Savino is thisclose to crawling! Eep! I have been saying "If only he would just start crawling!" worried that maybe he was delayed in what is supposed to be a big milestone for his age. Now I am all TOOSOON about it! Well, it is exciting to watch him try and get it. He has just figured out that he can move his arms forward and then he gets up on his toes and hops himself forward onto his knees. It is quite a process to watch!

Tim is on call tonight and has already been back to the hospital TWICE. It is small consolation that at least he is being paid well for each call but still! He got called out right as we got home from the grocery store and from picking him up, so I got to make dinner all by myself which is always fun. Usually one of us cooks while the other tries to feed the baby because otherwise I end up feeding the boy instead of eating dinner. Tonight dinner had to wait while I tried to convince Savino that he could eat his food without screaming. At least Haley was cool with it. She is such a big help with her brother, she does such a good job entertaining him and keeping him happy when I need a minute to do something. She hung out with him this afternoon so I could take a quick shower which improved my day immensely.

I spent a good fifteen minutes on the phone with our mortgage company today and ended up not being able to accomplish ANYTHING. I was so frustrated. We got a lovely form letter letting us know that they believe our homeowner's insurance was cancelled or not renewed, which is completely 100% incorrect. We've had our insurance company fax them proof of our current policy which was paid in full by the company that we refinanced our mortgage through before they were bought out by CitiMortgage which is our current mortgage holder. All of our insurance and taxes are paid in escrow, so its not even something that is in our hands, it's all dealt with by the mortgage companies. Our insurance company has faxed them proof not once but TWICE and yet Citimortgage was still saying that the policy was expired. So I got on the phone and navigated the automated system until I FINALLY got a human being. The guy on the other end was polite and I was polite to him, and finally he said "Well, I have the fax and everything is correct on the fax but it's not correct in the system..." So I said and is that going to be fixed? Because if it isn't then Citimortgage is going to purchase a $1200 insurance policy and charge us for it, which is bull frankly. So we got to this point where I got the guy to admit that they DID have proof of the current policy with all the correct information and then he drops the bomb on me, Citimortgage doesn't have MY name on the loan account, so I cannot make any changes to our account information. Um, yeah. So then the guy puts me on hold and gets a customer service rep on the line as well and he gives me this song and dance about how they will have to send me a form to fill out with Tim and send it back in so that I can be authorized to make changes to account information.

Cue me ready to scream.

My name is on the insurance policy, my name is on the actual title to the house, and I signed about a bajillion forms when we refinanced and I KNOW that my information is on the loan account because while the loan is in Tim's name, I had to provide all my information as co-owner of the home. Oh, they'll let me make the payments on the loan, but I can't verify our insurance information so they don't charge us $1200 for their mistake. I wanted to KILL. I just said FINE, Tim will call you and verify this. I wanted to let loose all my frustrations but what would that have accomplished? There is literally nothing I can do to fix the situation until I have authorization to make changes. And let me tell you it KILLS me that they have the correct information about our insurance policy, that their information in their main system is WRONG because someone clearly did not enter correct information, but it will linger until Tim can call them all because of their stupid policy which doesn't even make sense when I am just trying to VERIFY WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW. Arg! I HATE STUPID POINTLESS BUREAUCRACY!

It just aggravates and frustrates me that Citimortgage bought out our mortgage company, didn't transfer our loan information correctly, makes us jump through ridiculous hoops, and still won't fix what is THEIR mistake. And we're paying THEM!

Ok, I am done now. Tim will take care of it either tomorrow or Monday when he is off.

The weather got crazy cold, our furnace was running day and night for the last two days, and then today it got back into the 80's. I die. Please DECIDE what the weather is going to be, OK? This doesn't help the kids allergies/colds/whatever.

Haley has like 3 weeks of school left! We are in the countdown! I am so excited for school to be done so we can get to the good parts of summer! We are going to have so much fun this summer with me being able to actually DO things not being ridiculously pregnant! We are ready for the pools to open, ready to get to the park and play, and enjoy it.

