Family update

I've been realizing that the only times I'm really drawn to blogging are when I'm upset or stressed or frustrated about something and need to process everything. My blog has two purposes. The first is as a kind of journal where I can process things - purpose met. But the second purpose is to document the everyday details of my life. Since I blog so irregularly, this purpose is not being met! So here is my first attempt to blog more regularly and document life (the good and the bad) more accurately!

We got back from vacation (a week at the beach then a trip to the zoo!) five days ago and I am just now feeling "recovered." Vacations with little kids are just not real vacations. As fun as it was and as nice as it was to be at the beach and be with my husband's family, I felt that when it was all over, I needed a vacation! I seriously was daydreaming of a weekend alone in a hotel room! I no longer feel that way but I'm happy to be home and back in the swing of our regular routine. I have finally unpacked and tidied the house. The laundry is even mostly done. I even did laundry while we were on vacation and somehow we still came home with what seemed like a ton of laundry. The good thing was that since I had done laundry there we had some clothes to wear when we came back and I didn't have to do the laundry until yesterday.

Before our vacation, MG (3 mos) was sleeping anywhere from 5-9 hours at a stretch at night. She didn't quite sleep as well on vacation (usually a stretch of 3-4 hours but it was 5 hours one night!), but she is now back to some good long stretches! The past two nights she's gone to bed in the eight o'clock hour and has slept until six or seven in the morning with a dream feed before I go to bed. Woo hoo! I am well rested again. (Kind of!)

My plan of a two-week potty training "boot camp" has turned into a summer of potty training "boot camp." It's taken A LOT longer than I ever thought it would but I think we're on the upswing now. I hope! We weren't able to do too much potty training on vacation so we decided to just let it go and resume when we got back. Well we started up again yesterday and it's going very well! ME (3) went all of yesterday and all of this morning without any accidents!!! Yesterday he did not initiate using the potty on his own but he went every time Hubby or I told him to. Today, he has gone whenever I told him to and has initiated it twice. Yes! Okay, as I was typing this he had an accident in the basement. Oh well! Still, one accident in a day and half is awesome!

Now that the summer is winding down, Hubby and I have begun the process of getting ready to sell our house. We'll be moving in June when Hubby finishes his residency and plan to "put our house on the market" (really we're doing For Sale By Owner - it's very common among the residents here) in January. We've made a master list of all the projects and cleaning that need to be done between now and then and hope to tackle it one by one over the next four months.
We're also job searching. Hubby has several job possibilities at this time. The hospital he's at now has offered him a position at the sister hospital where he moonlights. I'm not sure we're very interested in that option but it's still a possibility. Then there's a group between here and where his parents live that is actively recruiting him. We went down there several weeks ago for a "meet and greet" kind of thing. The group reserved a private room at a really nice restaurant and most of the physicians and their wives all came. It was crazy to realize that they were all there to meet us! We really liked everything we learned about this practice. Hubby will be going there later this month to see the office, the hospital, etc. Then today, Hubby left his cell phone at home (I hate that!) and got a call that I answered. It was a physician from a local ortho practice that is interested in Hubby. We talked for a bit and then I passed the message along to Hubby. Those are the practices that are pursuing him (and boy is it nice to be pursued!) but he has several other options/contacts to consider as well. The funny is that Hubby will be doing a fellowship from August 2009 until July 2010 so this job search is really for two years from now. It feels funny to be "planning" so far ahead for the future. But on the flip side, we found out our fellowship location last summer and now a year has passed and it's only a year away. Not only that but we're already making plans (e.g. selling the house, researching rental property options, etc.) for that time in our lives. So, although it feels far away, I know the time will pass quickly.

Lastly, we've made several big purchases lately and have upgraded our technology, some of which were planned and others were not! Hubby's had some good moonlighting weekends recently so we've been able to do this. First of all, we bought a new laptop which should be here soon hopefully! Our current one isn't all that old technically but computers become obsolete almost as soon as you buy them! So we got one that can replace our desktop and still handle all of our photo and video editing programs. That was a planned purchase. The next one, however, was not. On Sunday, ME (3) was playing in the living room and decided to (toy) hammer the television and broke it. So out we went shopping for a new tv. We actually ended up ordering one online and its on its way! Along with the purchase of the new tv, came the decision to upgrade our cable service. We've had bare bones cable since we moved here which worked fine for us. Then our cable company went ahead and changed the channels on us and we no longer get two of our favorite channels! So for many reasons, including a discussion and demonstration of the many uses and benefits of DVR, we've upgraded and the cable guy will be here next week. Lastly (well hopefully last!), we've bought a new heat pump. That was also an unplanned purchase. Well, it wasn't planned to be a purchase right now but we knew when we bought the house that we would most likely have to replace it (it's 21 years old) and saved for it. That will happen next week as well. So there are major technological upgrades happening around here in the next two weeks.

That's all for now! I'll try to blog again soon - maybe!