Homebody

Tyler's transmission went out, so we are officially a 1 car family again. The Bonnie is just chilling in the street in front of the house. What that means:

1. I stay home all day
2. I get up before 7am to drive Tyler to work and pick him up

I prefer option number 1, but staying at home all day gets boring. It is better than waking Amelie up, feeding and changing her, driving to Eagan, then hopefully getting her back to bed when we get home. Then waking her from her afternoon nap to go pick him up. Dreadful timing for something like this to happen though.

Yesterday, Abby and Sam came over and kept us company. We walked up to CoraZon, a little store near my house, and browsed around. They both fell asleep on the walk home.

They played on the floor together, Sammy kept trying to steamroll Ami. She took it in stride and just sucked on his fingers. This happened several times.

She learned to roll over from her back to her tummy yesterday. Her arm got stuck under her and she would roll back over after a few seconds, but today she figured out how to roll all the way over and get that arm out of the way. She did it twice. It was awesome. I called Tyler and he pointed out to me that she is now officially a danger to herself. Now she can steamroll Sam.


She fell asleep today while eating and I tried to move her to the floor for a mini-nap. Didn't work. I did, however, snap this photo of her stretching out after a good meal. She's so funny, always stiff as a board. I can hold her parallel to the ground, she just stiffens up her body. She's so strong. She has an incredible grip too. It's actually quite painful. She grabs onto my face, neck, hair and anything else she can get a hold of. She will probably be able to bend steel bars pretty soon. Supergirl.

Our garage sale was a success. Lots of work but worth it. We made just over $1100, same as last year. West River Parkway is the best location for a garage sale ever.

Today, we bought our first home!

I didn't jinx us, everything worked out with our home purchase and we closed today at 3pm. It only took about 40 minutes. Grandpa Stan came down to watch Amelie while we signed our lives away (at an excellent interest rate). Here is our house. Tyler and my dad must be having a really important conversation.

It is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom 1.5 story home in a PHENOMENAL neighborhood. There is a fireplace, dining room, and a partially finished basement...plus, I finally get to have an alley. We live about 3 blocks of Minnehaha Parkway, 2 blocks from Lake Hiawatha (where there is a kiddie pool, beach, tennis courts, multiple playsets and a park building), 2 blocks from Minnehaha Creek, and we are within walking distance to Lake Nokomis and Hiawatha Golf Course. It is exactly what we were looking for.

Ty and Stan went to pick up some supplies to start cleaning up the place. We will start that task tomorrow. Well, I won't be there, but Tyler and my dad will. It's a fixer upper, mostly cosmetic. We'll clean up the outside a bit, power wash the exterior and do some landscaping. The previous owners of the home were big time smokers, so the walls are yellowed and stained pretty bad. We are going to clean clean clean those walls then paint. We will update the kitchen and appliances and the bathroom as well.

Andy the Human is going to help us with the tile and Ben will be over helping us with a variety of other things. We've got 2 weeks, we may have to stay at my parent's house for a little bit, but I'm hoping my dad uses that as some motivation to work really hard to help us get all this stuff done.

I love our big backyard, which is pretty much a blank slate at the moment. There are no trees, no gardens, no patio...just a really skinny walkway to the garage at the side of the yard. Oh, and a birdbath and built in gas grill. I can see a playhouse, a sandbox, a glorious garden and a tree or 2 back there in the near future.
When we get started on the work I think I will do some before, during and after photos.

In baby news, I swear Amelie is going to start crawling any second. When she's on her belly she brings her legs up into the crawling position and is able to turn herself around in circles. All she needs to do is coordinate that leg movement with the arms and she'll be crawling like crazy. Not for a while though I hope. We have some baby-proofing to do.

She is crazy strong. She was practically standing by herself today. I was holding her because she doesn't have the balance to stand on her own, but she sure has the strength. That girl can make herself stiff as a board.

Grandma Mike came for a visit yesterday, brought me Chipotle. It was the first thing I was able to eat and I almost chewed through the container to get at it.

Now we just have to finish packing a million boxes and sorting through our things for our garage sale on Saturday and Sunday. Luckily, Grandma D is coming down to help us Friday and Saturday.


Amelie's new favorite things are:

Supergirl

and

her bouncer.

She giggles and laughs like crazy when we do Supergirl and hold her over our heads. It's so cute. She drools all over my face, chest and shoulders, but it's worth it. Also, she is slowly figuring out all the entertainment possibilities her bouncer (not hers actually, loaned to us by a friend) has to offer.

Andy, Tova, and Tyler just went over to our house so they could check it out and talk tile I guess. I'm just waiting for him to get home so we can have a celebratory glass of "we just bought a new house" champagne.