Gag Me with a Pink Wall

Alexis is not happy about all this house stuff. She has learned to embrace the fact that many of her toys have had to get ready to go to the new house, even going so far as to help me separate them into "OK to go to the new house" and "Needs to stay here longer" piles. However, she has not learned to embrace anything to do with the actual house itself.

Saturday, as we scoured the place for reasons to keep our money, Alexis followed me around asking to go home. I took her whining as an opportunity to break it to her that we might be making that place our new home.

She wasn't impressed.

I tried telling her that she was going to get to finally have a room just for all her toys.

She wasn't impressed.

I told her that we would be able to have a swing and slide in the yard, just outside the back door.

She wasn't impressed.

I tried to tell her she could pick whatever bedroom she wanted (just so long as it was the one I wanted her to pick--the biggest bedroom has its own bathroom and NO, ain't no 3-year old of mine getting a bathroom all to herself).

She wasn't impressed.

I then dug deep in my bag of tricks and told her that she could paint her room whatever color she wanted.

She wasn't impressed.

It wasn't until later when I took her to look at paint samples at Home Depot that she started to see the joy in decorating her new room. She intently studied the rainbow of choices, searching high and low for just the right color.

She grabbed pink.

I HATE pink. Like, HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE. Alexis doesn't know that because I try not to influence her likes/dislikes (Hello? The kid loves Lima beans. I cannot accept blame or credit for that fact--it's all her.). Yet, I hate pink, especially decorating with it, with the fire of a million suns.

Whatever.

I begrudgingly told her she could paint her room pink.

She was happy. Then she saw something that made her even happier.

It.

The display for Disney paint.

And the other it.

A little sample card of a room painted with a High School Musical theme.

She happily told me, "I know! I'll get a pink High School Musical room!"

::headdesk::

Ever since then, she has carried around that little card, occasionally glancing at it and smiling as she imagines her pink High School Musical bedroom, complete with High School Musical blankets, walls, carpet, and doors (her ideas, not mine).

I'm going to hate every single second of decorating that room, but at least Mr. Husband will be able to get his Zac Efron fix whenever he needs it.

She's Got a Good Heart

Another Wednesday, another dance class. This week's class was much like the past few--Alexis happily stood on her little circle mat, focused intently on trying to copy the instructor's every step as they tap danced to Supercalafrajilisticexpealadocious. Her face comically alternated from a happy grin to her determined tongue-hanging-out face, back to a grin, back her tongue hanging out, lather, rinse, and repeat. When they finally finished working through the routine as a group, the kids all ran to stand next to the wall so that they could take turns doing a step or two of solo dancing.

As each kid took a turn at making up a dance step, I sat glued to the glass watching her. The Cool Moms (including me) had managed to secure the best spot for kid-watching, so we intently watched our daughters get their groove on, quietly chuckling each time one of them did something a little bit funny or cute.

In Alexis' case, pretty much EVERYTHING she does is either a little bit funny or cute. She's the smallest in the class, and the only kid still sporting a fair amount of baby fat. Frankly, it's nothing short of the cutest thing on Earth to watch her do steps that seem more geared towards kids much older. She does really well, but her still-almost-a-baby body sometimes betrays her in ways that just doesn't happen to the 5 and 6-year olds.

As she stepped up to do her solo, all eyes turned towards Alexis. She busted out a smashing little sequence of tap moves that were certainly advanced for her age. And OMG, SO CUTE! All the adults chuckled as she rushed back to her spot, and several moms commented to me that she was (OBVIOUSLY!) the cutest. thing. ever.

I don't know exactly what happened next, but suddenly Alexis wasn't standing on her circle. Instead, she stood inches from my face on the other side of the glass, tears in her eyes as she stared directly at me. Her eyes told a story of pure pain, so I rushed over to the door to find out what had happened.

Alexis was sobbing. She was sobbing so hard she couldn't string together the words to tell me what was wrong, so I scooped her up and walked out to the hall to try talking to her. Minutes later she finally choked out the words that broke my heart. "Someone laughed at me," she whispered.

We talked for several minutes about how it was OK for people to laugh with us and that whoever had laughed certainly meant no harm. We discussed how she sometimes laughs when I poke myself in the eye with my sunglasses, when Meg falls off the couch, and when Daddy falls on the stairs. On and on it went, until finally I was able to coax her back into the dance room. Within minutes she was falling over in a fit of giggles, but the pain in her eyes and the pain in her words still hang with me.

Alexis is a tender-hearted little thing. Sometimes it's a good thing because she will guilt herself into good behavior. Sometimes it's a bad thing when she lets embarrassment keep her from having fun. I mostly worry that if she doesn't grow some thicker skin soon, she's in for a bumpy ride.

The teen years are going to SUCK.

I Have Nothing Else to Talk About

I really hope you don't find House Stuff annoying. If you do? You might want to click away, because that is pretty much all that there is going on in our world right now. House. House. House. House. House.

The House.

We're still waiting to finalize an agreement to purchase The House. It's pretty much our own fault that it's dragging out another day because Mr. Husband and I? Are jerks. We're totally squeezing the current owner for every penny that we can. The current owner happens to be a bank, so it feels gooooood to be all uppity about every penny. It's like sticking it to The Man, if The Man were a big bank losing a very small portion of its pennies on a foreclosed property.

That little detail adds a whole level of stress, because it's an "As Is" kind of thing. Meaning, there has to be something wrong with the place. We went back on Saturday to scour the joint before we made an offer, and I took about 80 kajillion photos of every little flaw. What I didn't do is take photos of the good stuff, so now I have this whole folder of Really Good Reasons We Should Run Far and Fast.

Like, the lady who lost the house through some series of unfortunate circumstances? She totally didn't go down without a fight.

Um, I think the wall won. I only say that because it's still in the house. It's bruised, it's battered, it has a giant hole in it, but it's still there.

What's not in the house are the kitchen faucets (yes, plural--there are two sinks in the kitchen).

Apparently faucets are worth a lot of money on the black market. If you happen to see somebody standing on a street corner hawking a couple of them, let me know. We might need them if we ever decide to run water in the kitchen.

Also missing is a bunch of cold air return/vent covers.

I have no explanation for the need to walk off with a couple of hunks of cheap metal, but I did spend a crazy amount of time with my head stuck in various holes looking for a reason to take them off in the first place. I got nothing, but how much do you want to bet that those hunks of metal will turn out to be super-special sizes that can only be purchased from The Really Expensive Hole in the Wall Covering Place?

I'd show you the really scary Thing That is Wrong, but then you would realize just how crazy we are, and we can't have that. Let's just say Mr. Husband's project to turn the basement into the Man Cave of his dreams won't be without a whole lot of work. Very gross work.

If it all goes through. That's still a big "IF."