Kara & Sophie: What a weekend

I was dreading this weekend, but now it’s almost over and I plan to be in bed by 8pm!

We had our first ‘open house’ this afternoon. This meant (a) cleaning the house from top to bottom; (b) cleaning the house from top to bottom to Lance’s standards; and (c) keeping all 3 girls (myself included in this I learnt) out of the house the entire weekend so it would stay clean.

We have been tidying, tossing, cleaning and rearranging for a couple of weeks now. I just had to suck it up and let Lance rearrange each room countless times – but to be fair, the house looked fabulous by the time we were done. Sophie’s bedroom turned into a kid’s play room … then turned into a sitting room … then finished up as the TV room. The front ‘parlor’ room turned into Sophie’s bedroom … then turned back into a sitting room. Now Sophie is in our bedroom back in her bassinet. Considering where I work, this is a huge no-no (i.e. Sophie is 4+ lbs over the weight limit of the bassinet; she is also too long for it so she sleeps corner to corner; then when she wakes she sits up and leans over the side to see who is around – so at night we lay pillows all around the base to cushion the inevitable landing). But the house looks better having Sophie in with us and at the moment, it’s all about appearances.

Of course now that the house is spotless and uncluttered, we have vowed that we’ll always live this way! Ha-ha.

But to backtrack, on Saturday morning the mason came to do some concreting out the back and the painters came to patch cracks and paint all the outside windows (all 3 floors), etc. It was all stuff we could have done ourselves I guess (except we don’t even own a ladder), but Lance ‘knows people’ now so it was easier to get his buddies to do all the work. So the house was literally filled with a gaggle of people, and keeping Kara’s busy feet and hands away from all this fun and excitement was a task in itself. So the girls were all kicked out early Sat.

We started out at the Building Museum, a favorite jaunt for all. Unfortunately the ‘building zone’ for kids was overflowing so the MM group settled for a picnic in the main hall … which for me meant Sophie crawling in 1 direction while Kara sprinted in the other. I then took Kara home in the hope she would nap in the midst of all the banging, painting and Spanish music … and miraculously she napped for 2 hours!

In the afternoon we took refuge at Esther’s house (poor Esther had more than her fair share of sharing fair with Kara this weekend – 3 times in total!). As soon as I mentioned we were going to Esther’s house Kara repeatedly questioned whether the dogs were going to be upstairs and of course they were (thanks Ellen!). Late in the day we headed home and I marched Kara straight from the car into her bed, literally holding her arms by her side so she wouldn’t touch anything.

Bright and early Sunday morning we were back at Esther’s house – this time we decided to go to the mall with the girls to let them run around. As Sophie has just fallen asleep in the car, Esther’s mum selflessly offered to take Kara and Esther into the mall BY HERSELF for over an hour! (Ellen said the whole excursion went fine although taking both girls to ‘go pee pee’ at the same time was a tad stressful). I stayed in the car with Sophie and caught up on some much needed ZZZ’s. Kara had a great time and talked about Esther's mummy the whole way home (‘I like Esther's mummy. Esther’s mummy is nice’!).

Since we had to vacate our house all day, we went straight from Esther’s house up to Baltimore to visit Oscar and Jasper and partake in some good old fashioned kite flying (it was freezing and windless but the kids didn't care). The plan was that Kara would nap in the car on the way up (yeah right) or when we got there (yeah right) or in the car on the way home (yeah right). They have a huge dog and 3 cats so Kara didn’t stand a chance (we really need to find some dog-less friends). But considering she missed her nap, Kara was a trooper and was in good spirits all day. By the time we got back into DC Kara was exhausted and happily went to bed at 5:45 pm!