Pajama Time

yup, they love each other. they also love each other's pajamas.

even the head gear.

Chocolate Milk

Apparently, Scout has the secret. Overheard at dinner:

"Scout, mix mine for me."

"Okay Wolf"

"No, make it dark, really chocolatey, like your milk. Like Daddy's skin."

Training for the 2020 X-Games

A little bit of meditation.



Add some serious focus

Success!



Not to be outdone by his little sister . . .

The Big Ugly House

My description of what would later be affectionately referred to as the Big Ugly House:

We are still house hunting [this is December 2005]. After 4 hours together in the car over Thanksgiving weekend, Troy convinced me that we should make an offer on this hideous monstrousity of a house near the beach.

The pluses: it's huge, it has a guest "cottage" which is as big as our current apartment-- it's really just whole other house in the back yard, it's one block away from an A rated elementary school, and it's within walking and biking distance to the beach.

The minuses: it's a good 30 minutes from downtown, it's expensive -- we'll have a lot of room and no furniture, if you come visit you can stay in the guest house, but you'll need to bring your own bed :-) , and it's UGLY, UGLY, UGLY.

I don't think I can overstate just how UGLY it really is. It is brown. It has baby blue shag carpet from the early 80s in the dining room. It has wood paneling. If we actually get this, you must come visit just so I can get some decorating advice, although I'm sure even a great paint job (pretty much the only thing we'll be able to afford for awhile) is not going to make a dent for this place. It actually has a HOT TUB inside the master bathroom -- not a jacuzzi tub, a real outside big 70s swinger hot tub right in the middle of the bathroom -- this is not a pretty thing. But it seems to go with the three, yes three, bars in the house. These people were serious about their drinking. The kitchen cabinets are white laminate, and the floors that are not ugly carpet are dark wood parquet. It looks like the last owners designed everything exactly as they wanted it, saved up through the 70s, built it in 1983 and haven't touched it since. It's the 70s Dream House.

Anyway, We are still negotiating with the ugly house people, but it does not look promising (right now, we are still over 35K apart). On the other hand, they haven't flat out turned us down yet, so... still a possibility.

A few months go by. Apparently every other home buyer in the universe agrees with my assessment of the asthetics of the house; they think it's ugly too. The real negotiating begins, continues, continues and continues. At one point during the "negotiations," I lost it and told our realtor that I would not pay another dollar. "Not one single dollar I tell you. not another dollar. not a dollar!" I had everyone, including myself, convinced that if they came back one dollar below our "final offer" my head would spin around three times and I would walk away. Not to be outdone in the crazy department, on the sly one night, Troy told the realtor, if I have to, I can pitch in some money from my business account - "just don't tell Ree. she doesn't have to know." Our realtor was flummoxed. Not only is she an ethical person, she couldn't think of a practical way around me not knowing what the sale price was on a house that I was buying. And of course, by now, eons after our house hunt began, her payout on this deal is working out to about $3 an hour. I'm sure she was thinking, my god, this cannot fall through. I must get rid of these nutty people. Luckily, for him and her, my husband can't keep a secret. We reached an agreement on price with the sellers and the bottom line is: No one was happy.

And then, while serving as a bridesmaid at my best Nashville bud's wedding, a phone call from our poor Realtor... Here's how I describe it in an email:

For those of you following the big ugly house saga, I feel compelled to share the latest. It is a bit of a long story, but the bottom line is the seller heard through the grapevine that I called her house (the one she has not been living in for oh, about six months or so) "ugly." She was soooo offended she decided that she no longer would sell us the house. I'm not kidding. So, I had to spend lots of non-billable time (hey isn't that what I am doing right now?) writing a nasty lawyer letter explaining that really she'd already sold us the house when she signed the contract back in January. All this for a really really UGLY house that's expensive too. But, if the nasty letter works and we do actually get to move in, you all must come visit and see for yourselves. Maybe we will send out "house announcements" -- besides the throwing up for nine months, this process is remniscent of giving birth. Wait, add the vomiting back in there and we're getting closer :-)

The nasty lawyer letter worked.

From: Ree
Re: Big Ugly Housewarming / 70s Party
Date: 4/21/03

For those of you who have not heard, my husband and I bought a (not so) big, (but very) ugly house [in little beach town] last month, affectionately known as the "big ugly house." As an aside, this is the one where the seller heard I called her house ugly and cancelled the closing. Really. A nasty (nonbillable) lawyer letter later, we rescheduled the closing and are now the proud owners of the BUH. This is your chance to see the "before" shots, and a bit of wishful thinking on my part that within the next decade or so, we will actually be able to de-uglify the house enough to have an "after" party.

So ... in honor of the "before" decor, please join us for a Big Ugly Housewarming / 70s Party on Saturday May 10th at 7pm. Groovy attire required, and decorating ideas much appreciated. Let me know if you (and any decorators/design professionals/significant others you want to bring along) can make it so we can prepare enough fondue and order the appropriate number of lava lamps :-)

Some pictures

Wolf's thinking problem

Quote of the week for January 5, 2006:

Wolf: You know what my problem is daddy?
Troy: What buddy?
Wolf: I can't stop thinking. I wake up and I'm thinking and thinking and thinking. And when I go to bed at night, I can't sleep because I'm thinking and thinking and thinking. I'm just thinking all the time. All the time thinking.

Kid words

• An epiphany? It's not Ta-Da; it's "Ta-La!!!"

