Is there a such thing as a clean house when you are not expecting anyone to come over? I try to stay on top of everything but I fail miserably. This morning the doorbell rang and my heart jumped. I’m standing in the living room still in my pajamas trying to remember if I was expecting someone. I run to a window to peak out and it was the UPS guy who fortunately didn’t need me to sign for anything. I looked around the house and felt instant relief that I didn’t have to let anyone in this morning. I did a walk around the house and found the following messes in need of attention

1. Last nights dishes still in the sink, dishwasher needed to be emptied
2. Clean sticky mess off kitchen floor (what the %$#& is that)
3. Paper and crayons all over the office floor
4. Kids marked their territory in the living room…again
5. Garbage overflowing
6. Clothes basket in the bedroom needing to be put away
7. Beds need to be made
8. Laundry room is being painted so dirty clothes in floor of master bedroom
9. Finish painting the laundry room already!
10. Clothes left in washer, must rewash

I am by no means perfect, nor do I strive to be perfect. My house is by no means a pigsty but the only time you are going to find it perfectly clean is once a week when I do my top to bottom three hour cleaning marathon. With two young kids that state of cleanliness usually lasts about an hour after nap time. I visit friends who always have perfect houses and it always makes me wonder if they are always that perfect or do they sometimes look like mine. You know the type, there is nothing out of place and the first thing they say is “excuse the house its a mess”. If that is a mess I’d hate to think what they’d say about mine right now.

I think back to spring as a child and remember blowing dandelion puffs, endlessly throwing helicopters in the air and digging worms out of my dads garden beds. These are all things that were countless hours of fun. As an adult I see weeds multiplying in my lawn, my gutters clogged with those little helicopters and the trees that will eventually sprout and require pulling up when they seed. There is also the mulch I just put down getting thrown everywhere because my kids don’t want to dig in the garden I left for them, its more fun to dig in the ones that have been planted.

I hate that all those wonderful childhood memories turn into such a nuisance as an adult. I do love watching the hundreds of little helicopters spiraling through the air but then they have to land and spoil it for me. It would be so nice to always be able to see things through a child’s eyes. I think that is why I love writing Internet Toddler so much, its nice to see things through they eyes of my kids and regress to to a time when life wasn’t so complex.

The picture is of the tons of helicopters on the roof, this isn’t even a drop in the bucket of how many of these things we have covering the property.

My daughter has a head full of hair and I’ve been able to put bows in it since she was six months old. In the past three years we’ve managed to accumulate more bows than I care to admit. I had a makeup case that we called the bow bag they were all being stored in. When the bows started multiplying the bag became filled to the point that I couldn’t find anything in it. Then my son discovered how to work zippers and he found that dumping all the bows was fun. I started looking online for bow holders and couldn’t believe the price of some of them. Really, $70 for $8 worth of supplies and it’ll only hold 50 bows. When I finally had enough of picking up bows I decided to make my own.

I made a trip to Hobby Lobby armed with a 40% off coupon they have available on their site almost every week. I had no idea what I was after so I started on the ribbon aisle and picked up some ribbon that matched my daughters room. I was happy to find that it was a week where all ribbon spools were 50% off. I picked out four spools of ribbon and started wandering the aisles aimlessly looking for something to attach them to. I walked by of display of 16×20 canvases that were 50% off and decided that would be perfect. The grand total of all supplies $8.73. I thought I was a genius for thinking this up by sadly with the power of Google I found a few people thought of it before me.

When I got home I pulled out my hot glue gun and went to work gluing the ribbon to the back of the board and wrapping it across the front. I also used the hot glue gun to glue on the ribbon that it hangs on. I spent less than half an hour putting this together. I was worried how it would hold up with the ribbons being put on with hot glue but after three months of daily use it is still holding strong and still looks great.

I’m a self proclaimed expert at stripping wallpaper. We bought our current house because of its potential, it certainly had nothing to do with nine rooms of hideous wallpaper that all needed to be stripped. When I was preparing to strip the paper I went online and looked for the easiest way to do it. Everything I read pointed to the scorer and stripping gel that you can buy from local hardware stores. I managed one wall with that in three hours so I considered that a $35 lesson learned and a big fail. The next method I used was dawn and hot water in a spray bottle, this method took three hours as well. It was time consuming and extremely messy so another big fail. I would have tried a steamer but we have wallpapered ceilings in some rooms that look really nice and we wanted to keep so steaming was out of the question.

