Yesterday was Mercy’s third birthday. While thinking about the birthday, Taylor got this notification from a video three years ago that I wanted to share. This is Rosie, the day before she became a big sister.
So what do we do for such a special kid’s third birthday? One thing I admire about Taylor is her ability to not give in to pressure, and keep things simple and manageable. This party was no exception.
She often says, “just do one thing”, and the one thing we did was a balloon-twister for the kids, at a local park.
Instead of inviting our own friends, and Rosie’s friends that we have gotten close with over the years, Mercy’s friends were invited, including her friend Maren that we have heard so much about. Basically, Mercy ignored everyone else and played on the slide with her friend:
They also had their cupcakes together
Thank you to everyone that came. Even though Mercy knocked the cupcakes off the counter 10 minutes before we left the house, the cupcakes were smeared, but remained in the containers. The result was a messy, but still edible, cupcake.
The balloon twister was a lot of fun.
A lot of family and longtime-friends were able to make it. Including Matt, who I have seen once since Christmas.
At home, Rosie read Mercy a special story before we went to bed the night before. The book is “Birthday Monsters” by Sandra Boynton:
Then, as is custom in our house, there were balloons to wake up to:
Finally, the big present, and something we got for free from a neighbor down the street, our own bouncy-house.
So, this is a short post this week. Taylor made it all happen and the way she can put these things together with such grace is pretty cool. Thank you Tay for being such an awesome party-planner/mom/wife, as well as a good employee where you work.
Cobe and Rachael got married in Raleigh this weekend. It was a great wedding, and a wonderful weekend all around.
Rachael looked great, and it was special to hear more about their relationship and lives together.
Cobe is Taylor’s younger cousin, and he just passed the bar this past summer. The Bride, Rachael, is crushing it in data analytics wherever she is working these days (somewhere in Raleigh, I am uncertain where).
We got dressed fancy for the occasion- it had been a while since dressing up in a suit. It seemed like before Covid, so it was hard to tell. Were skinny pants still in style? I wasn’t really sure, but old-reliable gray suit got to make another appearance: this was the free suit I got at my own wedding 13 years ago, and still fits. But, it is getting a little worse-for wear, and might not be completely in style anymore.
Back to the wedding though…
We all clean up pretty nice.
From left: Me, Taylor, Mallory and Dereck (Taylors brother), Grandma Becky, Deborah, and Ted (Taylor’s parents).
What really stood out at the wedding?
Everyone’s answer to this is going to be different.
For me, Cobe is just Taylor little cousin, and one of the “kids” at the beach house every summer for family beach week. This means it is in context of going to and from the sand, ensuring food is available for everyone at the house, etc. Cobe is just a polite, somewhat quiet little cousin.
Cobe and Kenna visiting Taylor and I in Virginia 9+ years ago
That’s what made the wedding so special. Hearing from their friends, and listening to the stories about his relationships with his family, and his relationship with Rachael added some meat to the story. We got to hear who Cobe really is: a kind, polite, and it seems above all, humble guy who really is thoughtful about the people that surround him.
Ok, Let’s just look at pictures from the wedding.
The shared iCloud album has several hundred (thousand?) images in it, here are a few that seemed special:
Dereck dancing with his grandmother:
Dereck and Grandma Becky dancing
Here is the venue: on the 12th floor of a building in downtown Raleigh:
Kiyoe, I hope you are getting all this- you know more about weddings than anyone else reading this blog.
Cutting the cake:
I got to meet a fan of the blog: Taylor’s cousin, who reads every week.
They did some fun dancing at the end. This video kinda had me laughing as Deborah worked her way through the steps in the electric slide:
Then Ted and Deborah sharing a dance:
Other parts of the weekend
Where the heck are Rosie and Mercy?
The bride and groom had a kid-free weekend for us. Taylor is a VIP for putting everything together for the kids to be taken care of while we were out.
First, they spent time with Grandma (above).
Then, they did a sleepover with their older cousins.
Then, the babysitter came and hung out the last several hours until we got home from the Sunday reception, at around 8:30.
While they were well taken care of, there were the “other” parts of the weekend as well.
The reception was on Sunday, so on Saturday, we did a lunch at the Raleigh Times:
Then, on to watch some Saturday afternoon football games as App State played Eastern Carolina University. We went to Woodys:
The next day ( we went to bed early) Taylor and I did a quick run of 3 miles around downtown:
We stayed at the Downtown Marriot while the Latin Festival was going on:
One thing we learned about the Marriot is that they do offer complimentary toothpaste if you forgot yours. A 0.17 oz container:
Outside the Starbucks where I got my afternoon pick-me-up
The quiet weekend away from kids was 100%; highly recommend.
