The Update

Simon is just racing down the developmental highway these days. It's hard to keep up with all his new words and concepts and abilities.

Here are just some of the newer words he says: Towel ("dow"), Shoe ("zhoo"), Bean ("bee"), Keys ("ghee"), Fan ("ban" or "van"), Boom, Mole ("moh"), Water ("wah wah"), Bra ("bwah")

The other night Simon took the Singing in the Rain DVD off the shelf and put it on top of our portable CD player (which, by the way, is always playing the Rutles). He looked at me with a meaningful expression. He wanted me to play the disc, thinking it was music. I had taken the disc out of the case so he couldn't destroy it, but he knows that such cases usually hold discs and that those discs can play music. So I put the disc in the DVD player and skipped to the "Moses Supposes" dance sequence. At first Simon was skeptical, but then he saw the tap dancing and really liked it. "That's Gene Kelly," I told him (Donald O'Connor will come later, I guess). We watched that number several times. Simon stomped his feet really fast like he was tap dancing. Very cute. He was excited and proud. "Where's Gene Kelly," I asked, and he pointed at the tv screen. If you ask him, "Can you tap dance?" he'll stomp his feet for you.

The House

Being the financial geniuses that we are, Michael and I are trying to sell our house. You know, to take advantage of the booming real estate market. No? Okay, just because we want to live somewhere else. As wonderful as our house is, we have kinda grown to hate it. We went through so much hassle to fix the house up that we always feel annoyed here. Also, we want to find a more toddler-friendly place, closer to parks, sidewalks, and other little kids. We don't have to move; we just want to.

That said, what a pain in the ass it is to clean up and clear out every weekend for the Open House. It's really hard (impossible) to keep the house clean when Simon's around, so every Friday we race around making everything spotless (because just clean doesn't cut it), then we head over to my parents' house to spend a night or two. We've done this for three weekends so far. My parents have helped us "stage" our house to look its best. During the week we don't touch certain things, like the dining room table and the elaborate place settings on top of it. There are a lot of "off limits" areas, actually. We don't use the breakfast nook table either--it's all decorated ("staged") and we don't want to mess it up and start over again. Oh, yeah--and about half our stuff is packed away in a storage facility.

The house looks great. Closets, cupboards, bookshelves, etc. are organized and pleasingly arranged. We have flowers in many rooms. It's nice to live here now! Well, except for the hassle of the Open Houses. When we leave for the weekend we take certain valuables with us--cameras, laptops, jewelry, financial documents, etc. We also lug some stuff up to the attic--the highchair, an electric fan, an air purifier, a curtain rod and curtains. Then, when we come back home Sunday night, we have to lug these things back down. Blah, blah, blah.

We have a few people who are interested in the house, and a husband and wife who will probably make an offer soon. That's good. I don't want to live like this for much longer. Unfortunately, I haven't seen a house I'd rather live in. I've just been looking at Internet listings, but what I've seen isn't all that great.

Simon is handling all of this really well. He has fun at my parents' house--he loves to play with Nonna and Papa! And he's learned a lot about cleaning from watching us scrub and wipe and polish. He likes to take a paper towel (or baby wipe) and run around the house "cleaning" surfaces--floors, tables, walls, furniture. It's very cute.