The Babysitter

After 11 months of being a simultaneous full-time parent and full-time employee, we decided this was not the most sustainable lifestyle and looked at getting a nanny for a few hours per week.  I feel like in most circumstances, this wouldn't be that weird or difficult, but when you're the parent of Ivy G, you have concerns.

Since Ivy doesn't like people in general (unless you're a child and willing to let her pull your hair and claw your eyes), this kind of limits the pool of people who are able and willing to spend time with her.  But!  I figured that this babysitting arrangement could help with Ivy's people probs, and maybe it'd get me some more sanity sleep as well.  Win, win.

After talking with some old neighborhood babysitters about pricing, and noticing how confident they sounded in their ability to manage my child for such little pay, I thought, "Maybe these babysitters could give me some pointers.  Maybe I'm paying for some childcare and some training."  By the way, bless those babysitters' hearts.  I've been in the business world too long, because $5 per hour sounds like pure service.

Anyway, I rounded up some young ladies in the new ward to give this a shot, and I haven't been so nervous in quite some time.  I wasn't nervous about Ivy's well-being.  I was nervous that the babysitter would run away and never come back.

This was pretty much my expectation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dQpFu8uRP0

The first few tries went about as expected, but then today I heard Ivy laughing like a maniac downstairs and I couldn't have smiled bigger.  Things just got a little bit more awesome around here.

Foley House #3

We are here in the new house, and there is much rejoicing!  Somehow right when we got here and had a million things to do, life felt even more stressful than moving, but I contribute most of this to my lack of internet-problem coping strategies.  Comcast and I are on the mend now.

West Jordan is pretty great.  Our area has lots of wide open spaces (as does our home) and I don't feel like I live in Salt Lake County.  There's an online grocery shopping option within minutes of my house.  I have a giant garden and pretty yard that we plan to rip up and make better.  I have a kitchen sink that's the size of a small bathtub.  We have space to invite large crowds of people over.  I can hide inside my pantry if I want.  There are more windows than I can manage to open and close at the appropriate times.  Life's pretty good here.

We're trying to seize the day and do all the things we think up doing right away.  It seems that if you don't get stuff done within a few weeks of moving, the only other option is to wait 4 years or just never do it.  There's no in-between.  So we're caulking things and touching up paint.  In a moment of weakness at the store, I bought an entire garden area of seeds and plants and flowers.  We also have a very long list of other things to do and buy, so although the move is over, I guess we won't return to our normal routine for a while.  Scott and I are just keeping love alive here, touching up grout in the evenings.

Anyway, what a grand new adventure for us!  I'm excited.

I should also note than we no longer own what I've been calling the "North Salt Lake Vacation Home."  As great as it is to own two homes at once in this unstable economy...I'm grateful that we are done dabbling in real estate transactions for quite some time.  We do already miss our friends and neighbors though.  I know going to church in a new ward is all "Yay the gospel's the same everywhere", but...I don't know these people yet, so it's weird.  Haha.  Hopefully we make friends soon and I start a new book club with the long lost twins of my old book club.  Small demands.

House Hunting

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I think if you are walking through a person's house, you can maybe judge them a little bit.

We've been house hunting for the past two months, and there are some very strange people in the world.  That, or they just have very strange house-selling tactics.  Some observations:

1. If you're taking time to vacuum your room for house-sale pictures, at least take the vacuum out of your picture.
2. It's probably a good idea to not only take down your framed Cosmopolitan magazine covers, but also to remove them from sight.
3. Smells cannot be unsmelled.
4. Maybe I'm the most un-fun mom there is, but...I think I'm right that most paint colors should never be sold.
5. Some street names are almost deal-breakers to me: Loch Awe Avenue???  Let's get the grid system back.  Brigham Young knew about this.
6. If you're thinking of adding a water feature to your yard, stop.
7. If you get lost in someone's basement, you can conclude the layout is sub-par.

Anyway, this process has been very time-consuming and I feel like it's the tooth-ache of life experiences.  The constant nagging feeling that you are not where you need to be and you have no idea when you'll get there?  Blech.  All 3 members of this household are excited to be done with this someday...and then we can stop discussing MLS, contracts, due diligence, and that random for-sale-by-owner guy named Regie.

On the plus side, our realtor this time around is nothing like our old nemesis realtor from our last home selling/buying sojourn.  The absence of pure evil is noted.  Also noted is the fact that we're under contract and we can count the number of days until this is all over!