This week has crawled by but thankfully it is finally almost over. Tim has a three day weekend, which is nice. We are going to try and get some things taken care of around the house. Fun times!

Savino SLEPT last night! Oh blessed blessed sleep. One day my life will not revolve around how much he sleeps, but for now it totally does. He woke up at 12 to nurse and I didn't give him a bottle afterwards like I normally do, I just laid him back down and he rolled over and went back to sleep... and slept until almost 7am! Woo! I actually woke up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and had to check on him because he was out so completely, he was still in the same spot he had rolled into when I laid him down.

I have figured out that he does this about once every two weeks or so. I can handle it! I don't expect him to do it again, but I think it would be awesome if he ramped up to one night a week of sleep.

This morning I had to get up anyway and help Haley get ready for her group pictures at school. I helped her pick out some clothes and then did her hair in two French braids. I am getting much better at braiding her hair! I think just doing it over and over has helped. I also figured out that I couldn't get all of her hair into the braids, the part right at the back at the base of her neck is just too short to be braided in, so I stop the braids just above that part and leave it loose. It looks so cute! And even better, it stays out of her face when I do it that way, so you can see her beautiful heart shaped face.

Savino is definitely about to push tooth #5 through his gums, there is a tiny ridge of tooth already out and I think in the next few days it will come all the way through. That explains the copious amounts of drool that come pouring out of his mouth.

I managed to get a bunch of leaves and dead grass out of the front flowerbed yesterday while waiting for it to be time to go get Haley. I put Savino on a blanket and let him pull up peices of grass and sneak them into his mouth when he thought I wasn't looking. He was too cute, he would pull a peice of grass and then look up and see if I was watching him, if he caught me looking at him he would give me this big innocent smile like, "Oh no Mom, I wasn't going to put it in my mouth!" and if he couldn't see my face (I was working behind the cherry bushes, so I could see him through the branches but he couldn't really see me), then his hand would slowly move towards his mouth and he would thoughtfully chew on the grass. I figured, what the hell, he was sitting in a patch of clover and grass and we don't put any chemicals on our lawn so a few peices weren't going to hurt him. I did run over and stop him from eating a leaf, that isn't quite the sort of thing that he can chew on. Anyway, I pulled out a ton of leaves and grass and now I need to rake it up and put it in a trash can for hauling away.

This afternoon after I pick Haley up we are going to Lowe's to look at plants because I am going to find something to plant in front of the cherries and around the strawberries and in the front circular bed where my sparse tulips are too spread out. I also need to get some pruning shears and some new cheap trowels that I can use to tear the crabgrass roots out of the flower bed. I always tear up my trowels so I just buy cheap ones so I don't mourn when I break them or bend them or otherwise mangle. I also need some new gardening gloves. Deals has all of that for $1 so I might make a trip over there too.

I tried to talk Tim into having lunch with me, but he has three admissions that all arrived at the same time, so he is swamped and I just said forget it. I am a little sad at that. The goal was to have lunch together once a week and that has not happened. He never even suggests it, I have to talk him into it. I guess I don't really care, I mean, we've gone all these years without ever having lunch together through the week, I just thought it would be a nice way to get a standing date in every week. Since he is on call for the rest of the weekend, I am not counting on him being around. I am just planning to do things that I don't need him for, like plastering the wall in the hallway where I have ripped out the wallpaper and somehow managed to tear off the top layer of drywall as well. I think that just a layer of patching plaster will be fine, the top half of the wall has textured paint on the drywall anyway.

