Report Card

The last five days have been jam-packed, but I couldn’t have been happier with how they’ve turned out and how much I’ve been getting done.  I’m not even sure which thing I’m most excited about…

There’s my very first attempt at appliqueing which, though obviously not store-quality, didn’t actually turn out that bad.

The nearly perfect long-sleeve t-shirt that #2 is attached to, and the ridiculously cute skirt I made to match.  I love when I actually find time (make time?) to sew and things turn out well.  I can’t wait to put this outfit on Nora on her birthday.  Stay tuned for pictures.

Friday, we had a surprise no-Mr. T day, and we got a bunch done around the house, as well as running several errands with our new stroller.  It wasn’t all work, though, we ended the day with a Brotherhood picnic dinner and some seaside Shakespeare.

Nora loved the play.  I didn’t expect her to be as interested as she was; she could barely eat because she was so busy staring  open-mouthed.  She laughed a lot, even a few times when I wasn’t sure what she found funny.  The best (but slightly awkward) moment was when, right after Romeo and Juliet killed themselves and it was dead silent, she yelled, “That’s so funny!”  It was all I could do not to burst into laughter.

Yesterday was more of our usual routine.  I slept in, we had breakfast out with Dada (tried the Brick Bistro and spent WAY too much money for a breakfast), then we went out to the farm.  We were the only ones there yesterday; it was so quiet and relaxing to dig in the dirt, weeding and thinking.  When Nora woke up from her nap she was in a great mood, asking to weed as soon as I got her out of the car.  Really she was excited to see the worms.She likes when I find them in the dirt.  I can’t usually get her to hold them, but yesterday she was game.Until it moved.And she promptly dropped it.

The big project of today was painting Nora’s room a beautiful shade of blue “ocean breeze” appropriately enough.

I got two coats in today, one during nap and one during way more YouTube videos than Nora would normally be allowed to watch.  Sometimes you do what you have to do.  I thought I was done, until I peeled the blue tape off to discoverthat it was too much to assume our landlord had sanded and primed before repainting the trim.  Ugh.  I should have known given the state of the rest of the paint throughout our house: paint over outlets, painting around nails and wall hangings instead of removing them, only one thin and spotty coat – even when the dark color underneath shows through, and the kicker more than just not sanding Spackle (in the rare instance it was used) but not even smoothing it with the putty knife.  Of course they were too lazy to paint the trim properly.  So tonight Nora will be sleeping in our room and I’ll be sanding and painting trim (if I can find enough white paint/primer among the leftover paint cans).  It may be a later night than I expected.

On top of all that, I’ve been doing pretty well on the rest of my Housewife Challenges.  I won’t claim perfection.  Yoga is still just a fantasy and the upstairs (our bedroom=dumping area) could use a tidying up.  In fact it may be dirtier than I thought: I just noticed a water glass on the desk with mold in it.  Umm, yuck!  How did that happen?  Clearly it’s time to get back to work.