I love hardwood floors.

After Reed told me at Ikea that "YELLOW is my favorite color!", I decided that it was fair game to pull executive privilege on the color of the floor, so beige it is.... Here are some pictures of the new room. I should have taken before and after pics, because the carpet was nasty, but we're pretty pleased with the end result.

Happy Weekend

We're officially really, really done with the semester. Somehow, I kept expecting bells and whistles, but it doesn't really feel any different than any other semester. I'm looking forward to some time to relax, but we've already started tackling another project. We're ripping the carpet out of the upstairs and painting the hardwood floors. Reed's asthma dictates that we shouldn't have carpet, and I'm glad to have an excuse to remove it. After pulling this carpet out, I'm officially grossed out by carpet. There were PILES of dust and dirt underneath the carpet, and lots of strange hairs (we do not allow Hank upstairs because of the asthma issue, so I don't know WHAT kind of hair that was).



Also, there was kitty litter. We don't even have a cat. Yuck.



I asked Reed what color he wanted his floors, but he said red. Now, I don't know what to do, because his walls are bright yellow, so if we paint the floors red, then we'll have to paint the walls, which I don't want to do. So I think I'm going to pull executive privilege and paint his floors beige or green. Luckily, he's an amicable little fellow, but he keeps repeating "I want red. Red is my favorite color. I LOVE red." Uh oh.



This weekend, we're going to Pittsburgh to get him an official big bed. Actually, it will be a twin, but he's in a toddler bed now, so I think he'll be pretty excited to have a bigger bed. He slept in our room last night, because we cleaned everything out of his room to pull the carpets out, and we put all of the stuff from HIS room into the GUEST room--not a lot of foresight there.



Well unfortunately, Reed talks in his sleep. He kept Caleb and I both up all night. Finally, because I had a big paper due today along with a final this afternoon, Caleb took Reed downstairs to sleep at 3am. Reed stretched out and made himself comfortable, and Caleb slept on the couch sitting up.



Poor Caleb. I guess that I owe him now.



Have I mentioned how excited I am for summer? We're going to Salmon and Jackson Hole, WY during June, and in July, I'm joining a book club with my favorite professor. Besides that, I'm just going to try and get some writing done, so I'm ready when my grad program starts, and at the beginning of August, I'm going to attend a 2 week seminar on how to teach English 101.



Summer is going to be AWESOME. At least, until, as the head of the deparment wrote recently on the English Department blog, "August becomes the month of diminished expectations."

Remember When I Used to Write Blogs?

I have to confess that I'm not a very good blogger. Caleb keeps promising to post some blogs, but he sits down, tries to figure out the pictures, says some fake cuss words, and then gives up.

I will say that we have been very busy, and we're all looking forward to spending 3 weeks in Idaho this summer, although I'm not sure how excited my parents are to have us visit for that long. We haven't been to Idaho in a year and a half, so I felt like we needed to have as long of a visit as we could. Hopefully, we won't all drive each other crazy. But our lives have been very crazy lately, so that wouldn't be unusual.

After many, many years, I have finally graduated. So here's a big WOO-HOO to me. After I had Reed, there were many days that everyone (myself included) thought it wouldn't happen, and I'm glad to be able to prove us all wrong.

In the fall, I will be going to graduate school to get my MFA in Creative Nonfiction at West Virginia University. I was initially very euphoric as I was awarded a full teaching assistantship and told by the director on the phone that I was their "top candidate," but now that the reality that this is really happening has sunk in, I'm terrified. If I'm the top candidate, then doesn't that mean that I can only go down from here?

I'm working on lots of positive self-talk here, but I'm really, really nervous.

Caleb, as usual, is working far too hard. I won't even write here how many classes he's teaching, but let's just say that it's far too many. Hopefully, I can share some of that burden now that I'll be teaching, so he can have more time to write.

And Reed, as usual, is just a joy. His language problems from his ear infections are almost fully resolved, and he says the funniest things now. He's really into counting and math, so he likes to add everything. The other night, I put him to bed, and I went into the bathroom across the hall to brush my teeth.

Reed heard me, and he peeked out the door and said "Mommy, I have to go to the potty." Well, he had just pottied about 10 minutes prior to that, so I said, "No you don't; you're just stalling." To this, he replied:

"Well, I went potty once, and now I have to potty again, so that's 2 potties!"

We also discovered, quite by accident, that Reed knows how to wipe his own bum. We've been earnestly doing that for him for some time now--only to discover that his excellent preschool had already taught him how to do that on his own.

Life just keeps getting better and better.

His favorite phrase is "Remember when?" He frequently says "Remember when you, and me, and Mama Kathy went up in the High Tower? That was fun!" (The High Tower was a hotel in Pittsburgh when my mom came to visit over spring break, and he mentions it at least once a day).

Sometimes, he says "Remember when we ate lunch?--right after we've finished lunch.

He also says "Remember when Randy ate a DOG BONE?" This refers to when Caleb's friend Randy stayed with us for a while and ate a dog bone on a dare (it's a long story).

Reed thinks that's so funny. Today, he said "That's gross! DOGS eat those." Then he chuckled and said "We all laughed at him."