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So that last post brought up some interesting stuff. I thought about writing a whole long post explaining my personal religious beliefs - not because I thought I needed to defend myself, but just so I wouldn’t be misinterpreted. And you know what? If you’re curious, I think I basically summed it up in this post a long time ago. If you want to know more about my beliefs, drop me an email; otherwise I don’t think there’s any need to bore you with it.

Topic change: house stuff! We’ve had four or five showings now, which is good, although stressful. My child likes to disassemble… well, everything, really - toys, kitchen cabinets, her dresser, you name it - so whenever we get word that we’re going to have a showing, it seems to take a really long time to frantically clean everything up and get the house in good showing condition. And I’m really wishing we didn’t have so many cats, because vacuuming the house every other day is getting really old.

[Speaking of which, if any of you know anyone who might want to adopt Cleo and Greta? That offer still stands. I'm taking them to the vet next week to get their shots updated, and then I'm going to start talking to all of our neighbors and maybe put an ad on PetFinder to see if I can find them a new home. I won't give them to a shelter, so if I can't find a place for them, then I guess they're meant to stay with us. But I'm going to try my darnedest.]

Anyway, on Tuesday, we had two showings for the same people; in the morning, just the wife came to see the place, and she came back that evening with her husband. (This is why I don’t know if I should say we’ve had four or five showings - technically five, but only four separate families.) They seem like the most promising so far. The wife really loves the place, but the husband has a laundry list of things he was griping about. This is all based on the feedback that their realtor gave to ours, so I’m not sure if maybe they’re just playing good cop/bad cop to see if they can get us to drop our price.

The story we heard is that they sold their house two years ago, and have been renting ever since then. They were planning to buy some huge 25-acre lot and build a house on it - not because they have animals, mind you, just because they “want privacy” (25 acres?!) - but they haven’t been able to close the deal in the past two years. The realtor says the wife is at the end of her rope, and she just wants a house already. I guess the husband is still hung up on this “dream house” idea. Dave said it’s pretty likely that we’ll get an offer from them since the wife usually controls those types of decisions. Which I knew, of course, it was just funny to hear my husband say that. I guess he’s already learned that expression that “a happy wife makes for a happy life” really is true. He’s a smart egg, I knew he’d catch on quick. Heh.

Regardless, I’m really surprised at how many people have been coming to see the place - we’ve had a lot of drive-by’s, and have already had to refill the flyer box on the “for sale” sign a couple of times. (I know a lot of that is because of nosy neighbors, but we don’t have that many people in our neighborhood.) So it’s good. Dave and I were trying to think of this on a 6-month scale, since that seems to be about the average time most houses take to sell these days. I was thinking ok, no biggie, at least we’ll be able to host Christmas at our new house. Now I’m wondering if maybe we’ll be in a new place by Labor Day. One can hope, right?

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This morning, she announced:

“I BE SAVED!!”

Apparently we’re raising a born-again Christian. Dave and I are very worried.

I promise you, though, the second she starts talking about what a great president Bush is, we’re going to find some sort of toddler-brainwashing camp and send her there.

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Today Cate is 16 months old. I meant to get her monthly milestone post written a lot earlier, but we were caught off guard with an unexpected house showing (our third!), and it threw off our whole day.

So! This month Cate has learned:
* The sign for “milk”! At last! I’ve been trying to teach that one to her since she was about 7 months old, and she just finally started doing it back a couple of weeks ago. She usually signs “eat” first, then signs “milk,” so there’s absolutely no mistaking what she wants.

* However, the sign for “eat/food” has become the default sign for everything she wants. Cup of water? Sign food. Sleepy? Sign food. Want to go outside? Sign food. It’s almost like her way of saying, “I want something, and now it’s up to you to figure it out.” It’s… challenging.

I’ve been trying to teach her the appropriate signs, but you know, it took her 9 months to get “milk” nailed down, so I think this process might take a while. And that’s fine, she’s just the type of kid who takes her time observing and thinking stuff over in her head before she gives it a try.

* She has a few new words: horsey is by far the most popular one right now, especially since we’ve been visiting the neighbors’ horses pretty much every day. And the other day at the park, she saw a dog who I guess kind of looked like Patsy’s dog (in that it was small and brown, but a totally different breed), and she said “Buddy!” (Patsy’s dog’s name). Oh, but one of my favorite developments is that she now says “hi” and “bye” appropriately.

She’s even got the bye-bye wave down, although she doesn’t do it in that video. The weird thing about her talking is that I’m pretty sure she has several other words that Dave and I can’t understand. She says them with the same inflection over & over, we just haven’t caught onto what she’s trying to tell us yet. Too bad there aren’t second language classes for speaking Toddler. I’m not sure which’ll come first, either we’ll figure it out or her enunciation will get clearer.