Dara and Ken, thanks for the awesome weekend. Cobe and Rachael, congrats! Enjoy your honeymoon in Italy! Kenna, woohoo! You made it to the blog!
We got to go to Ocean Isle Beach for Labor Day weekend, the Folk Festival was back in Greensboro, and we got a new roof.
This is the view of Ocean Isle Beach when crossing the bridge onto the island. There is only 1 way onto the island, and this is it. The girls got to leave school a bit early to beat the traffic, and we made it in time for dinner and the Friday afternoon music in the park. This time around, our family was to tired on Friday afternoon, we could barely put one foot in front of the other, so there wasn’t much dancing, but we still had a good time.
This time around, Rosie was really into something:
If you are viewing this from a phone, you might not be able to tell with great clarity, but that is Rosie on a boogie board. She did this for almost 7 hours on Saturday, and the same on Sunday. The waves were awesome, and Rosie was fearless. There were groups to the left and the right of slightly older kids, but Rosie still wanted her Dad out there to “tell her which waves to get.” I was happy to oblige, and give her that big push on the board to catch the perfect wave in. It was all smiles.
Mercy was almost all smiles this weekend.
I love this picture. Rosie is so happy and proud for an audience to watch her on the boogie board.
Though there interests are different, one place where the smiles are shared (almost every time), is the golf cart:
One evening I got to spend a little 1:1 time with Rosie and hop over to the ice cream place. It is hard to get that time with her now because when she gets home, Mercy always escalates and screams and demands attention, and Rosie is so busy with dance and friends, it seems like there are less moments with her. So, I jumped at the chance to take her for ice cream, and we saw this:
It wasn’t just 1 deer. We counted 9 of them:
Not too far away, we saw this little fox. It looked a few pounds bigger than a cat:
Finally, after a long, long drive home, when it seemed there were way too many potty breaks, and way too many “Are we there yet”, we got home. You know what these kids did when we pulled in the driveway?
They stayed in the car and played together. Whatever. They were smiling and laughing. Often these moments are the same: Rosie will be trying SO HARD to play with her little sister by getting her to do something, and Mercy will “play” by absolutely messing with her sister, and refusing to do what she says; Mercy smiles while doing the opposite. A bit mischievous, but I see what’s going on here.
Folky
The Folk Festival came to town this weekend. It has been in Greensboro for several years now. This is something we tried to figure out but couldn’t: how many years HAS this event been happening? 5? 7? We didn’t really know.
But, we got the chance to go downtown on Saturday night and meet up with our friends the Cores and the Lynams. Now that I look at it, I don’t think we got any good pictures of us together. Maybe I am running out of excitement to catch these moments for the blog as they happen?
It seemed like a good turnout.
We ran into Amelia and Matt.
Rosie got to meet up with a friend, Hunter, who is also our neighbor. It was fun, but there isn’t much to share about this. The music was ho-hum, but a fun atmosphere, and unfortunately, I didn’t get any of it on video.
A new roof
Our house is almost 70 years old. We have been in this house about 4 years, and one of the things that has been in need of work is the roof. We have these trees that allow mildew up there, and it was just showing its age. I was afraid it would spring a leak with any passing storm, and by then, the price would have ballooned quite a bit.
Like most things, pictures don’t do it justice. We tried twice to see if there was any hail damage, but our homeowners insurance denied it both times. The roof was around 20 years old, surely there was SOME hail damage during that time, right? I am not sure exactly how insurance makes their determinations about that kind of thing, but they didn’t see it that way.
Ugh, that image above looks terrible.
But, knowing that it had to be done because we plan on being in this house for a while, we researched a couple of roofing companies. The range of pricing was wild. However, we went with the company that had been around for a long time. They were a bit more expensive, but they said that if they found any damaged wood underneath, they would replace it was part of the price. Since I overanalyze everything and was confident they would find utter ruin, that spoke nicely to my concerns.
The weather was brutal on those workers, but they got it done in 1 day.
They worked hard for that money. It was tough to work from home that day, so I spent most of the day at the coffee shop. Unfortunately, Taylor had trainings all day, and had to endure the sound of hammers, and a barking dog all day.
The finished product looked great though. One less thing to worry about.
Rosie started another school year, and she is pumped. It doesn’t take much to get her excited though.
