I Took My Shorties to the Movies

Yesterday I saw an ad for free movies at a multiplex that just opened up north of our new town. Since Pixar's new film, "Ratatouille," was listed as one of the possibilities, I thought it would be a great time to take Nutmeg for her first theater experience. And I figured that no one would mind if I brought an inant to a 9:50 a.m. free showing to a kids' movie on a weekday.

I didn't tell Nutmeg where we were going just in case we got there and weren't able to get tickets. Since our community is surrounded on three sides by low income neighborhoods with mostly African-American residents, I was guessing the multiplex was in one of those. It was, or at least, it was near such a neighborhood but its immediate surroundings seemed to be a railyard and some former industrial empty lots. At any rate, the atmosphere was as I expected, all moms with kids and a few summer day camp groups, and although I was in the racial minority there I felt very comfortable. One mom very sweetly got a booster seat for Nutmeg, since she could see that I had my hands full of baby.

The experience was a challenge. Nutmeg was mostly very good, with only a few outbursts of loud talking. As soon as she settled in her booster seat, she spilled some of her free drink on it, and got up crying because her wet pants were irritating some heat rash she got on our long drive last weekend. The movie was just about to start, and another mom held Filbertine for me while I helped the Nut get dry. We spilled most of our popcorn and a dad offered to get us some more.

We watched most of the movie, but Fil became louder and louder as the film moved towards the end. I love Pixar and was of course anxious to see the end, but eventually I had to bring Nut and Fil into the hallway and eventually out of the theater. There were some other kids running the halls, as you might expect on free day at the movies when the Coke and Hawaiian Punch is free.

As we left, I heard one woman say, ruefully, "You can't even watch a movie with these shorties."

I'm pretty sure she wasn't talking about mine, but she pretty much summed up my morning. I'll have to rent "Ratatouille" to find out how it ends. All in all, the kids did pretty well, but still, taking two babies to the theater all by yourself is no walk in the park.

A Fil Report

As I type Filbertine is sitting upright on my lap, reaching over my supporting arm at the fishies circulating over her Ocean Wonders Aquarium Cradle Swing. Like everyday in Boxland, I don't really have time to post, but I had to sit down and record a few things that the amazing Filly is doing.

Mainly, she's grabbing. On our way up to the cabin this weekend, we stopped to meet up with our friends in Spring Green and I put her in the Baby Bjorn while I called my mother for directions to a local fish fry we wanted to visit. But I could barely scratch out the directions because Fil so persistently, and so accuractely grabbed that pen out of my hand. The same thing happens when I try to unpack with her in the Bjorn, sign a credit card receipt, dial my phone. I expect to finally lose that last 10 pounds of baby weight because she never allows me to eat anymore. Right now she's managed to grab the ethernet cable and shove it in her mouth.

Scooting: I almost forgot this huge one! She has scooted backwards, on her tummy, for FEET, often until she hits a barrier, on several occasions. Just now, I looked at her a few minutes ago and she was on her playmat, pushing herself up on her hands and looking around. Now, I find her on the tile floor, two feet away from the mat. She usually sounds frustrated when she is scooting, probably because she is trying to move forward but she ends up farther away from her target. My MIL tells me that Epu crawled at just this age, 4-and-a-half months, so I know where this is leading, and soon.

Sitting: She will sit up for maybe 30 seconds or longer before toppling in one direction or another. This delights her because it allows her to grab for things once out of her reach. Have I mentioned the grabbing?

Interest in food: I am steadfastedly holding out for that 6-month mark before actively feeding anything solid to Filbertine, but I have a feeling she's going to feed herself something solid by then because at every meal she's angling for everything on the table, nonstop.

Rolling: We were stupid and lazy enough to let her sleep on mattresses all last week because we can't find the tool to put the crib together and we hadn't brought the Pack N Play upstairs. But even if she's in the middle of the mattress, this kid will roll over and over, even in her sleep, until she sometimes falls right off the mattress.

Recreation: Yesterday she started vigorously bouncing up and don in her Exersaucer, something Nutmeg never did.

Quickie

As soon as Nutmeg's bathing suit comes out of the dryer we are leaving for swimming lessons, so this is a quick update.