I finally devised my own method that is both cheap and easy. The only tools required are a large paint brush, a bucket and hot water. I boiled water, poured it into my bucket, painted the hot water on over the wallpaper with the paint brush, let it sit for a minute and peeled the paper off. Depending on the paper you can sometimes get lucky and get both layers off in one go. If the backing stays on the wall just paint over it with more hot water and peel or scrape the second layer off. On sheet rock walls it really can be that easy! Don’t make my mistake and fall victim to all the expensive “miracle” products.

Here is a small sampling of the eclectic mix of wallpaper that was in this house when we bought it. I’m sure most of you agree that this wallpaper was well past its use by date and had to go.

I’ve noticed in my search queries that I’ve had a lot of hits for “metopic ridge no surgery” so I thought I’d give an update.

It is really stressful when the line down the middle of your child’s forehead brought to your attention and no real information is given. You go home armed with the words metopic ridge and do the inevitable Google search that brings you more photographs and information than you can handle. All of a sudden something that was mentioned casually is now in your mind a source of worry and stress. Some parents know right away that their child will need surgery, these cases are the most severe and from what I have found are caused by other plates in the head fusing prematurely. Most of the wonderful people I have met on this journey have a child like mine and were stuck in the wait and see what happens basket. No one wants to wait but unfortunately in some cases that is really all you can do. Looking back I am happy that this was the path we were put on and my son didn’t require surgery. I was frustrated waiting at the time but now knowing what I do I know it has worked out for the best for my son.

Ethan is now two and a half and we are no longer waiting to see what happens, he has been given the all clear. As the months pass his ridge becomes less noticeable. I was looking through pictures for this update and realized that you can only see his ridge from certain angles now where used to you could see it in every photo. My little guy has developed normally physically and emotionally. He doesn’t have behavioral problems other than those of a typical two year old, he is a very happy and loving boy. I am hoping that over time his ridge will continue to even out but if not I pity the kid that makes him mad, he will have one hell of a head butt!

I went on a search trying to find celebrities with metopic ridge’s and the only one I came up with is Heath Ledger.

The picture on the left is Ethan now (showing off his worm) and the one on the right was taken about six months.

I hear a lot of stories from friends about their renovations, never once have I heard that it was a wonderful experience that went smoothly. I thought I had just been better organized, now I realize I had just been lucky. Our perfect farmhouse, on the perfect acreage, in the perfect location is nothing more than a bank account sucking hog. The simplest of tasks in this house such as hanging curtains throw me into swearing fits. The studs in this place are 110+ year old oak that have aged and hardened over the years, my 18v electric screw driver is not a match for their strength. They have caused screw heads to snap off, some it is nearly impossible to drill into so I’ve been forced to move things to different locations and have patched more holes than I care to remember.

Our most recent project that we undertook was ripping out the old stairs and putting new ones in. The old ones were original to the house and well past their use by date. This project was met by multiple issues with the house not being square and incompetent unreliable contractors. I was told the stairs would take one week; six weeks in they still weren’t completed. When I questioned the guys doing the stairs I was met with every excuse in the book my favorite was always “it was more work than we expected”. Of course it is more work when you show up, spend an hour setting up and fiddling around, then work for two hours, pack up and leave for the day. Then there were the “my car broke down and I can’t come in today” excuses. That was soon followed by a screaming/swearing match on my front lawn by the two guys doing the work that resulted in one leaving and taking half the tools. With the stairs being such a major job we had to send the kids to my parents, when that stretched out to six weeks and I couldn’t see the end in site I had more than I could take, I just wanted my kids home. The contractors were fired and new ones brought in to try and finish up the mess the others left behind. Here we sit nearly two months later and the stairs are still not complete but are a lot closer than they were, we are now just waiting on the risers and trim to be painted.

This house also comes with issues that arise when fixing other issues. When the stairs came out we could see outside. The frame to the door on our upstairs balcony was rotting out. There was about a 4″ gap between the door frame and the deck that was letting water, leaves, wasps and cold air come rolling through the house. On the bright side we were able to replace the door and in one month brought our heating bill down by over $100.

All whining aside, I do love this house and the transformation from an outdated tired little farmhouse to what it is today makes me extremely happy. I may be broke but at least I have a fabulous house to hang out in!

