Catching Up - Parenting Stuff, Infertility Stuff, Random Life Stuff

Not necessarily in the order of parenting/infertility/random life...

One of the main reasons I've been even more MIA than usual is because the deal to buy another house (mentioned a couple posts prior to this one) went through. We have been working on getting the new (to us) house fixed up and getting the existing house packed up. Former is going better than the latter. And trying (mostly successfully, so far) not to hyperventilate about the idea of having 3 mortgages at once.

Of course, timing being what it usually is, just as we got word that the bank accepted our counter to their counter, the tenant in the rental property we already have gave us notice that he was moving out. Thankfully, we were able to get that rented out to someone else very quickly, so we only had a half month of time where we didn't have rental income on it.

Because of all the real estate stuff, we haven't done an FET yet. Hoping for late August, maybe September. Need to get my butt in gear on exercising and taking better care of myself.

Went to a Lego event today with Miss A and our 10-year-old godson. Was stand-still-in-my-tracks shocked to go over to the little kids' area and see a small little pile of pink/purple/white Legos with a bunch of little girls crammed shoulder-to-shoulder around it and a much, much, much larger pile of yellow/red/blue/green Legos with boys spread out comfortably and only 1 or 2 little girls.

Seriously, we haven't come further than this on gender in the last 50 years? Are the pink/purple Legos going to give the blue and green Legos cooties?

If a kid wants to play with pink/purple Legos, fine. Just stick all of them in one pile and let them choose, don't make the choice for them in advance and limit it to either/or. Heaven forbid, what if a child wants to play with pink and purple and (gasp!) blue and red Legos?? I think Lego made a bad decision to set up the area with 2 separate piles based on "typical girl colors/typical boy colors". (I could totally understand if it was 2 separate piles of mixed colors, with one pile for 0-2 year olds and another for 3-5 year olds). But what was even more surprising to me was that parents seemed to be going along with the gender stereotyping, because in a lot of cases these were kids who were too young to understand the difference and make the choice themselves.

(For the record, I plopped Miss A down in front of the primary colors pile.)

While we were packing up yesterday, we came across a box of "We want to adopt" business cards we had made during our first round of attempts at adoption. I commented how we wouldn't be needing those and should just throw them out, and R surprised the heck out of me by saying, "But what if we need them - if none of the transfers work, and we decide to try to adopt?"

He's always had the stance that he'd be perfectly happy with just 1 kid, but Miss A grows more and more fun each day, and now apparently when I brought up the idea of throwing away the last vestiges of one of the avenues of possibility, he realized maybe he wants another more than he realizes. I'm just not sure I could ever attempt the adoption thing again. But for now, we packed up the cards and will be moving them with us.

It's 1 a.m. I need to get up in about 4 hours, do a couple hours of work, drop Miss A off at day care, and then stop by the other house to let the painter know that I am still not quite happy with the color of light green that we have chosen for the master bath, which will mean yet another trip to the paint store for him. Lesson learned - do not select paint colors based off of paint chips, since they never look anything close to that color on the wall. Hopefully the paint store can color match to a newly purchased bath mat...

Speaking of paint, Pinterest can be a very wonderful/dangerous thing.

I came across (what I think is) a great idea for painting one wall in a playroom with 18-inch-high horizontal stripes, each in a different color, with shelves running wall-to-wall where each color meets the next. Miss A can use the lower shelves as surfaces to play with toys and dolls, and the upper shelves can be used for display. (The shelves are going to be 2x4s or 2x6s directly bolted into the wall studs, so no danger of them toppling down on her if she tugs on them or hangs from them.) R, our handyman, and the painter - all men - all shook their heads at me, but they're creating it.

I also found great ideas for a playroom reading nook and making a coffee table with the top of it covered in chalkboard paint. There is now a $15 Goodwill find coffee table awaiting refinishing in our garage.

Wonderful - ideas. Dangerous - me thinking I have the time/know-how to do these projects. It's kind of like me and the Food Network channel - I watch it and get deluded into thinking I can cook... :-)