Around the beginning of February, I had a job interview with a company in Clearfield, about 15 minutes from home. The interview went well and the job seemed really great. Two weeks later they made me an offer. I kind of had a feeling that this was the best offer I would ever get, so I prepared myself to quit my job the next day. Another guy on our team had quit a few days earlier, and he did it in a really horrible way, so this was bad timing for me to quit. But I was ready for it. The next day I mustered everything I had and told my boss I had an offer and would be leaving in 3 weeks. He just sat there shaking his head, saying he totally understood and he knows how hard it is to commute so far and leave kids home. But then he asked if it would make a difference if I could work from home sometimes. It definitely would. The new job would mean a much better commute, but 5 days solid at the office every day. So my boss talked to the CFO and got him to agree to let me work from home Tuesdays and Thursdays. The CFO hates letting people work from home. He's all about wearing ties every day and being at your desk all day every day. I know plenty of companies work that way, but it doesn't seem really necessary in our company. I can absolutely do my job from home, so driving 2+hours a day does't make sense. My boss also got me a little raise to make up for the fact that our benefits are worse than anybody else anywhere. So I stayed. I know I'll regret staying on days when I really hate my job, but for the most part it's a super easy job, and working from home twice a week is great. It gives Matt a chance to have full days for meetings and appointments and just to get away from the babies for a little bit.
3 weeks ago on a Saturday I had just gotten home from grocery shopping with a fridge load of groceries. As I was putting them away, the fridge started beeping. Usually this means the door is open too long. I closed the doors and it kept beeping. We checked all the doors and levers and read through the owners' manual but couldn't get the fridge to stop beeping. And the temperature indicator showed the temps of the fridge and freezer were going up pretty quickly. After messing with it for about an hour, we had a quick conversation to decide between calling a repair man, knowing he probably wouldn't be able to come for a few days and it would be expensive and the fridge would probably only last a year or two longer anyway (it came with the house and is 10ish years old), or we could buy a new fridge and hopefully avoid extra costs later. By this time it was late afternoon- the appliance store was open for one more hour. So Matt sat with the girls and I ran down to the appliance store. We texted about what features we wanted, I sent him a few pictures of the fridges that looked good, and I bought a new fridge. We had to live out of coolers in the backyard for a few days (yes, it was February, but it still got to the high 50s each day so the ice in the coolers melted faster than we expected), and the new fridge was delivered Monday afternoon. It's great. It's nice and big and does the job.
The next weekend we all got sick. I think I probably caught it from work. When one person gets sick in my office, we all get it within 1-2 weeks. I was on the tail-end of this one, but I still got it. It was just a bad cold, but still not great. I was super sick Saturday, Matt was super sick Sunday, and the girls got it Sunday night into Monday. They only had runny noses for a few days, but it was still gross and a bummer weekend.
Last weekend we had all sorts of house cleaning and projects we were going to do. Matt went downstairs Saturday morning to do something and came up a few minutes later saying, "we have a problem, there's a bit of water in the basement." He went back down to vacuum and towel out our storage room. I went down a little while later and when I stepped on the carpet, my socks were immediately soaked. We probably had about an inch of water in the storage room and out into the carpeted area a few feet. Matt couldn't tell where the water was coming from, so he called the handyman that he works with a lot through the properties he manages. The handyman (Shane) came right over and they worked together to find the leak. They finally decided it was probably a leaky spigot on the back of the house, so Shane left to get tools to cap that spigot off. Meanwhile, Matt had shut off the water in the house and was still vacuuming water out of the basement. Once Shane got back, they realized it wasn't the spigot (I was with the babies all this time, so I don't know the whole process they went through to figure it out). It turns out, the main water line running from the street to the house had broken somewhere near the house. Matt called his brother-in-law (he owns an excavating company and has all the equipment you could want to tear into any ground, and used to work for a utility company so knows about repairing water lines). He came and looked at it that night and said he'd be back in the morning with his equipment. So we turned on the water for just long enough to fill some pitchers, make bottles, and get ready for bed, and then Matt turned it off again and vacuumed the water out of the basement again. The next day, Matt's bro-in-law (Jake) came over and dug a piece of our driveway out right next to the house. Then he tunneled under and into the house and replaced the broken pipe. He ended up spending all day there, but by the end of the day, we had running water again (hallelujah!!!). We still have a section of concrete missing in our driveway, right in front of the door, but that's nothing as long as we have water. I think we have to wait til it's a little warmer to re-pour the concrete (of course that was the week winter hit finally).
I was a little wary going into this past weekend, wondering what new disaster would hit. But we're safely on the other side now and we had a good weekend.
Here are a few more pictures of babies, because they're super cute.
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| Tille and Hattie holding hands while they relax before bed |
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| In the past couple of weeks, Tille has gotten really good at scooting around on her stomach, but she can only go in circles or backwards. So she spends a lot of time stuck under the couch. Hattie has gotten in on this action too in the last few days. |
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| Both babies are starting to learn about different toys. Rather than just suck on everything, they know that this toy can be pushed and will roll, vs rattles that they shake or animals that they squeeze. It's so fun to see them zooming this car around on the carpet. |
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| Tille is really good at playing by herself on the floor. Sometimes she'll be good for 15-20 minutes, just entertaining herself. She'll scoot around playing with various toys, and every minute or so she'll take a break, where she rests her head on the floor for just a few seconds, and then she'll pop back up and keep scooting or rolling. She also looks like she might crawl any day now. She'll get up on her hands and knees and rock back and forth for a few seconds before falling down again. Hattie likes to be on her stomach more. She'll scoot around and she's really good at rolling from stomach to back and back to stomach. She'd rather sit in someone's lap all the time, but she's pretty good on her stomach. Hattie's also just started a thing where when somebody is holding her against their chest she'll rock and jump, like she's dancing. It's pretty cute. |
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| Taking a break |
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| 6 months already (Hattie in purple, Tille in pink)! They have their next doctor appointment tomorrow, so we'll see how they're doing. I have a feeling they'll still be on the tiny end of the spectrum- they're still in most of their 3 month clothes, but some of the 6 month outfits are starting to not drown them. Now that they're 6 months, we're getting more relaxed about what they can eat. If they're awake while we're eating meals, we put them in their bumbos on the table and give them bits of our meal. So far they've been pretty good about eating whatever we give them. They've had broccoli, potatoes, oatmeal, bread, banana, and pancakes. |
