Laying Low

I think I have mentioned this before, but I absolutely love each and every thing about having a baby boy, including ironing his little shirts. 

Wait. Did I just use the words love and ironing in the same sentence? Who am I? 


Actually, I just trying to catch up on things around here after having an amazingly lazy weekend. As in Nyah and I only left the house once to buy some food. I don't think George did as much. But it was so nice to chill out, enjoy our house, our yard, our neighborhood and give the kids the time to work out their imaginations. 


Elsa and Ny breezed by occasionally and watched a little of the Cruzan Christmas Parade with us in between puzzles, running around, arguing, napping, and giggling.


And rest, oh did we rest. Because little dude still isn't sleeping through the night. An hour or two is the longest he can make it so by the weekend we are whipped.


I guess having down time is one of the benefits to not having any friends in town. Wondering if we will ever find them. I guess we will enjoy our rest until we do.

Flea Market Find

Our latest (or first, ever) flea market find.

A nice little pair of Mexican paintings.

Five dollars each, with frame. The woman we bought them from wasn't sure where the paintings came from or who painted them, she bought them from a woman and was reselling them, obviously trying to make a dolla, but she did her best to convince us we needed these two in our lives. How did she know?


Here they are all trimmed up and reframed (in new frames).

Perfectly gender neutral (which is totally my thing now), wonderfully colorful, and the perfect scenes to spark a kids imagination.

I found Nyah staring into the paintings the other day and that is when we found the pinata. So appropriate since the pinata is the highlight of all our celebrations.

Can't wait to place them in their new home- the hallway leading into the kids rooms. Gotta love cheap art.

Roses are Real

It's an odd thing moving into a space someone else has occupied. It is easy to inherit the most unintentional things, a cat's hair from deep in the shag(adelic) carpet, another's esthetic and scratches in the wood floor, or someone else's hair in the clogged drain (any volunteers to come fix that problem, I mean, I just can't). Yet somehow we made it all our own by just walking through the front door. 


At times, things are passed along you didn't even know you needed until you see them each morning at breakfast, and watch your girls lean on the window sill and gaze at them as the sun is setting through the glass each evening.  

I now cannot imagine my life without these flowers growing and showing off just outside the window. I wonder how they have managed to survived on their own for this long? Actually, they have thrived. So I guess that is what I will continue to do, leave them alone and let them do their thing, naturally, because they are really out doing themselves.

Though George isn't exactly the flower giving type (they just die is his philosophy, and I totally agree) he has now given me all the roses I could ever want, though I was never aware that I ever desired such a thing. Because we both know what I really dream of is a mango tree and bananas growing in my backyard for the pickin'. 

 But these little beauties will do the trick for now. Thanks babe!

The Neighbor(hood)

So here's the thing about the neighbors. They are...well, incredible. And I think they have personally taken it upon themselves to become our best friends and make us feel as welcome as possible in our new home of Louisiana. And for that, we are beyond thankful. 


I am not sure what we are used to or what we expected but the welcome and they way they have included us in everything is pretty awesome. We have always been close with our neighbors, or fellow condo livers, but those relationships grew over time. These southerners, well they were in our driveway, introducing themselves and welcoming us to the neighborhood during our first visit to the house, inviting us over, feeding us, and even mowed our lawn while we were away because we didn't have a lawn mower yet. 


And get this, they are even teaching our children manners. Yeah. Greatest neighbors ever. One of the men in particle won't let Nyah answer him without a, "Yes, Sir, " thrown in there and I am not even kidding. He didn't even ask George or I if this okay, he just corrects her repeatedly until she answers him properly. The look on her face is hilarious when the two of them go through this battle, and the sarcasm in her voice when she answers him, well, we have to work on that. 


I was warned by a friend (thanks Ali) about this sir and ma'am thing prior to arriving down south, but woah. George and I have discussed it and we are like, hey, if someone wants to teach our children manners, have at it. We personally don't feel the need to be addressed by sir or ma'am by our children, Mom and Dad work for us, but whatev, gotta make an effort to blend in. 


So I guess you could say we are loving the southern hospitality and neighborhood living, and we are doing our best to get used to the southern ways and fit in. And my favorite part of living in a neighborhood (besides the people, bike rides, walks, and school buses)? The quiet knock we heard on the door early Sunday morning to see if Nyah and Elsa could come out and play. 

I think we are going to be okay here.

Walking in Circles

We are back, finally connected to the world again. The break from all technology (minus our cell phones and our house hold appliances) has been great and refreshing, though I can't claim to have accomplished anything great. Because it seems like I have just been walking in circles for the past week we have been in this home. Or wait, has it been a week? I actually don't even know what day of the week is. 