I would like to figure out how I can turn our front room into some usable space. I need to get a TV stand for the TV in there, and figure out how to de-cat-hair the couch that is in there, it is COVERED in cat hair. It is so gross. I have no idea. I just don't know how to keep the cats off of it either, they just claimed that couch as their own. I feel bad that it is this whole room that we are not even using and I don't know why, it is a nice room and it stays very cool without any air conditioning in the summer. I think that it would be a great library/office area, but I am at a loss as to what to do with it. Right now we just use it mostly as a coat room. All our shoes are in there, well me and Haley's shoes mostly, and we have coats hanging on a junky coat rack that was there when we moved in. I guess I need to just get some hangers and put all our coats away since the weather is so much warmer that we don't need them. I don't know. It has a fantastic light fixture in there (remember the branch and leaf chandelier that I got for $14?) and I could put in some nice curtains, right now there are just some sheers hanging up. It needs another seating area, like two nice wingback chairs and a coffee table to go between the chairs and the couch. Some bookcases, some art or pictures on the walls, I think it would be really nice. Tim can set up his laptop in there, and with the TV hooked to the basic cable that is in there, it would be a nice place to just hang out or for Haley to do her homework at. I want to start maximizing our space, we have SO MUCH of it in this house and we just don't use it well.

So anyway, I have plans for the inside and outside of the house this weekend. I hope that I can get something good done. I also have two large picture frames that I need to decide what to do with! If I can find a nice 11 X 14 mat with an 8 X 10 cut out, I can put the new 8 X 10 of Haley and Savino that I have in it, or I could order an 8 X 10 of the picture of Tim and Savino in the park that I love so much. It is hard to decide! Then I have a big giant frame that I am going to collage some more pictures into, I have a thing for picture collages lately.

Chantal is supposed to come by at some point this weekend to pay her part of the cell phone bill. I will totally not be shocked if she doesn't show up, but whatever! I am good without the drama!

On that note, I am going to rescue a baby who doesn't want to practice crawling anymore and nurse him and try to get some laundry done and get him dressed for the day. We are bumming, him in his pjs and me in my workout clothes.

Been Awhile

I have been super busy taking care of things for Eleni's baby shower which was Saturday. It went well but man, I am GLAD to be done with that! It was a whole lot of work and running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

Today we had lunch with the whole family to celebrate Tim's brother's birthday. He picked Applebee's. I am not impressed with their food. It was OK because I spent most of the time feeding and entertaining Savino who towards the end of the meal started trying to rip my shirt off to nurse. He is getting a lot more demanding when it comes to that, which is not cool. I am hoping that he will start signing for it and stop just trying to pull my shirt down, I'm not too impressed with it.

Just a few pictures because I am trying to wrap things up here and head to bed. I have been out to the store every. single. day. last week. I am really hoping that this week I can just stay home and enjoy some down time.



Savino's 7 month pictures. He is getting too big!




One of the set of favors for Eleni's baby shower, they are monogrammed rice krispie treat lollipops.




One of the pair of hand carved doors in our house, this is the interior



And the exterior.


We are getting serious about selling one of these hand carved doors. I would like to make enough from the sale of one to get serious about some renovations on both of our houses. Our little house needs a lot of work before we rent it out this summer, we are upgrading the electrical and putting in new flooring or carpeting. We are going to be putting in new decks at the big house and replacing fencing, getting ready to renovate the kitchen and master bath as well. When we first bought the big house, the guy who appraised it for the mortgage company said he thought that the set of doors were worth half of what we paid for the house, and so if we can sell one and make a good profit on it, that would be awesome. I have e-mails out to architectural antique dealers and have yet to hear anything substantial back from anyone. The doors are original to the house, hand carved from the 1880's and made without any nails in peg and dovetail construction. They are definitely unique, I am having a hard time finding anything comparable to put a real value on them, but Tim doesn't want to part with them for a small amount so I am waiting to hear back on what a few dealers think they are worth before we start actively selling them. I am cautiously optimistic though, I think the right buyer would appreciate the craftsmanship and detail. They were one of the reasons we fell in love with this house, despite all the work it needs. It is bittersweet to think about parting with them.

I will try to catch up with what has been going on here, but I am beat for the night. It's been a long day. We have a long week ahead of us too, starting Thursday Tim is on 24 hour call at the hospital and will probably be called in several times in the middle of the night. It's good and bad, the money is ridiculously good when he is on call and it definitely adds up quickly, but getting up at 2am to go into the hospital sucks at the best of times. He's on call from Thursday to Sunday night. It has been nuts up at the hospital lately too, so we will see how it goes. Tim is not looking forward to it and frankly, neither am I, but we do what we have to.