Whee! I spent most of the day at Road to California with some friends from my quilt guild. My first big quilt show! On one hand I spent too much and it was more crowded than I like, on the other hand there were some really gorgeous quilts on display there and I really love the stuff I purchased. I kind of wish I had the freedom to go more than one day, take my time, maybe take classes, but OTOH... SAHM with two little boys not yet in school. Not going to happen soon. Wonderful Husband was very wonderful about taking care of the children today while I went to play.

On the house front, we dropped our asking price $10K, and have suddenly had seven sets of people wanting to look at it in four days. One contacted our realtor about an hour after they toured the house, and said they were going to make an offer... for $25K less than our new, lowered price. Sigh. Well, we'll see. Especially since we haven't actually received said offer yet.

In other news, I've picked up Duolingo again, and been pleased to discover that they now offer Japanese. So I've added Japanese refresher lessons onto my Swedish lessons, and have diligently been practicing each for 10-15 minutes a day.

Since we're kitten-sitting, and the bigger cats have decided they don't like Rey (no surprise; strange kitten in THEIR household!), the kitten is getting shut in the shower room at night. Which does have the side effect of making it unavailable to us, especially since her food/water/litterbox/bed are set up in the shower. So last night, for the first time, the remodelled master bath got used for something other than Squiddle's baths.

In short, I think we picked a good showerhead. ^_^ We may need a liner shower curtain, though. The pretty decorative one doesn't adhere well to wet wall; water can get beyond it onto the floor.

New computer in working order: hooray!

Bathroom remodel: done.

Health regained: mostly.

This year's promised El Nino rains: still awaiting delivery.

Rainy day. (Hallelujah!)

Wonderful Husband painting bathroom. (Yay!)

Sick toddler ensconced on sofa, watching animated movies. (Currently How to Train Your Dragon; this morning was Lilo and Stitch.) At least he is lethargic rather than fractious. He wanted hot dogs for lunch, but we're out so he made do with a couple of chicken taquitos.

The rest of us had tuna fish on toasted sourdough for lunch. Probably going to do breakfast-for-dinner with buttermilk pancakes and sausages.

Feeling like I ought to be doing something productive, but the bathroom's honestly small enough that two people painting would be a hinderance rather than a help, and it's wet enough that I don't want to do gardening. Probably I should work on the round robin challenge for my quilt guild, now that I have my sew-jo back.

After seven years of living with a master bathroom that was more like a half-demolished half bath, Wonderful Husband and I have finally gone through the painful steps of getting quotes, and getting the bathroom redone. Demolition started on Monday.

Soaker tub. Higher showerhead, so we don't have to duck while washing our hair. Insulation stuffed in between the two bathrooms so we can't hear someone using the other loo from our bed. New cabinet, new fixtures, some shelves in that awkward nook/cubby....

Meantime, of course, paper down on the floors of the bedroom, hallway, living room. Sleeping poorly because the cats think that scampering up and down that paper and batting at its edges all night is a great game. Losing the ability to lie in or have naps.

At least the new tub is now in place instead of in the middle of the living room.

It will be lovely when it's all done. It's just that the three-four weeks until then are going to seem very long.

Wednesday was my last day at work. So now it's official: I am a SAHM, homemaker, domestic goddess... whichever term you prefer.

Today I connedpersuaded Wonderful Husband to do some yardwork with me. He put rubble into the trash bin while I trimmed tree suckers and yanked weeds, then put those in the yard waste bin for me. Squiddle, meanwhile, was happily lying on a blanket in the shade, examining these fascinating "tree" and "sky" things.

This morning, the baby successfully took his paci out of his mouth, shoved it back in (!), took it out again, then spent the next several minutes hitting himself in the face with it. My assumption is that he was trying to repeat his triumph, but that his aim needs work. Today he also did his first rollover from his front to back. Has not repeated that yet either, but I can see him trying.

In slightly less positive news, he has a rash on his tummy, which I'm keeping an eye on, and I've been getting morning and evening headaches the last couple days. No discernable source, and ibuprofen hasn't been having much effect on 'em. :(

ETA: Acetaminophen does seem to work on the headaches. Thank god. Hooray for Tylenol!

Technically, family shower time as we don't have a bath. Someday the master bathroom will get redone, and we will, but until then, we shower. Given that the water pressure is going steadily wonkier, though, and it takes a few minutes for the hot water to travel from the heater tank (outside the kitchen) to the shower room, replacing the water heater with a flash heater is inching up the list for our major household spendature for 2014.