In addition to being excited about a new school year, mom and dad are excited for the fall and a little bit more routine mixed in with everything.
We started the walk to school “parent train” again; a group of 3-4 families meet at the corner and cycle through taking the kids the last 1/4 mile to the front door of the school. Honestly, this is the best. I never thought walking to school would be a highlight, but I really enjoy this time in the mornings.
Mercy doesn’t smile much- but she was smiling just BEFORE this picture was taken.
Speaking of Mercy…
Sleep regression is terrible. A few weeks ago, Taylor was out with some friends and a storm rolled in over our house. This would normally be no big deal, but the storm came in right at about Mercy’s bedtime, and it was a little unusual. Instead of the storm lasting about 15 minutes and passing by, the storm just stalled, and sat right over our house, for about 90 minutes.
Every time I said “it’s going to stop real soon”, I proved to be a liar. It didn’t stop, and Mercy got scared. I got frustrated- bedtime ended up being close to a 2 hour routine that night.
Ever since then, Mercy has been freaking out at bedtime. Instead of going nicely to her bed, she insists that the door stay open. She has a million reasons NOT to stay in her bed (I need water, I need a hug, I need to go potty). She screams and screams, and if she wakes up in the middle of the night, she will scream and scream unless you stay in the room with her. And she will just come out of her room and scream and wake the whole house up. Rosie is struggling too, because her sleep is interrupted throughout the night.
Taylor and I are exhausted. This has been terrible. Yet, not enough time has passed to where this will be a long-term habit, but we do not want it to go on much longer. What should be done?
Personally, after 90 minutes, my patience is usually around 0. If she cannot fall asleep after 90 minutes, I am tempted to give her a sleep aid of some kind, but that isn’t the best solution.
What does the internet say we should do?
Read before bed.
Create a nighttime routine
Give her a blankie to keep her “safe”
Spend time in her room to normalize it.
Talk calmly and gentle to her about bedtime.
Done and done- now what? None of this addresses her issue- a calm kid, until bed time.
We went to the beach last weekend, partially with the hope that a change of scenery would help. It did- sort of. But, we talked it over, and decided one of the main issues is that she keeps coming out of her room. She would still be sleeping in a crib (not her current big-kid bed), except she kept getting out of it. At the same time, she is begging for the door to stay open. The challenge is that her room is right beside the living room, so if her door is open, the family is “held hostage” by this action, knowing that the slightest sneeze could put us into a 30 minute spiral.
So I had an idea: We need to keep her in her room, and she needs to learn to comfort herself when she is worked up like that. Our house (and doors and doorknobs) are close to 70 years old, so the normal child proof doorknobs won’t work. But this did: a simple, lock from the outside for children.
We tried it last night, and per usual, she freaked out at bedtime. For 15 minutes I did what the internet said: speak calmly, put her back in her bed, and do not match her level of screaming or stress. Then, I just locked it, and something amazing happened: she fell asleep.
This may seem insignificant depending on when the last time was you were around small kids, but this was huge for us. After dragging trough life like a living dream for 2 weeks, we may be getting to the other side.
The expensive parts
Life is expensive sometimes, and we are entering into one of those seasons. We have several trees in the front yard, and because of them, our roof is showing its age and needs to be replaced. We have been working with insurance about it, but they will not budge, so we need to pay out-of-pocket for it, and paying for a roof is like paying for new tires: it is expensive, and you don’t have much to show for it. After that expense, everything still functions just like it did before.
In addition to the roof, we have slowly been putting the pieces together for the outdoor garage, and how the electricity out there is not working properly. And electrician pointed out that there are two lines feeding the garage, and one of them was cut; the other line was 90% cut, and created some “arcing”, which is similar to “sparking”, where the current turns on and off repeatedly.
This had the impact of frying everything out there: Tv, stereo, AC unit. And, the only way to fix it is by re-trenching a new line out there, which is also thousands of dollars.
But that’snot all. Before going the beach last weekend, the car needed to be inspected and have the oil changed.
“You need new tires and axles.” Axles? Since when do cars go through axles? When getting the car back, all sorts of other lights were on on the dash; what the heck is a VBA system in a car? Ours has an issue now, it seems. Luckily, the mechanic will fix all the lights. Unfortunately, it was after my father in law had to drive the car and saw a colorful dash filled with errors.
Ugh. Life is expensive, but we will make it through. I think Taylor and I are both getting close to looking into a new car the next time our bill is a couple thousand dollars.
