Let's all hold hands....

..and think good thoughts for the Hogan family. We have a contract on a house here in Richmond. It's NOT in the Robious Elementary school zone. Poo. But I just couldn't fall in love with that house. And don't you think you ought to love your house? I do. So we bought a house I do love - especially its granite counter tops and HUGE black refrigerator. (In a particularly embarrassing incident, our real estate agent caught me air humping the fridge. I told you I loved it!) But this house is in the Providence elementary school zone. I've heard nice things about Providence Elementary, and I've decided to withhold judgement for now. If people moving to Christiansburg decided to judge our school based on it's test scores, they'd really be misguided. The finest special education teacher I know works there. In fact, that school is full of talented, warm, caring teachers - all of whom would embrace Lois and take good care of her. So, we're not going to judge a book by it's cover, and give Providence a chance. But I made Jay promise that if it stinks, we can move. Always good to have a back up plan, right?

So although we have a contract on this house, the inspection is taking place today at 1:30 and I'm just a nervous wreck. The two other homes I've owned were both new construction, so buying a house that's 20 years old is a little scary. Is the roof OK? Is the heat pump going to poop out on us? Is a family of raccoons living in the chimney? Does the house have bad jou-jou? OK. I guess the home inspector won't be able to help me with that last matter. Unless he's part psychic. That's probably too much to hope for.


As for the butter bean, she's 10 months old now! We did have a photo shoot with Baxter bunny, but it didn't go very well. There wasn't very good light, and although Lois was in a gorgeous one of a kind dress, she puked on it within the first five minutes. I cleaned it up with a red paper napkin and smeared red dye all over it. And things went down hill from there.


Are you noticing Lois's new hair accessory? That little barrette has a very light work load. Not much hair to hold back. But doesn't it look stinkin cute? She owns these barrettes in every color under the rainbow, but I've decided hair accessories will be for special occasions only. They are SO hard to get in, and the bottoms of them are rather sharp. And once you get it in the right place, you have to press the darn thing into Lois's little skull to get them to snap in place. I worry about gouging one into her soft spot. In fact, I'm pretty sure if I sent a package to Guantanamo Bay, those boys could find a creative way to use them as instruments of torture.



At 10 months, our little butter bean is a world class "sitter." In fact, I think she sits up straighter than I do. I worried and worried for so long about her lack of sit-up-ability that I expected the day she figured it out I would hear bells chime and the earth beneath our feet would shake. Instead, it seems that a month or so ago Lois suddenly knew how to sit up. Like it was no big deal. We should probably get used to this. Our girl is going to do things on her time - not ours. A good lesson for her parents, I think. She's much happier on her belly now, too - thanks in part to her mother insisting she spend some quality time there. But the big lump still won't roll over. She pushes up quite well, and with a rolled up blanket under her belly will act as if she'd like to get on her knees and start crawling. But my infant educator tells me we need to conquer the rolling first. So the poor Bean spends time every day rolling from back to front with a little nudge from Mom - listening to lots of clapping and cheering - and then doing the whole thing all over again. Is it helping? No. My girl is a slug. But I like her that way. She comes by it honest.

And finally, just to totally traumatize the Ya-Ya, here's what Lois's beautiful pressed Ralph Lauren dress looked like after our photo shoot. I must remember to look for the Oxyclean...


Have a great first day tomorrow, friends, I'm thinking of you....