Stormy Weather

Current weather map; we are also watching cars try to wade through 2 feet of water trapped under the Green Tree Rd overpass on I-43 near Good Hope Rd.  And a guy just got off the bus on 43 and got onto another bus. 
They closed the storm drains because of construction debris and now the interstate is flooded; actually, both main North-South highways (43 and 45) are closed because of standing water covering the roadway. 



This is some crazy stuff!  There was 7.2 inches of rain at Channel 4 WTMJ, which is basically downtown, for lack of better geography. 

We have a small lake in the basement, because the gutter was overflowing onto the ground by the NE corner and it just runs back into the house.  We should fix that.  Whoops! 

In other house news, we are working on refinancing the house.  Much better rate, much lower payment = amazing.  We can possibly save $150 a month, which will go nicely on the credit cards; I'm thrilled!

Next up:  Car refi to dump the 9.75% interest rate that we currently carry, which is totally absurd. 

Little Boy is doing well -- lots of crawling and cruising and kneeling and babbling.  I'm thinking that he will be walking by the end of summer; hopefully, once he has mastered that skill, the language will start to build again.  He will babble in sentences; you can't understand him, but he speaks in sentences.  Also, he has 99% mastered the toy that he got from my aunt and uncle for Christmas; I'm generally pretty impressed.  With all of our worrying and fussing about him, he's turned out to be a very funny little boy.  A very funny Daddy's boy.  :)

Lovely New Things

So, in honor of Little Boy learning to crawl and pull up and generally get into everything that he can, we purchased a new TV console/stand from BigLots!; everything was 20% today too, so it was only $109 with tax, instead of $130 plus tax.  Best deal evah! 

I know that I was just complaining about money; but this was Jake's summer gig money AND we needed it so Little Boy would stop turning on/off the power on the receiver; you can tell him 'no', but he likes to push the buttons anyway...Plus, we came up with a plan for the money situation, so I don't feel so badly about spending $100 for a super good deal. 

Since Husband and I are insane, we waited to reset everything until 8pm and just finished right now; it's very, very nice, but that was a lot of work!  It makes the living room look a bit bigger because the old one covered up the windows like 50% of the way. 

So, now, Little Boy can go to town on cruising along the TV stand, but the volume will not be touched.

The next tooth came through today -- the center top right one, when you are facing him.  He was VERY crabby all weekend; after 3 days of constantly being around him, I am ready for the break of working!  I feel terrible for saying that, because I really do love him and he is the funniest little boy most of the time, but we spent a lot of time together this weekend and he was kind of cranky for most of it.  But, we are up to 5 teeth now!  I suppose the next top center one will start to come down and make a nuisance for a while. 

My daycare was closed on Friday, because of the flooding, so I was home all day with Little Boy; we went out in the morning, as I was trying to force him through to just an afternoon nap (they have great success with this at daycare) and he passed out on me at 11am; he didn't wake up when I carried him in the house, when I changed his diaper and clothes, etc.  I was shocked, but then again, he only slept an hour or so.  Then, he had a nap from 3:15 until 4:45, so we could go with Daddy to his gig Friday night, but even then, he was wiped out by 8:30.  Poor Little Boy.  We ran him ragged all weekend.  I think that there are times when he would prefer just to stay home and chill.  We should probably be more sympathetic to that some days.

Since it's 10:30, it's probably time for bed for me, but more laundry awaits. 

14 months

It's been a while and much has happened; Little Boy turned 1 and had a very fun birthday party with his cousin, J.  The weather was really great and his Grandma flew in from MD to see him and J and all of us.  It was a pretty good weekend; except Little Boy did not really enjoy the whole cake thing.  Cookie was much more promising. 


Little Boy also had his 1 year check up, which was great; I was worried about the fact that he wasn't crawling, or pulling up or any of that pre-walking type stuff.  I shouldn't have worried, because within 1 week of that appointment, he was sitting up on his own, from his stomach, then army crawling, then regular crawling.  Now, he crawls and pulls himself up to standing on lots of items.  He can also sit on his knees and balance quite well.  I give him the end of the summer before he's walking.  Once he figures it out, I have a feeling he will be tearing through the house.  He is just such a big boy now, it's amazing. 

We really need to baby proof the house, but we are both too tired half the time to do anything during the week and the weekends have just been really, really busy lately.  We'll get it soon. 

The only other frustration that I have right now is that, while I would love to have another baby very soon, we just can't afford it.  I try to figure out a way to pay things down and pay things off and whatnot and it just seems like it's impossible.  I wish I could just stumble upon $10k (heck, even $5K would be beneficial at this point) to pay off credit cards and be done with it; if we paid off debt down to under $5k, I would be much, much happier.  But, I will figure out a way to get through it and come out good on the other side. 

Then, we can start all over again.  :)