1. The doctor was very nice and didn't scold me at all when I told him I was taking Nutmeg's ciprofloxan or whatever they were called eye drops. Both he and the nurse were suitably impressed at how very inflamed my eyes were, and this was after some improvement from taking Claritan and possibly from being out of my dusty house for an hour.

He couldn't say for sure, but he agreed that it looked more like an allergy than an infection. Just to be safe, he prescribed drops called blephamide (heehee, funny name) that contain both a steroid and antibiotics. Now that my eyes are on steriods, I can actually see all of you while you are reading this blog. Actually, there was almost immediate improvement -- hardly any pain now, much less redness, some reduction in itching, and most mornings my eyes opened when I woke up.

Except this morning, when I had to get Epu to get me a hot compress before I could see. Since we were at the cabin all weekend, this leads me to believe that I am allergic to our new home. Hopefully, just the remaining plaster dust in the new home. So I guess there will be some HEPA vacuuming after swimming lessons.

By the way, to the person who mentioned Patanol, I was actually taking that as well last week because my mom gave me some that she uses, but it didn't help. And if you think Patanol is expensive, Blephamide is about $100 a tiny bottle, before insurance.

2. The cabin was so great. So much relaxation and time to actually enjoy our daughters, who it turns out are charming and adorable, not just the impediment to work that I usually see them as these days. My brother came, as well as our friends who had a baby the same week Fil was born, and everybody had a good time. There were songs around the campfire and an afternoon at a local beach.

Eyes Shut Up

I am so sorry for the extended hiatus. Beyond the busy-ness of moving, I am still suffering from extreme discomfort in both eyes that makes me avoid looking at the computer screen or practically anything. I actually had a doctor's appointment for this on Monday and failed to show up, and believe me, I am regretting it now.

It just occurred to me to wonder if what I'm suffering from is a bizarre allergic reaction to all the dust -- old house under-the-rugs dust, new house new-drywall-and-holes-in-the-walls dust. This would explain why no one around me has caught what I have despite bed sharing and all the necessary physical contact of child rearing. It would also explain the complete failure to respond to the antibiotic eyedrops I've been illicitly taking, the same drops that cured Nutmeg's pink eye in a day or 2.

The reason I haven't really considered that before is that I have no other allergy symptoms -- no sneezing, runny nose, wheezing, sinus pressure, nada. Just sore, bloodshot, teary, mucousy eyes.

But to test the theory I just hit CVS (on the corner of our block, btw, tres convenient) and scored a pack of Benadryl and one of Claritan. If the drugs don't work, our drive to my parents' cabin tomorrow morning will be by way of our old neighborhood so I can make the walk in clinic at my old doctor's office.

Which, duh, I should have done a week ago. I know this. And I am not looking forward to telling a doctor that I've been trying to self-medicate for a week while my eyes threaten to ooze right out of my head. Oh well, any lecture would be worth it to end this discomfort. And, as an added bonus, hopefully if I go to the doctor tomorrow I will not end up going blind from this.

On the house front, I am ordering a cart for my kitchen, because it doesn't have enough counter space to display my very housewifian collection of red Kitchen Aid gadgets. Nutmeg and I partially set up her room today, with a clothing bar in the closet just her height. Then when she was supposed to be napping Nutmeg took all her dresses out of the closet and "unpacked" a box all over the room to boot. Sigh. I'm afraid my reaction was not very gentle, nor understanding. Epu is installing a ceiling fan light in our new living room ceiling light box. I have moved many boxes to the basement to facilitate our moving around the ground floor and upstairs. And, I primed the insides of both bedroom closets, so we can now start putting our clothes away. I also primed the new drywall in the downstairs half bath (the original upper walls in the half bath, hidden by an ugly drop ceiling, were crumbling plaster and super-old paint).

Coming Up For Air

My desk is in our new kitchen, surrounded by boxes. I'm sitting here with a wriggling baby on my lap. I have a very uncomfortable eye infection that's been raging for a week now. I've been using the eyedrops from last time Nutmeg got pinkeye, and I think it's getting better but I'm not sure. I can't get reassigned to an Oak Park doctor until the first of the month. Well, I think I'm going to look for a specialist on our plan here in OP.