• One of Wolf's favorite places is "Chicken-play." I was so sad the weekend they came back from visiting their aunt and uncle and someone had told them it is really called Chik-fil-a.

• For the longest time, the sheets in our house were called "sheep." Baaa

• Scout said, "MY love you"

• And they both think we get out the mat, put on our loose fitting clothes, turn on the yoga video and do "yogurt."

• The neighbors are "neighVors." That one we've tried to break them of, but for some reason, "neighVors" just makes more sense.

• Ouch, Scout got a "taxi" in her foot the other day.

More kid logic

SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2006:

Wolf standing outside his room, looks confused and says, "I don't understand why my light is on. I remember turning it off this morning but now the light in my room is on."

He walks down the hall, obviously still mulling this over in his head. Then, he turns, having figured it out...

"Maybe the 'off' switch is burnt out."

My floors, let me tell you about my floors

Email exchange a few weeks ago at work - also known as the place where Very Important Lawyers do Very Important Work and are very very Busy...

From: Ree
Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2006 2:40 PM
To: A bunch of other Very Important Lawyers
Subject: Big News

The Scooba is cleaning my floors right now!

An added bonus - I hear that it fits under the island in the kitchen - until now, the home of crumbs, matchbox cars, little girl "hair bows," Happy Meal toys and general gunk that I have been too lazy to crawl on the floor to clean up.

Yippee!

------------------------

From: Very Important Lawyer
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 11:11 AM
To: Ree; and the other Very Important Lawyers
RE: Big News

ok so how did it do?

-----------------------

From: Ree
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 11:12 AM
To: A bunch of other Very Important Lawyers
RE: Big News

awesome - my floors are clean and beautiful! but it doesn't save time if you can't stop watching it.

---------------------

From: Very Important Lawyer
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 11:14 AM
To: Ree
Subject: RE: Big News

you are very sad watching the scooba clean your floors...do you watch your dishwasher run, too? : )

----------------------

And I used to think I would grow up and be some cosmopolitan girl in the city out on the town, drinking martinis, flying off to Paris for lunch. Frankly, my younger self is appalled and cringing with humiliation.

I mean saying (or typing) the words "my floors are clean and beautiful" is bad enough, but I have been truly excited about the fact that I have clean floors. I think about the Scooba during the day and plan what rooms I'll use it to clean that night. I am ecstatic about the Scooba. I love my Scooba.

A part of me would like to think my younger self would understand. She knows I hate hate hate cleaning the floors, I'm no good at cleaning the floors, and I'd rather play twelve rounds of Candy Land with cranky kids than break out the mop. But really when I think about it, the only way my younger self would understand is if I lied to her and implied my new appliance was of a more intimate variety.

The punchline, but in real life

One of the best conversations overheard at our house last year:

Early one morning Troy and I overhear the 3 and 4 year old talking in the hallway. Their conversations are just so dang cute to us so we hang back and listen. I mean the idea that they communicate with each other like real little people and not crying drooling babies is still just cool.

So, we're eavesdropping when we hear Scout telling Wolf some story. In the middle of her sentence, she says "oh my God" and takes a breath to continue, but before she can finish her thought, Wolf, using his best paternal all-knowing but kindly tone, stops her and says,

"Scout, God doesn't like it if you say 'oh my God.' It's not very nice. Instead, we say "oh my goodness, or oh my stars" (what??!!!) Troy and I exchange amused but perplexed looks - "Oh my stars" - excuse me, but what the heck? And who is "we." I certainly don't remember giving Wolf this lesson.

But Scout takes it in stride, thanking him for the information, "oh, okay … thanks Wolf" and finishes her story.

They continue playing and Troy and I giggle.

But, there is more.

That night during dinner the two kids are again deep in conversation when Scout stops herself in mid sentence, "… oh my G---"

We can see the wheels quickly turning in her head. She closes her mouth, thinks about it and continues,

"Oh my JESUS"

We about peed our pants.

Besides the hilarious kid logic of it all (first the kindly lecture from Wolf and even more so, Scout's "Jesus" solution), what is so funny about this story is that probably ten years ago, Bets told me this joke. No really. The exact. same. thing. Except that it was a joke. Here it is:

Little girl visits her grandma and the entire time is saying, "Oh my God" this "Oh my God" that until the grandma can't take it anymore and sits her down to explain all about how we don't take the Lord's name in vain, etc... The next morning the little girl gets up, goes downstairs to the kitchen and says "Oh my JESUS grandma, you got my favorite cereal!"

He's a Player

Wolf is attending summer camp at the elementary school where he will begin kindergarten in the fall. Thank you Florida taxpayers. Under the new free universal pre-k program, it is free. Yup, free. For most of the summer, he gets to play with other 4 and 5 year olds and hang out in what will be his brand new school, in the actual kindergarten classrooms, using the actual bathrooms, walking in the actual hallways, eating in the actual lunchroom and hopefully getting a head start on feeling like he owns the place. How cool is that? Even better, his teachers are two of the school's kindergarten teachers and one already told me she would love for Wolf to be in her class.

Anyway, Wednesday morning we followed a little girl and her mom into the school and down the hall. She went into the classroom next to Wolf's, but before she did, she turned around, smiled at us, said "Hello, Hello, Hello!" and all the time waving enthusiastically.

We smiled and waved back before she went into her classroom. I asked Wolf, "do you know her?"

He looked at me and replied, "No. I just sleep with her."

I couldn't wait to get outside to tell Troy about his son, the Player.

Apparently, the two classes get together for naptime.