Land, they ain't makin' any more of it!

Here's a big secret: we are 25 hours away from our contract expiring on our dream property. It has been a nail-biting experience with an uncertain outcome at best.  Excepting my mom, we have not really divulged this experience to anyone up until now.   I guess it's our mid-life crisis, but we got a bug to own land. You know, land, they're not making any more of it!   So this summer we put an offer in on a 30 acre agricultural estate, after three weeks of painful research regarding how to finance the beast.
What are we going to do with 30 acres? I have some crazy desire for horses.  I started calling around today to investigate how to turn 20 acres of corn into pasture.  My mom says, "But Jane, we aren't horse people."  Except she pronounces it "hoss" in her thick Boston accent.  The inner Jane knows better. I chose horseback riding as my "senior choice" every summer at camp.  I am vaguely aware that cantering on a horse a bit over my teen summers, um, like two decades ago, does not completely qualify me to own a horse farm.  I google "how to start a horse farm" and I am rewarded with a hit from Amazon for a book entitled "The Smart Woman's Guide to Midlife Horses." Uh oh.  Boy did they see me coming.   Damn Google.

Fortunately, I am not alone in this wild endeavor.  There are four children who have no idea what they are in for.  Then there's my husband.  My husband has a craving to be a Gentleman Rancher.  He comes back from South Dakota with Tony Llamas.  Though he confided in me tonight that he wants a horse that will trot- wait, he means walk; trotting might be a little much. And the horse does not have to be particularly large.  I chuckle and wrap my arms around him.  I did catch him drooling a little over the $50,000 in tractors sitting in the heated outdoor mancave during the home inspection.  He was trying to figure out what the tractors were exactly for. How about changing 20 acres from corn to pasture?
 Here I am cleaning the wood floors of our house, running over in my mind a million scenarios as the clock ticks down on the contingency to sell our house.  To heighten the drama, after nearly 50 days of 30 showings and no offers, someone came through and saw our house on the 27th of October and decided they liked it. They came back for a second showing on the 28th with their mom, and then requested a third showing tomorrow for their sibling. Just to make sure.  Let's hope they make an offer before they decide that their second cousin twice removed needs to see the house too. Meanwhile, two more calls for showings came in over the next 24 hours. When it rains, it pours. Will we get competing offers or be left high and dry?
Will the sellers of our dream estate extend our contract? Of course, my mom says. They have been trying to sell for three years, and we are the only people crazy enough to buy this albatross.
With an offer pending, my mind has been running away... What are we going to name our Green Acres?  (I like The Doctor's Inn, but I know my husband will think that's pretentious).    I am taking suggestions.  I like puns on words, Naval connotations, and so forth.  Some of my favorites include "Fortress of Paulitude" (except we aren't named Paul or Paula) and "Battlehouse Galactica." My husband suggested "The Yard."  My mom offered "Never Moving Again Manor." 

Stay tuned to find out if we get an offer in. Will we buy the farm?

Lessons From Children and Real Estate Transactions

We have been trying to sell our home.  It's been an interesting endeavor with young children in the house.

A few things we have learned:

1) We have learned to live again without cleaning ladies that used to come biweekly.  This has saved us quite a bit of money, the kids have been more accountable in their cleaning, and the house stays cleaner in general because we know we have to clean it up ourselves. It is also more convenient to our lifestyle to not have to clear out for a few hours in the middle of our school and work week.

2) Wow. Our kids were being rough on the house! We have always prided ourselves on children who are relatively well-disciplined about appropriate behavior and decorum. I think if you saw our house you would think it was in decent shape too. When we started to scrutinize our house for resale though, we were shocked to discover the dirt and damage to our wood floors, the beating our new kitchen cabinets were taking, and the fingerprints on nearly every window, wall, and molding in the whole home.  For about a month you could hear us say about ten times a day, "Stop touching the wall! Stop touching the window, the house is on the market!"  After about a month, we discovered we did not have to yell as much, and we dropped the "on the market" part because we simply wanted the habit to be permanent. Trust me, the kids are not scarred for life by this new habit.

3) A woman's work is never done.  Ugg. This is truly the worst part about having a house on the market with a big family of little ones.  Every waking moment meant that I was working.  During the day, if there was an idle moment it meant I was suppose to be processing laundry, emptying the dishwasher, picking up toys, wiping a sink down somewhere, sweeping or mopping or otherwise engaged in some maintenance routine.  Every night we went to bed with the house in pristine condition, and every day we left the house in pristine condition whenever we had to go out, just in case we got a call for a showing. This meant really limiting our clutter and constantly keeping up on it. I never let things pile up.  It was kind of nice to have to house always near-clean, but I felt a bit neurotic and OCD, and I don't think it was all too pleasant for the kids. This is one habit I am not sure I could maintain after the real estate adventure is done. But it had another unintended consequence I hope to keep up...

