 minutes before it had three offers and was ultimately sold in a day. We never had a chance. Apparently, a sincere homebuyer should have something called "pre-approval" for a mort-gauge, more-gorge, something like that. We have no such thing or any idea how to get one. Obviously.

We're stubbornly committed to living in this neighborhood, arguably the most desirable area in town. I don't know who would argue about it. I know I wouldn't. At first I was crushed because we've been waiting (and may yet wait) years for an opportunity like this. But to look on the bright side, I learned a lot from the experience, like the need to be prepared to pounce. When a chance like this comes again, I don't want to lose out because I didn't do some groundwork.

There is nothing stopping me except ignorance, so I am trying to remedy that. So far I've figured out that I need this pre-approvity for a home lawn thing. I am told it's important. Next I need a Real-tar. Fake tar is not as good, I'm guessing. I should have this all figured out very quickly.

And that stupid house up the block that sold before I could dial the phone? It is steps away from our local city green space, our lovely green hill where the boys spend untold hours running, playing, hunting Easter eggs, sledding, and flying kites. Not that I care. Who wants to live that close to a park, anyway? The sound of children's laughter is SO annoying.