Packing up and moving...

Sorry Blogger, tired of your commenting glitches.

I'm taking my toys to play over at http://earlyollie.wordpress.com/

Please follow us over there!

Clearly, it's time to get him out and about on the social scene.

Ollie has a friend, Lilly. He met her once before, back when they were both sleeping all day and the main concern was who's gonna feed me?

She's grown into quite the hostess, young Lilly. Proud of her toy collection, she let Ollie play with whatever he found and made sure we followed her into the kitchen at lunch time.

Ollie was shell-shocked, I think. He doesn't see other kids very often, and I don't think he quite knew what to do about this other person the same size as him.

He pointed at her eye and patted her leg.

Clearly, it's time to get him out and about on the social scene.

I was hoping Lilly would crawl around and show him how cool it is to be mobile, but crawling's so last month for her. She's tottering about in that zombie-baby-walk that can just about kill you with cuteness. Ollie showed her how manly it is to get around by rolling.

There are some playgroups in the area that we need to check out, now that flu-season is ending and there's less chance he'll pick up a bug of some sort. For now, we can see Lilly every now and then.

Hopefully he won't be so interested in her eyeballs.

TWO WEEKS without a post?

What have you been doing, lady? Why aren't you giving me attention?

These are the questions I imagine this site asking me, day after day of ignoring and neglecting.

Well, Dear Blog, I've been running around like mad.

When we bought our house, we noted that the bathroom would need to be re-done soon. Apparently, the little old lady we bought it from didn't actually shower and finished the bathroom with wallpaper. The entire bathroom was covered in 80s-cool wallpaper, including the tub surround. So, for the past 18 months we lived here, we had the shower surround enveloped in gorgeous vinyl shower curtain liners, to protect the drywall from daily showering until the day we could start fixing it.

That day is now. (Actually, it was supposed to be last Spring Break, but we hit a little bump in the road that prevented us from doing it. Welcome Home, Oliver!)

The curtain liners are finally down, as are the walls of the bathroom. After three days of hard labor, our bathroom is gutted. Completely without its own walls, down to the studs. A small dumpster is in the driveway where my car should be and supplies and new things are scattered about the house like Ollie's toys usually are. For a couple days, we had the old sink and vanity in the kitchen, looking sad and cast off.

It's chaos.

I've spent hours in our local home remodel stores, choosing the new look for our bathroom. I've consulted with the (paid) experts about what would work best for flooring and walls, and dashed out when the drywall and plaster started coming down to protect Ollie from the dust. We've stayed away because, well...Ollie's a scaredy-cat and cries when he hears any power tools of any kind.

I'm doing the easy work. I'm spending hours away from home, visiting family, killing time until the project is over, and I'm exhausted. I packed Ollie up in the car and left today with no destination in mind, and I'm pooped out. Poor Matty is doing the tough stuff. I haven't picked up a hammer or other tool of destruction unless it's to move it out of the way to get something more important.

It's crazy. It's dirty. It's expensive. It sucks.

All I want to do is shower. Without walls of vinyl surrounding me.