4) Ultra-punctuality.  Because we opted for a short showing notification (1 hour), we had to leave the house in pristine condition. This meant that I had to start cleaning up our homeschool activities or the kids' toys and preparing to leave the house nearly a full hour in advance of any event.  The unintended result was that we were sometimes ten or more minutes early to every event.  Amazing for us, since we use to arrive just-in-time or late.  It makes our commute more peaceful and we are not losing money from piano lessons or swim team (since time is money!).  I hope I can keep this punctuality up.

5) Decluttering.  Every one who has ever put a home on the market knows that the first rule is to go through and declutter all the surfaces of personal effects.  We took this to heart, and the 60 tchotches on the kids' bookshelves went into storage.  The refrigerator surface became spotless and visible.  The bathroom counters and bathtub were devoid of toys, bottles and more.  Turns out the kids can live without their clutter, my oldest only asked once for something I had put into storage. I loathe to bring that stuff back out.  Also, the kids are constantly trying to encroach again into the clutter zone by not putting things away properly, or collecting more knick-knacks on surfaces.  I now "inspect" the rooms every morning to ensure the kids are putting their stuff away properly.

What lessons do you have from kids and real estate? Have you been able to keep up the habits after the sale?

Morning Roll Call

1) From the mouths of babes (Pumpkin): "Mama, I need to tell you sumpin'.  Lawn people wear DIRTY clothes!"

2) Jamberry's Sonlight Language Arts Assignment.  Do you think she likes cake?

3) Sunshine has lost her second tooth in three days biting into mango this morning. I am wondering about the graveyard of teeth we will have around this place in another four years when all four kids are losing teeth. You never see that on the Duggars. That household has got to have teeth all over the place.  I guess I missed whatever episode addressed the economic distress the Tooth Fairy experiences in that household.

4) "JJ" turned one last week. His new favorite word: "bedtime".  He runs around saying, "Bedtime! Bedtime!"   If only he would sleep in his own bed more... His new word today is "Bye-Bye!"

"Bye-Bye!"

Earning Your PhD in Parenting

Parenting 101: Always wash baby with the dinner dishes. This will save time and expense.

Ever read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell?  It's a very interesting read.  In a nutshell, to become the best at anything in this world, you need to devote about 10,000 hours (preferably over 10 years or less) to that particular skill set: ice hockey, piano, neurosurgery, basket weaving, you name it. 
That got me thinking about being the best mom. Really, you can say all that sappy baloney about all you need is love, but the truth is, first-born babies get dropped more, have worse diaper rash, probably get punished plenty more for things they didn't really do, and so forth. Oh boy, here comes the armada of data about birth order. First borns are more successful in life, right? (Read Dr. Kevin Lehman's Birth Order books)  So adversity breeds character and all that. So maybe being the best Mom or Dad is totally bogus.
Still, for the sake of argument, if you wanted to quantify parenting into a Bachelor's, Master's and Doctorate's, you could break it down by hours of experience.  Right off the bat, you figure that makes Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar the parenting equivalents of what Bill Gates is to computers.
To be realistic, I think you would have to consider a parent's time with each age group of children separately. Caring for a newborn, toddler, preschooler, elementary kids and teens all require different skill sets.  For example, once a baby is mobile, you probably spend 10% of your time changing diapers, 10% feeding, 10% bathing, 30% prying the child from your pant leg, and 40% of your efforts on making sure the child does not kill his or herself by eating a choking hazard, falling down a flight of stairs, or sticking a fork in some outlet.  This is vastly different from say the preschooler time period, where you might spend 10% of your day dealing with potty and feeding issues, 30% of your day engaged in a discussion with your child as to exactly how a dry kidney bean got so far up his or her nostril, and will this in fact facilitate a trip to the ER, and why again did he or she feel it necessary to put a bean up their nostril, and why we will never put a bean up our nose again, and then the other 60% of the time is spent in the ER waiting room.
Well, taking Malcolm Gladwell's perspective on things, I have had four babies in six years, whom I have cared for and nursed mostly around the clock. All my babies walked at ten months, so let's say I have spent roughly 12 hours a day times four babies times 300 days = 14,400 hours. I have earned my Doctorate in babies.  (Insert pomp and circumstance music please).
Unfortunately for my first grader, as she is my only elementary age child, and our homeschool year just started in mid-September, my education level is pitiful- 1 child times 30 days times 6 hours of schooling & direct interaction per day (got to include chores and whatever else)  leads to only a sad 180 hours.  That's the equivalent of one semester of college I suppose.  Just 9,820 hours left to become the best mom to elementary school kids. Wait, in that many hours my oldest will be 11, perhaps almost 12, and nearly a teenager. Then I will have to start working on my next degree, and since teenagers are known to interact with parents as minimally as possible, the outlook is bleak.  3 minutes per day x 1 child means it will take me 547 years to get to the 10,000 hour mark in teenager-dom.
What does this mean? NOBODY is an expert at teenagers.  That's our get out of parenting jail free card! So I guess we better get things right before our kids turn 13.
How do your hours and 'degrees' rank up?