When we bought the house I knew I wanted to give the kids fabulous rooms that they could grow with and I wouldn’t have to redecorate for years. Ethan’s room was going to be the easiest to redecorate so I decided to start with his. His room wasn’t wallpapered and he has laminate flooring. I found his bedding at Target at all places and it started evolving from there. I was looking for camping theme bedrooms for ideas and came across the paint by number mural that looked like it was made to match the bedding I had purchased. I decided to give it a go, if I turned out to be a really bad painter I could just paint over it and I wasn’t out much money.

Normally I would point readers in the direction of where I bought the mural from but I can not give a 100% recommendation so they will not be mentioned by name. The mural I received had numerous issues. It had been reproduced poorly and was missing the top border and they edges of the trees on the left had side, there were elements missing such as the birds nest, part of a tree and text. The one that got me was the key that you are meant to be following doesn’t match up to the mural you trace. There are parts of it that are just odd, lines that go to nothing and items in the key that do not exist on the traceable. Me having to draw all the missing elements in frustrated me and caused the project to take a lot longer than what it should have. I am not an artist, that’s why I bought something I could trace and fill in.

In the end I am very happy with how the mural turned out. I can paint by numbers! It looks great with the bedding and I’m happy I persevered with it to get it completed. His room is my favorite in the house right now.

Now on to Georgie’s room…..stripping wallpaper and replacing carpet, fun!!

We are now referring to our house as the money pit and for good reason. There is a large amount of cosmetic work that needs to be done, that’s not really an issue. The issue is the problems we find with each project started. We are having a half bath put in off the kitchen in what was our second pantry. Our plumber (who is gorgeous and does great work) discovered that the sewage pipe from the kitchen to the septic was held together with duct tape. I know duct tape can fix anything but seriously, why would someone do that? The last thing you want to risk is a leak in the crawl space, that is just asking for a whole mess of issues including inviting termites to come and play. We have also discovered that the downstairs shower and toilet haven’t been ventilated so we keep getting a lovely sewage smell in the downstairs bathroom. Thank goodness we got a great deal on this place! This beautiful home on our lovely estate from here on out will be referred to as the money pit.

After murals on the walls, lipstick on the carpet and various other toddler related disaster you’d think I’d learn not to trust my kids when they were out of my site. Wrong, once again my laptop has become victim to my son. He pulled thirteen keys off my keys off my keyboard when I was cleaning the kitchen. Luckily I was able to get all but five of them back on. I am missing the letters c, x, z, an alt key and some other key that fortunately I never use. I now get to type on little black nubs for the missing keys, fun!! I didn’t want a new laptop right now but it is looking like I will be getting one soon. I love my 12″ tablet HP but it is not sturdy enough to survive my kids.

The damage

As a parent I can understand that sometimes you might have to bring your kids to work. When Georgie was a newborn I was lucky enough to have a job that allowed me to bring her in with me. I had my own office, wasn’t near any other employees and was able to close the door so that if she did start crying she would never bother anyone. I did this for one month before we left Australia for the US. If we had planned on staying I would have found daycare for her; I would not have expected this to be a long term solution.

This past weekend we had an Architect come over to take some measurements and photos for a renovation of our old barn and the plans for our new garage. This guy showed up with his six year old son in tow. I personally find this very unprofessional, especially seeing that he mentioned that his wife was at home with their 18 month old. My husband ended up watching our two kids plus the architects child while I showed him around. This is our family home and my husband and I both want to be involved in the plans for it. We felt as if he wasn’t taking his job or us seriously. We made the decision to hire him together and he should have been talking to both of us about what we wanted for this project. We both want different things and its his job to put all that together.

In the hour they were here this child managed to bust my sons large Mickey Mouse balloon, hit Ethan with a truck, turn the slide upside down, climb up on it and try to get Georgie to climb up so he could shake it and knock her off and the worst was he killed our goldfish. Yes, this six year old child killed our much loved family pet. He dumped an entire container of fish food in with the fish and that’s what led to her death. We have had that goldfish for ages and it was a great fish with a lot of personality. We were only annoyed but the death of our fish was the final straw for us. How do we know that he won’t bring his son along with him in the future, next time he could injure one of our children.

The Architect has now been fired and it was all due to a twenty cent fish. I wonder how he feels knowing that he lost a large job due to something that costs twenty cents. Hopefully he learned a lesson and doesn’t take his child to clients houses anymore. If he does hopefully he’ll keep his son with him and not expect the client to babysit him.