Talk about deja vu. Another June, and once again I'm feeling physically miserable and faced with a mountain of unpacking. Oh well, at least there is NO way an eye infection can last as long as pregnancy.

More details later.

Entering Internet Black Hole

We're packing. Moving men come tomorrow at 9 or 10. We've informed them that we'll be paying them to pack some of our stuff, since we've spent most of the week over at the new place, priming and painting, repairing some of the damage wrought on our plaster walls and ceilings by the electricians. We also had a great handyman, who lives in our building, working there for three days doing same, plus repairing a couple spots in the hardwood floors upstairs.

Today, the windows went in, or at least they were beginning to go in when I left the house at 9:45 a.m.

I've been up until 2 the last couple nights, and I think I may have pink eye. So I'm going to turn in "early," at midnight, and get back at the packing in the early a.m.

Most of the packing was actually done by my parents, bless them. And my mommy is coming back tomorrow morning, early, to help us out some more.

There are so many things I want to tell about the kids, like how Nutmeg loves her swimming lessons and how Filbertine is scooting herself short distances across the floor to reach coveted objects. But I. Must. Sleep.

The computer's getting packed after I finish this, so I'm not sure when I'll get back online. Do nothing till you hear from me, darlings.

We Have Water Pressure

Very tired. But not as tired as my uncle must be right now. He greatly improved our water pressure this weekend and modernized about half of our plumbing system.

My uncle arrived between 5:30 and 6 a.m. Saturday morning and got right to work. Twelve hours later he sat down to dinner with us (and my inlaws who are here to visit and help). Then he was back to work as we packed up the kids and headed back to Chicago. He slept on our air mattress and then got right back at it this morning, finishing up in the afternoon and driving back to Kenosha.

But not before trying to get out of getting paid.

Seriously.

I knew that my uncle was known to resist accepting money for plumbing within the family, and is known to be generous. I remember that he once slipped hundreds of dollars in cash to one of my cousins when she was going through a terrible time.

But this is ridiculous. The man drove a hundred miles each way, spent a night away from his family, and worked longer and harder than I have seen anyone (except maybe me) work. At a skilled and highly financially valued trade, no less. Epu explained that we had budgeted for this work and were ready and able to pay him.

He finally accepted a check for half the amount he admitted the job was worth at his usual rate, and said if it bothered us so much we could send along the difference. Which of course we will. My mom warned me of the possibility that he might not cash the other check. Which would put us in the position of finding something else we could do for him, like maybe some computer setting up or something.

It's touching that my uncle is so kind and willing to help us out. But besides the obvious fairness issue, I have a selfish reason for making sure he gets paid, too. It would be nice to be able to call him again when we are ready to have the rest of the system fixed and remodel our nasty bathroom. If he doesn't get paid, I can't exactly ask him again. Even with his pay, he did us a huge favor by coming so far from home, overnight no less, to do the work.

So thanks, Uncle Bob. You rock!

Other updates: The closet door in our guest/media room has been widened and roughly trimmed, Epu spent part of today adding more trim so it approximately matches other doorways. The electrician has redone a bunch of switches and outlets, and last I spoke to him didn't seem to think he would need to do more than the already expensive work. Sadly, he replaced our ancient button-push lights with switches, which we didn't realize he was going to do. The kitchen has accent colors only, since I'm sort of on a painting hiatus until the electrician finishes tomorrow.

And we have six or seven boxes of books packed. Movers are scheduled for Saturday, when my mother and Epu could both be here. Will the windows be installed by Saturday? Well, it's on the Polish window guy's schedule that way. Let's see if the window company delivers on time or within four days of on time.

Tomorrow: Drive to OP at 6 a.m., electrician at 7 a.m., Nutmeg's first swimming lesson at 10:20. We were planning to stop in OP tonight but when we realized we needed to stop home for something after leaving Ribfest at 9 p.m., we kind just stumbled upstairs to bed instead of driving to the western suburbs. We're kinda tired. But, like I said, not as tired as Uncle Bob, who I am sure is sleeping right now.

Now Aren't You Sorry You Asked for a House Update?

OK, we are trying to get as much done as possible this week while Nutmeg is at my parents' cabin in Wisconsin, so listen up. This will be brief and possibly misspelled.