* Sort of along the lines of talking, but pretend play and mimicking are new milestones this month. The phone is the big thing. She’ll pick up her toy phone (or anything really - a hairbrush or the stick from her xylophone work just as well), hold it up to her ear, say “hello” (uh-llo), then she’ll jabber away for a while, throw in a couple of “yeah, yeah”s, and then she’ll say, “k, bye-bye!” and hang up. This slays me like you have no idea. Dave isn’t really a phone guy so I’m thinking she got pretty much all of this from me. (Although maybe a little from Patsy too, I know she talks to her sister at least once a day.)

* She gives kisses, and even makes a smacking sound when she does them. Oh, be still my heart. It’s too cute for words.

I know there are a ton of other little things that I’m forgetting. I could go on all day about how fantastically awesome and wonderful she is, and how she has Dave and I both on the floor laughing pretty much every day. But you know, I think this has been long enough.

Our girl rocks. Simple as that.

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Hope everybody’s been having a fun holiday weekend. We’ve been having a ball, although it’s been pretty low-key, no big cookouts or barbeques or anything like that. Saturday was beautiful, so we spent a lot of the day outside. Dave did a ton of yardwork (sweet man that he is) and Cate and I just hung out and played a lot.

Sunday afternoon, we dropped Cate off at Patsy’s house for a few hours (hooray for her after-hours baby-sitting policy!) and went to see the new Indiana Jones movie. I know a lot of people have been nay-saying it, but Dave and I both really enjoyed it. The only thing that irritated me about it was the guy sitting next to me (who had to come to the theater alone, and I think I know why); every time some outrageous plot point or stunt happened on screen, he’d kind of groan and say, “oh, yeah right.” It was like watching a movie with my dad, who has absolutely no concept of the suspension of disbelief. I wanted to punch him (the guy, not my dad - although I have been tempted to sock my dad once or twice during a movie as well). I mean, you don’t go see a Lucas/Spielberg movie and expect realism, right? It’s just supposed to be fun. So with that expectation in mind, as far as we were concerned, the movie was great.

After the movie, we picked Cate up at Patsy’s house and came home. I made lasagna, and while it was baking, she and I wandered around the neighborhood and visited with some of the horses. Then we came back to our yard and spun airplanes (you know, where you pick her up under her arms and then spin around so her feet fly out behind her), then we’d crash in the grass and she’d laugh and laugh and sign “more” to get me to do it again. We did that over and over until I thought I was going to throw up. It was fantastic.

This morning, Cate and I headed out to Target, and for the first time I set her down to let her walk around in the store. She had a BLAST, although it wore me out because I had to chase her down everywhere. She doesn’t quite understand, “Ok, let’s go this way” yet. Hopefully she’ll figure that one out soon.

She conked out in the car on the way home, and is sound asleep right now. Since it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain like the forecast predicted, we might have to pull Dave away from his work and take a family trip to the park this afternoon. Hope y’all are having good weather wherever you are, too.

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We have another house showing tonight at 6:45. Yay! I’m not sure if we’re going to get any over the weekend or not. I guess some people might use their three-day weekend to house hunt, but I would think a lot of people will be out of town. And the weather is going to be crappy, which I don’t think will help our cause. Oh well, having two showings the first week is two more than I expected.

Seriously, I know we have a nice house, I just can’t imagine why anyone would voluntarily choose to live in Duvall. The only reason I live here is because Dave already owned this place when we met. After things got serious and we decided to co-habitate, his four-bedroom house in the boonies seemed more practical than my tiny one-bedroom apartment in Seattle. (Did I mention that I had a view of Elliott Bay? And I could see the Space Needle every time I walked out my front door?) God, I loved that place. But I loved Dave more, so I moved. And I’ve been itching to get out of here almost since the first week I moved here (or whenever the first time I saw a cat mauling a field mouse was), so I’m really looking forward to someday living in a house that both of us love for a change. And maybe a place where we could let Cate play in the backyard without worrying about coyotes. A girl can dream, right?

This is random, but it’s been bugging me for the past few days: we had someone come out to pressure wash the siding and the deck, right? I found the guy because he had a sign up near our house, and he came out to give me an estimate the day I called him. His price was reasonable, and he didn’t give me creepy-contractor vibes, so I was planning our list date around when he could do the job. When I called him to confirm, he said that his pressure washer needed a new part, and he was waiting for it, and could he do the job around the end of this week? I said no, that really wasn’t ok, so I’d just find someone else, thanks anyway. He was like, “uh… let me make some calls and I’ll call you right back.” Ooookay. He called me a few minutes later to say that he found the part locally, so he could come on Tuesday (the 20th) to do it, would that be ok? Um. What?

The thing that bugs me is that he MUST have been lying, right? I mean, was he saying that he was going to go for a week without making any income because he was waiting on a part for his pressure washer? He didn’t have another one for when his main one crapped out? I mean, my mom has an extra sewing machine so she can still do her alterations business when her main machine is in the shop. And then suddenly he magically finds the part within about 10 minutes? I don’t know, it sounded shady.