Six Month Frowns

In February of 2013, after most of my adult life with some pretty crooked canines, I started the Six Month Smiles program. Mind you, I did not understand that I was actually getting braces. I thought the program was similar to Invisalign, but with a removable sort of retainer.  I did try to research Six Month Smiles, but could find very little online, and no reviews. Hence this blog post, so that you, dear Reader, may learn from my mistakes.

Background: As a teen I had had head gear and an assortment of retainers that ultimately left me with crooked teeth again due to over-crowding issues never being resolved.  I also have very short roots from apparently having my teeth moved too quickly.

Why I think Six Month Smiles was not a good fit for me: 

• STAINING. I naturally have "dirty" teeth. Something about my saliva, teeth, and body chemistry- I brush twice a day with a Sonicare, I floss religiously, but my teeth are a furry battle. Six Month Smiles was a hygienic nightmare for me.  At the two month mark, I had such vicious staining and plaque, the dentist gave me a prescription floss and mouthwash and scheduled an extra cleaning. It helped, but it was not a panacea. Right after the dentist put the braces on, she shoved a small slip of paper in my hand and pushed me out of her office. I stumbled into the lobby with the deer-in-the-headlights thing going on. Did this piece of paper say I committed to no raw vegetables, no pasta sauces, no berries, no sodas, no caffeines or tea or anything else that might stain my teeth for the next six months? Yep. And in my case, it was serious. I had one Coke Zero and the cement and guard wire were brown, and it went drastically down hill from there. If I had understood these issues, I would've opted for Invisalign instead, so I could floss and clean unfettered.  
• BREAKING BRACKETS. No chips or anything crunchy- no joke.  I was breaking brackets left and right.  I had a tiny light ripple chip and a bracket broke off.  I even broke a bracket eating a pancake.  I am not kidding.  My dentist got lazy about repairing these brackets, they were mostly on my mid-molars. The last two months my bottom mid molars had no brackets, and now they sit about an eighth to a quarter of an inch inward medially from all my other teeth. Totally not joking.  What's worse, the last month, a bracket broke of one of my front teeth. That tooth is a bit off from the others.  My dentist claimed it was coming along nicely, but the truth was, it was straight at the 5 month mark, and crooked vertically and behind all the other teeth by the 7 month mark, largely because she did not reattach the bracket. 
• HYGIENE ISSUE TWO- I will report back on this one, because the verdict is still out, but I have had some serious fillings in all my molars from childhood, and the molars that had the brackets on them for Six Month Smiles have not faired well. I had tremendous sensitivity on them while the dentist was taking the brackets off, and when I got home I was distressed again to see tiny black holes through the sides of the molars. I think I am going to end up with at least 2 if not as many as 4 root canals from this whole experience.  I mentioned it to the dentist, and she said, "Well, it may just be staining. We will get you in and see,"  hmmm, that was not really what I wanted to here.  
• RETAINERS FOR LIFE-  After I got my braces off the dentist had retainers made.  She wants me to wear these retainers 24 hours a day for life. The original plan was to put a permanent retainer in behind my teeth, but with the way I reacted to the braces, she realized that would not be a good idea for me. Well, the retainer she had made up for me looks just like the Invisalign ones, except thinner and cheaper.  Also, that very night after she gave them to me, I started getting a sore throat.  She did not give me any instructions with them, I tried cleaning them a little with mouthwash.  Every night I wore them, I woke up with horrible sore throats.  I tried wearing the retainers in the day, but my bottom piece cut my mouth up badly if I was talking at all.  Finally, on week two of this ridiculousness, I soaked both retainers completely in mouthwash for 10 minutes, and I was able to sleep one night without a sore throat. So, those retainers are nasty harbingers of bacteria. Pretty scary, right? I also don't see them lasting for more than a few months.  My teeth move a bit if I go more than a day without wearing them. I just don't see how this is going to pan out long term.
• MOMS OF LITTLE CHILDREN- As with any orthodontic endeavor, the frequent office visits were a bit of a nightmare with four children in tow.  My husband's schedule did not marry up well with the dentist's availability. Plus, the dentist did not work on Fridays. My first week, I had two broken brackets right off the bat, one right on a front tooth. I called on a Wednesday, and the dentist's office wanted to put me off until Monday or Tuesday. I told them I would rip the braces out myself if they didn't find a time slot for me before that.  I was in some serious pain, and the spinning brackets were a nightmare added on to the ordeal.  Luckily, they squeezed me in on that Thursday.  I must admit that a lot of the appointments were pretty short. But when it came time to get the braces off, we had a lot of trouble marrying up our schedules. As a result the braces stayed on almost 6 weeks longer than intended, and my teeth kept moving during that time, and I truly think my front teeth got worse during that time instead of better.  That brings me to another issue...
• NO END POINT AND FAR FROM PERFECTION. Six Month Smiles has no defined end point. They say six months, the truth is, (and the program is very upfront about this) you are aiming for about a 90% solution. Not perfection, but better. Well, who is to say what's better? The truth is that my top crooked canines were pretty much aligned and done in about six weeks!  The months to follow were unclear in their goals.  There was some inter-dental shaving done, and my teeth were pulled in tighter to each other after that with a "power chain", but the truth is, my bottom teeth became more crooked in my mind, and I think they were moved solely to adjust my bite to the top teeth. I ended up losing my neat bottom teeth to a strange little jumble so that my canines could come in. I am not sure it was worth it. Every month that ticked by after about month four was a bit comical. It was like trying to shake a box full of dice and hope all sixes come up.  Each time, one or two teeth would move into better position, but others would start doing things they shouldn't do.
• LAST IMPORTANT NOTE: Find a really good dentist. I think the lady I went to was largely experimenting on me. I was an idiot for not going to a real orthodontics clinic.  I don't think she is hygienic enough in her office, she has a high office turnover of staff which is an indication of issues, she had to keep referring to instructions through every procedure, it did not give me a warm fuzzy. The whole experience was not good. I would not do it again. I do regret the entire experience, I think it will be a terrible battle to keep my teeth in their current alignment (which is only probably about a 75% solution) and I think it will probably expedite me into implants or dentures in the long run. 