1. I may have already mentioned this, but there was still some remaining asbestos tile found in the house during the walkthrough. It has been removed.

2. Our windows are ordered. They are supposed to come in Monday but I'm not holding my breath. Then again, we have had several pleasant surprises in this process so far so here's hoping. We found a lead-certified guy to put them in, an affable Pole who goes by Ralph, and the bill for him and the windows he ordered was actually quite a bit lower than the regular, non-lead-certified window companies I contacted. After speaking with a friend whose building is getting new windows, I realized one thing in our favor: it's a lot easier to avoid contaminating a house than it is a high-floor condo, because with a house, you can just use a ladder to remove the old windows through the outside. With a condo, you need scaffolding.

Ralph's protections will include taping down a polypro tarp, wetting anything that needs to be sanded, removing debris through outside, keeping the door shut*, and vacuuming with a HEPA vac afterwards. I plan to follow up by mopping with Leaddissolve and doing some dust tests.

* Technically you should tape the doors shut, but this approach seems ok to me. After all, as Ralph points out, lead is pretty heavy, and doesn't tend to float through the air in the fashion of asbestos fibers.

3. Yesterday the very nice young man who lives in the basement apartment of our apartment building came out with another guy and built us a new gate to the alley and a new railing for our outside basement steps. These were very big issues to me since I now feel like Nutmeg can play safely in the yard. I just thought of hiring Reuben a week ago and I am SO GLAD I did because he only charged $300. This was a full day's work for him and one other guy, and the results are beautiful. I was able to cancel a handyman company that charged $700 a day, PER worker.

The drawback is that Reuben, while an adorably sweet guy, has not been stellar at getting back to us about the other estimates we asked for, or about getting back to us at all. We'd love to have him repair our upstairs wood floors and fix a faulty basement step before move-in day.

4. My uncle is coming Saturday morning at about 6 a.m. to fix the plumbing. He predicts a cost of approximately 1/3 of what we originally feared we would pay, so we are quite happy.

5. An electrician is coming Friday to do some rewiring and add some light boxes, outlets, and convert a lot of outlets to GFIs. This bill, sadly, is going to be significantly more than we had hoped, although we didn't really have any educated guesses. I thought that most of the wiring in the house was new because there are only a few cloth wires in the circuit box, but the electrician says you really have no idea how many old cloth wires there are until you check out the electric boxes throughout the house. And of course he recommends doing that right now because he wants the money. But, upon reflection, we know it makes sense -- any opening up of walls should be done now, before furniture is in the house and those walls have been painted.

6. Epu ran Ethernet from the basement, where the DSL will live, up to the kitchen (so a wireless antenna can facilitate deck-based laptop surfing) and to the future computer corner of the living room. He also wants to run it upstairs but has been a bit intimidated about how to get it up there. Anyone who knows how to do this kind of thing, PLEASE come help him.

7. I stripped wallpaper off the downstairs 1/2 bath and noticed that there is a good 2 feet of wall above the ugly false ceiling. The paint on this wall looks ancient and probably as leady as it comes. We have asked Reuben to remove the false ceiling and the yucky paint. I'm not sure what we'll do then, since the walls are partially tiled up to the false ceiling. The walls are also covered with rusted, popped nails. I'm now starting to see how little projects can cascade into bigger projects -- all I wanted to do at first was get rid of some ugly old wallpaper, and now I'm wondering if we should retile the whole bathroom.

8. We chose Benjamin Moore's Yellow Raincoat and Firefly for the kitchen. I washed and taped the walls, and primed more than half of them, but stopped when I realized that the electrician Friday will be ripping into a wall or two. For the living room, we are trying out some colors that Martha Stewart says go together for a color glaze brushed effect. I love the Martha Stewart line's suggestions for paint combinations, it's like GrAnimals for your house!

Everything else is still in the planning stage right now. Today I think I will stay in Chicago most of the day and pack, since any more painting I do at the new house might just be messed up by the electrician Friday. Anyway, Filbertine is being very selfish and insisting that I play with her, hold her, change her diaper and breastfeed her, which it turns out takes up a good chunk of my day. Only, since I usually do these things while chasing Nutmeg around the house or trying to get her dressed and into the car, I barely noticed I was doing these things before.

Next time: pictures.