Anyway, he showed up on Tuesday like he said he would, and he did a decent job, so that was fine. When it came time to pay him, he asked me if I would make the check out to him rather than his company “so [he] wouldn’t have to pay taxes.” I didn’t really know how to argue with that. Am I supposed to say, “Well, as a matter of fact, I think you should pay taxes, sorry”? So I made the check out to him personally, handed it over, and… he left. It wasn’t until later that I realized he never gave me a receipt or an invoice or anything for the work he did. So if he had screwed up something on our property, I would have no recourse whatsoever. (Thankfully, it doesn’t look like that’s the case, as far as I can tell.) Now, my guess is that he’s a sub-contractor of some kind, and if I had made the check out to his company, he would’ve only gotten a small percentage of it, and this way he got to keep the whole amount for himself. But yeah, that was totally shady business, wasn’t it?

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I apologize for any technical difficulties today, I decided to upgrade my version of WordPress, which always seems to cause way more of a headache than I think it will.

Last night was good. We cleaned like maniacs, of course, and I learned that Dave is even more nitpicky about clutter than I am, which honestly shocked the hell out of me. (He hid our decorative basket of extra toilet paper rolls! I thought it looked fine.) I baked cookies, left them out with a little note inviting our guests to enjoy, and the three of us headed out for dinner.

And you know? When it takes 15 minutes to drive to Redmond each way, it’s surprisingly easy to kill an hour. We headed over to Redmond Town Center, and took Cate to one of the play areas. [For you locals: the area between Gene Juarez and Ruby's Diner.] It was the first time we’d gone there, but it turned out to be perfect for her, because it’s covered (no rain!), it’s gated off (no getting trampled by shoppers!), and it’s got that nice rubberized flooring (no head injuries!).

If we go there again, I’m going to have to bring my camera, because Cate was so ecstatic, it was hilarious. She doesn’t usually get the chance to walk around out in public where there are lots of people around, but since this was a small fenced area, we just set her down and let her go. For the first few minutes, she hardly even seemed to notice the big play structure in the middle, she just walked around shrieking with glee.

We let her run around and burn off some energy for about 20 minutes, then we headed upstairs to the Greek place for dinner. (I guess it’s technically Turkish? I don’t know, they serve gyros.) Since Cate had some time to play beforehand, she was really good in the restaurant. Of course, the place was empty except for us so it wouldn’t have mattered either way, but it was nice to not have to eat my dinner with one hand because she wanted to sit in my lap. Instead, she sat happily in the highchair the whole time, and ate a couple of slices of pita bread. (She didn’t care for the lentil soup we got her.) It was really nice.

When we got home, I found the business card of the realtor who showed our house (nice of her to leave it behind), and I saw that they did, in fact, eat three of my cookies. So I guess that worked.

The downside is that with only three gone, we were left with nine freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies, and oh, what to do with them? Yeah. We’d better sell this place fast or I’m not going to be able to fit into my pants pretty soon.

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The sign in the driveway went up yesterday around 4 p.m. A couple of hours later, Cate was in a foul mood, so I decided that we should head outside and go for a walk. We were just heading out the driveway to go see the horse across the street when one of the neighbors came by to snag a flyer from the “for sale” sign. Gee, that was fast!

It was kind of awkward because I’m sure he didn’t mean to run into me. But he said, “Mind if I take one of these?” And I told him that it was no problem, but jokingly asked if he was going to buy the place. He said that he was going to pass it on to some friends of his who’ve been talking about moving to this area. Hmm. That’d be pretty cool, if it’s true. But I’m pretty sure he was b.s.ing me, and he just wanted to see what we’re asking for the house and what the inside looks like (there are a few interior photos on the flyer). I know that in my parents’ neighborhood, anytime a house goes on the market, my dad snags a flyer because he’s just a nosy type like that.

But anyway, we had a very nice chat, and it turns out that he owns the farmhouse across the street where Cate’s favorite horse lives. (I told him that his horse was how she learned the word “horsey”. He was mighty impressed.)

Then this morning, Cate and I were sitting on the couch watching cartoons while she drank her milk, and I saw a silver Mercedes station wagon pull up in front of our house. The guy got out, took a flyer, and looked around at our property for a good minute or two. I have no idea if he was an agent or a prospective buyer, but he definitely doesn’t live around here, because I would’ve remembered that car. (It was way too shiny to live in this neck of the woods with all of the loose gravel roads and driveways.)

So, here’s a question. I have this fear that no matter how often I scoop the litter boxes, our house smells like cats. Renee has warned against using air fresheners or plug-ins because she says that it smells like you’re trying to cover something up. (Plus, the fragrance probably isn’t good for Cate’s asthma.) So I stocked up on slice ‘n’ bake cookies, because they can be ready in 15 minutes, and they’ll make the house smell all homey. And then to keep us from eating all of them, I thought I might leave the plate out with a note that says “Thanks for coming, please help yourself.” Renee said that was a good idea, because if people are eating, they’re more inclined to stay in the house longer, and they might be comfortable enough to sit on the couch and try to imagine themselves in the house. What say you? Good idea, or does it scream, “we’re desperate and trying too hard”?

Oh, and while I was typing this, we got a phone call that we’re having our first showing tonight at 6:30. Yay!

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