Another Reason Never to Trust Airplane Lavatories...

I probably need my head examined... I flew solo from Maryland to South Dakota this summer with a 9 month old, 2 year old, 4 year old, and 6 year old in tow.  Aside from the usual travel hassles came my lowest moment on the last commuter hop from Chicago to Sioux Falls on a small express flight.  My baby did what I new had to be coming, he pooped.  Luckily there was no loss of diaper integrity, but with over an hour of flight time remaining and extremely close quarters to non-baby civilians, I had no choice but to perform a diaper change in the most miniscule commercial lavatory in existence.   This entailed leaving my children in the hands of strangers, which left me wondering who I should feel more sympathy for- the strangers or my children.  Needless to say, my baby was not thrilled about the drop down diaper changing "table" (a term I use very loosely), and he screamed perilously as though he were having his fingernails pulled out one by one.  Then the turbulence started and the fasten seat belt light came on. Thank goodness the flight attendant was too clueless to come banging on my door and demand that I return to my seat.

You might think a mother of four children in six years would be the fastest diaper changer in the modern world, but that moment seemed like an eternity.  Baby's hands kept reaching for various surfaces, Mommy kept yelling (to nobody in particular) "Don't touch, dirty! Dirty, don't touch!"  Then it happened.  One more bump of clear air turbulence, and the open diaper catapulted off the edge of the changing "table," strafing my shirt and Lord knows what else in the process, ultimately landing poop-down on the lavatory floor.  Uuuugggghhhhhh... I think I made a noise like that, somewhere between a balloon deflating and the sound the watchman on the Titanic made after it went thunk.  

Utilizing pretty much every baby wipe and every ounce of sanitizer in my arsenal, I recovered the best I could, and baby and Mommy emerged from the lavatory about 60 seconds later looking very much the same as before excepting  huge wet suspicious spots on Mom's shirt and skirt.

Relax. Moms are always spilling poop on themselves in travel scenarios. This is nothing out of the ordinary.  That was my mantra.  Little solace did it provide me, as in six years I could never recall such a similar moment off hand. 

My mind kept thinking back to my pathetic attempts to clean the lavatory with one hand and a screaming child in the other, and very limited resources... You never know what has transpired in those bathrooms.  

Along the same vein, I no longer put any "crawlers" or toddlers on the floor of a plane.  A flight attendant warned me once that various vomits and about fifty zillion pathogen friends regularly party on the airplane floors, and cleaning those carpets pretty much never happens.

To add insult to injury, the baby kicked over my open diaper bag while everyone was disembarking.  The contents fell every and I later discovered my Kindle made a getaway; sadly lost forever and ever to Kindle oblivion. Sniff.