But weekends are for laundry. And clean sheets on the bed and bassinet call for clean bodies to go with them. This evening, Wonderful Husband showered first, afterwards letting his hair air-dry a bit so it could be trimmed shorter. Meanwhile I took Squiddle into the shower and sat down on its ground to wash him. The only times he complained were when he didn't have some bit of himself in the warm falling water! When he was clean and rinsed, I handed him to Wonderful Husband, who took him off to be dried, diapered, and dressed while I took my own shower. After I was done, I took turn being in charge of the baby while Wonderful Husband got out the clippers and cut his hair, with me helping just a little to even up the back. And now he's showering again to get rid of the trimmings while Squiddle naps and I type this post.

It's a very small, mundane bit of an evening routine, but it's soothing and tranquil nonetheless. We spent the day chasing around to replace broken glasses frames (Wonderful Husband), tidying Squiddle's room (me), finally hanging some art on the walls (WH again), and figuring out what outfits Squiddle has grown into and out of (both of us). A day like this should be boring, or feel small. But it doesn't. Isn't there some saying about the art of happiness consisting of being content with what you have? And I am.

So, multiple people have told me "oh, you'll know your time is near when the nesting instinct kicks in."

Except, how am I supposed to tell the difference between this purported nesting instinct and "goddamn it, I am tired of not having had a kitchen/office floor/coffee table/dining room table for the last month"?

Two kitchen cabinets reorganized (one yesterday, one today); one and a half more to go. Homes have been found for the stand mixer and the crockpot, which was the purpose of the reorganization. The cutting boards' new place is still pending. Wonderful Husband, meantime, is putting up more curtain rails and then potentially the rest of the smoke alarms. "Only" 89 degrees inside thus far.

The spare cabinet, from where the dishwasher went, has been put out in the garage under the workbench, where it's now being storage for extra kitchen rolls, TP, tissue paper, and the like. Wonderful Husband, meantime, has resanded the new counters with 220 grit paper and they are finally smooth to the touch. Now they just need another coat of oil or three, and then we can start putting things like the microwave and bread machine back on the counters. Who knows, someday we may have an office floor or dining room table again!

(Amusingly, in the drawer reorganization shuffle, we have one drawer that is now the tea drawer. All the different flavors we drink, all the tea balls, etc. It is, of course, the drawer directly beneath where the electric kettle will stand.)

I've been tidying up Squiddle's room. It sometimes seems like one step forward, two steps back! But slowly it's also becoming organized. Yesterday, I found the dreamcatcher a friend made for me in high school - I need to attach it to the wall over the crib. It's lightweight enough that it falling during a quake wouldn't hurt the kid. Most of the other art we're planning on putting up doesn't meet that criteria. I also need to convince Douglas that a couple houseplants in the room will be okay; greenery livens up a space, and it's one of the brighter rooms in the house so maybe I can even get plants to survive in there.

Wonderful Husband has been working from home for the last couple days while Handyman Joel installed our new dishwasher and kitchen counters and backsplash. Joel finished yesterday, so today Wonderful Husband sanded the counters and applied three coats of finishing oil. (The new counters are Numerar solid wood counters from Ikea. They only have birch and beech listed online, but the store near us had oak as well, so oak we got.) It looks good! And today Rotorooter came and once again reamed out the backed-up kitchen drain, so the dishwasher has had its virgin run. Everything works. Huzzah!

Wonderful Husband and I have also now completed all of our how-to-be-a-parent classes. At the AAA Car Seat Safety class, we actually won a car seat! ^_^ Which, we already have an infant car seat, but the one we won is transitional, so it can be used for an older child, so that worked out well. In another of our classes (which was basically "how to keep your sanity and marriage intact"), I found it amusing that of the fourteen couples attending, we were the only ones who had chosen not to know the sex of our child. Apparently knowing ahead of time is the "in" thing? To me, it still feels kind of like cheating.

I was also amused at the part of the hospital tour (which I went on because while I had seen the labor/delivery rooms, I had not seen the post-partum rooms) where the nurse/lecturer/tour guide rather honestly tried to convince fence-sitters about the benefits of breast-feeding. Her stats included the fact that breast-fed babies are about 10% smarter than formula-fed babies. Which statistic I'm taking with a grain of salt. But I've heard it a couple of places; given that most of the people I count as friends are more intelligent than myself, it always makes me wonder how much dumber I would have been if I hadn't been breast-fed.... :)