Oh goodness! I didn’t realize I had been away from this little blog for a month now!
This summer has just been so busy, busy, busy that I’m not quite certain what happened to June, much less July. The stark realization that it’s the middle of AUGUST just hit me earlier.
This summer has been full of home renovation for us. We moved into this house in early 2006 and wasn’t quite sure at first if we would be planting roots here or not, but at the end of last year things just felt right to settle in more permanently. Our first goal was to refinance the house. That was accomplished in December when we were able to go from a 30 year fixed at 8.99 percent to a whoppingly low 15 year fixed at 5.25 percent! Our payments only rose $40.00 per month, but the time left to pay it off was cut in half. (whoohoo!)
Then, this past May, we haphazardly began our treck into home renovation and making this home “ours”. It all started with a bad flea infestation in our bedroom carpet. Now, we can handle almost anything around here ‘cept for those danged fleas. So out goes the old carpet (right out the bedroom window! It was quite a funny sight) and in comes the new laminate wood floor to match with the other parts of our house.
Well, it looked so nice I decided, why stop there? So we painted the room and had ceramic tile installed in the adjoining master bath. We were so inspired by that time that we also painted the whole house exterior, built a large arbor with 5′ country swing (and planed muscadine grape vines!), excavated a large spot for a flower bed / vegetable garden in the front, installed window boxes, built a large addition to our back deck, had a 24′ above ground steel wall pool installed, renovated our utility room with new shelving, and tinkered around with (what seems like) 50 million other little tiny miscellaneous odd & end jobs that we’ve always wanted done.
Now we’re 40% finished with a privacy wood fence in the back yard.
Whew.
Talk about exhausting! And we’re still not finished. So many projects were started at once that we haven’t wrapped up everything yet on some of them. Our original thoughts were that it would take us all summer, but now we seem to be scooting on into fall as well with these projects. Hopefully they’ll be done by winter, although we seem to be on such a roll now that who knows what we’ll think of doing next?
Also, another bright side, this entire year my “resolution” was to de-clutter my life. Now, if you know me, you know I’ve been a huge pack-rat / out & out hoarder my whole life. At one point in time I was even unable to throw away the most rediculous of things due to the silly sentimental attachments my mind placed on them. That paper plate from 4th of July? Such fond memories we had together! That random movie ticket stub? What a treasure! The broken crayon from when I was 3? How could you think of getting rid of that? Old high school notebooks? No way!!! And let’s not even start thinking about that pair of sneakers from junior high.
Yes folks, that was me.
But times have changed. I was so determined to finally declutter my life this year! And it’s worked. I started off back in early 2009 by clearing out my clothes. Then I moved on to getting rid of various bits & pieces of my former life (premarriage – early 20s & teen years), throwing away, purging, and donating. Now, after months of chugging along at it little by little, I look around and see huge progress! Our home not only looks 1,000 lbs lighter, but the mental weight of hoarding all of that “stuff” (stress that I didn’t even know was there) has disappeared. The added benefit is that I am finally able to recognize and throw away truly useless stuff without having a heart attack! It feels AMAZING with a capital UH.
So anyway, along with all of the house projects this summer, I’ve been in full force de-clutter mode also, purging and sending bags and bags of stuff out – to be donated and to be trashed – every single week.
And then there’s Jack-Evan who’s been keeping me busy.
He’s 15 months old now (where does the time go??) and such a little hambone. He finds humor in the oddest situations and starts this wonderful belly laugh that gets us all going. He hasn’t started walking yet, although he cruises along holding onto things (or even hands) really well. I started getting a tad worried about him when he wasn’t walking when he turned one, but multiple souces (books, friends, TLC, even the doctor) have said that it’s quite normal for many children not to walk until the latter half of their 2nd year, especially if others in the family didn’t. And apparantly many of the males in my family didn’t walk until they were almost 2 years old (from what I’ve learned this summer!). So although it didn’t stamp out my motherly worry all the way, it did help take the edge off.
Lately we’ve been practicing helping him walk a lot, encouraging him to walk beside us holding his hand (instead of us carrying him everywhere as we tend to do). He just loves to “go walking” and will stop what he’s doing to stand up and walk when we ask him to! He’s always been afraid to let go though and would cry if we tried to let go of his finger in the middle of the room. But guess what? The practice seems to have paid off. He finally stood UP on his own yesterday, and stood there for 10 seconds. The little bugger was so thrilled with himself that he stood there giggling the whole time looking proud as punch. My parents and I were all in the same room when he did it, so of course we were all on our feet cheering him on, dancing around, clapping and jumping up and down and all that silly embarrassing stuff family does in the privacy of their own homes. 
It was as if something clicked with him. One minute he was sitting on the ground, the next minute he just….stood up. Bam. Right in the middle of the bare floor. He did it 5 more times over the next half hour too. Then, later last night he treated his dad to a spectacular “up & down” standing show too. The courage to take a step didn’t come, but it won’t be long now that he realizes he can balance himself without holding on to anything!