I finally unpacked the last of the boxes yesterday and everything is relatively put away to their rooms or piles. I mean we are talking piles galore up in here and all I can do is roam from one pile to the next and then get distracted by another without ever really putting anything away. There is just so much to do to make everyone feel at home. And George and I have told each other, "Just add it to the list," more times than I would like to admit. Its kind of the theme around here, to just put it some where, anywhere, on the list, just to get it out of sight and mind so we can deal with it all.


We did get the most important room of the house put away though, the dining room play room, so the little ones can keep busy while I make every attempt to get busy. 

I guess it's okay to be real with myself and admit that is all just a bit much. Our 660 square foot condo is like my security blanket that someone just abruptly took away from me. I just can't stop thinking about it. I could clean the entire place, top to bottom (bathroom and floors included) in a little less than an hour. And all members of the family were in talking distance and in sight with as little as a lean in either direction. It was enough. And now George is back to work and I just feel like I am wondering around someone else's house. I'm exhausted from cleaning just a few bathrooms probably due to the circles I walk in the trek from one room to the next in attempts get ahead while maintaining the current mess we've made. 


My Google search bar has been blowing up with things like, "Wtf is a convection oven?", "What is that beeping sound?", and "Why is my fridge asking me what temp I want my water? Cold, I want it cold." I had to ask our perfect neighbor wife how to mop wood floors the other day because I don't know these types of things and I am sure she could see right through my small condo mind. And then my high tech washer said, "Hi" to me this morning and programmed the temperatures for the clothes I was washing. Which I am thankful for because I am used scrambling for quarters, playing laundry mat politics, and doing my best not to have the laundry mat attendant yell at me, again, rather than learning what temperature things should be washed in. And I am almost positive it was cold water for everyone at that laundry mat, so it wouldn't have mattered anyway. 


And Elsa is most definitely messing with me. Her new game is to pick the farthest point away from me in the house to hide in. She remains so quiet in the dark spaces causing me to leave the room and make another long lap around the house in search of her only to find her in the original room behind a door or in a dark closet giggling at me. Aren't kids supposed to be afraid of the dark? But the echos this house produces usually gives her away if she would just make a sound because we have little to fill this place. 


And in case you weren't aware, when you do finally decide to give in and give up and test out the new big tub in an attempt to relax, don't continue to add bubble bath when enough bubbles aren't produced because once the jets come on, yeah, it will boil over with bubbles. And your husband might laugh at you because you're trying to act like you know how to soak in a huge tub but you really don't. 


So that is what I have been doing, getting aquatinted with this place, the mailbox, the garage, the technology, the ridiculousness and trying not to feel overwhelmed and really trying to convince myself that maybe if I walk in circles long enough, that this place might eventually start to feel like home. 

Stretching Their Legs

Perhaps its all the sunshine, or these long hot Indiana summer days, might be all the love, or maybe it was just their time, but both girls seem significantly older, wiser, and taller to me since we arrived in the middle of America. One of those things that happened all of the sudden, blind sides me out of the blue when I least expect it. Bam.  

Nyah is building her own relationships, bonding with people, making her own connections with nature, imagination working at warp speed.

Elsa is talking more, saying and repeating everything, "tank you, gelcome, Yaya (Nyah), Nana, oh no, baby" and the list goes on. And of course, swinging alone. Without falling.

They both seem to be physically growing by the minute, stretching out like the green grass and flowers which keeps them company in Nana's outdoor play paradise. 

It's different here than island and condo living. Outdoors is part of life just as much as on the island (minus the pristine body of water), but is as easy as opening the back door. No packing up, preparing, planning, or cars involved. 

Independent, free, mischievous with contagious happiness exuding from them. Indiana seems to agree with both of our girls. They are growing like weeds in every way right before our eyes. Guess they just needed a little room to stretch their legs. 

 

Loving Limbo

Christmas morning, 2011, or in my children's life, something even better. Waking up at Nana's house after a full day of flying across oceans arriving asleep in the wee hours of the morning to their new temporary home. They woke up and realized they hit the jackpot, cash money. They found their paradise. St. Croix who? They are in heaven, in a frenzy since we arrived and they just can't stop. 

We are really enjoying our days here so far, family time like woah, and its awesome. Something we all really needed but just weren't aware of.  

I feel like I have traveled back in time. I am seeing everyone from my life past (enjoy introducing George to them all), cleaning out stuff from my old room dating back to high school to make room for my fam, showing Ny my old school, and the list goes on and disgustingly on. So quaint here, so familiar.


The question keeps coming up from many, "Do you all live here?" (We might stick out a little, not sure.) There is no simple answer to the question. Limbo is what we are in, stuck somewhere between island time and Christmas morning and loving every minute.