To pee or not to pee

Marion pee-pee'd on the potty yesterday!

She's been asking for the potty for weeks now so we have been indulging her requests. Typically the process goes something like this:

1. Marion grabs her diaper and says, "Potty! Potty! Potty!"
2. Whoever is around (Brian, me, Grammie, Ms Kim) takes her to potty.
3. Diaper is removed and Marion is lifted to sit on the potty.
4. Marion's bottom touches the seat and she immediately exclaims, "All done!"
5. Diaper is put on again and Marion runs off, happy with her potty ride.

This has been a fun process but not really productive. So Brian and I haven't been focusing on potty training. Primarily because thinking about a newly potty trained toddler flying to Europe gives me hives. And she's only 22 months!

Then yesterday happened.

I'm hoping this is a fluke. Or else I expect to be covered with hives until June!

Leaving on a jet plane

Well, in 2 months, 2 weeks, and 1 day we will be.

We bought our tickets tonight! I was worried that if we waited any longer we wouldn't be able to get three seats together on the flight. So we bit the bullet and made this thing a little more real.

And we got a non-stop flight! Score! Changing planes and going through customs with a toddler anxious to run wherever she can didn't sound like the way to start our international move. Hopefully this works to our advantage in Marion's transition. The smoother this goes the better, for all involved. :-)

Boxes and Bubblewrap

I ordered some boxes and bubblewrap today from Staples. Holy hell, that stuff is pricey. I doubt I overbought though. 18 moving boxes, 3 boxes of bubblewrap, and a dish kit will not pack up everything in this house. Which only means we will need more of this stuff eventually. Uh oh.

I also started the process of getting movers this week. I've decided that movers are the way to go. We'll be moving over memorial day weekend and I don't want to kill all of our friends and family with our stuff. Hopefully this will lead to a relatively short and painless move, followed by alot of margaritas and jalapeno cheddar hot dogs.

My daughter is taking smiling to a whole new level

Lately Marion's been smiling really, really hard for the camera. The camera doesn't even have to be pointed at her for her to make a huge grin, squint her eyes, and say "CHEEEEEEEEESE!!!!". Yep, it is cute. But taking a good picture of the goofball is getting harder and harder. Especially since after she makes this face she immediately starts moving and refuses to look back at the camera. This is what most of the pictures on my camera end up looking like.



But once in awhile she won't squint as hard and I manage to take the picture at just the right moment when she is looking at the camera. When the stars align, I capture something like this.

And that makes the hundred of bad pictures worth it. Thank goodness for digital cameras. I'd be wasting a ton of money on film and printing otherwise!

A start date for Brian

Brian talked to Doug, his future boss over in Switzerland, today. We are now looking at a June 9 start date for his job, possibly earlier. We are hoping for that date because we'd like to fly over June 1. This probably won't be settled for another month or two though, so it is all rough planning as of now!

We also won't have housing until we fly over there. The plan is to live in temporary housing for 2-4 weeks or until we find an apartment. If it takes longer for us to find an apartment, we pay whatever we would in rent towards the temporary housing. Doug mentioned to Brian before that finding an apartment hasn't been a problem in a past. Hopefully we find something during our first week over there!

The issues and a resolution

So, we reached an agreement so now I feel like I can talk specifics without jinxing things. Well, without jinxing this portion of the deal.

The buyer requested a list of items following the home inspection. Three are of note.

1. Loose chimney bricks. As a result of the home inspection, he requested we break down and rebuild our chimney.
2. We have a pipe that sticks up out of the ground behind our parking pad. It sticks up about a foot and has a threaded cap on the top of it. Our buyer felt that it could possibly be a fuel tank. Mr Home Inspector suggested, and buyer requested, we hire a company to come out and investigate if this pole is a fuel tank.
3. Our plumbing flow and pressure drops off if you turn two fixtures on at the same time. Buyer requested we replace the incoming water service to the house.

So, we took a different approach for each. Our responses were:

1. We will repoint the brick at the chimney as necessary.
2. No. This was the ridiculous, laughable request in our opinions. A railroad used to run above where this pipe is, it is as far away as possible from the house on our property, and the pipe does not look like a fuel oil tank pipe. Where they got fuel tank from, I'll never know. We've decided it was probably a support pole for a clothes drying rack.
3. No. We've dealt with this for 5 years and replacing the water service has never crossed our minds. We just don't shower if we are doing the laundry. If he wants to replace it after buying the house, fine. We don't want to deal with it.

The response that was emailed to my realtor around 10:30 last night was:

1. No, buyers wants the chimney rebuilt because that is what home inspector said.
2. No issue.
3. Give buyer half the money of the water service replacement so that he could replace.

Fast forward to this morning. My realtor is getting annoyed with these people. The contract doesn't really include negotiating of home inspection terms. Plus they took forever to respond in the first place. Our patience was wearing very thin. Especially since we had a chimney company come out yesterday and were told that all we needed for our chimney was a new chimney crown, minor repointing, and sealant at the flashing. Certainly not a complete rebuild that the genius and slow home inspector said.

So we decided enough was enough. Realtor called buyer's realtor and told her either he signs the addendum stating the terms we sent Saturday evening and were willing to take care of or we put the house back on the market. Then she gave them until noon today for an answer.

Realtor had the signed addendum in her email inbox at 11:36 am.

No word yet...

So tonight is the 48 hour deadline for the buyer's response to our response to the buyer's home inspection request (got that?). Officially it is at 7:34 pm but we are still trying to be nice about it. I'll post about the issues after we receive an answer but I will say I've been nothing but nice and accomodating to this guy. And yet we wait, at every stage of the game.

My realtor called his just before 8 tonight to tell her that we needed an answer, one way or the other. His realtor told mine that he works very hard and with long hours. Mine responded that we all work hard. God I love her!

Well, it is 9:22 pm and still no word. And so I wait, while I work overtime tonight at home.

A common theme

Brian informed me that he finished the paperwork for our visas and sent all of our information to the Switzerland office yesterday. So it looks like now we wait for that to be approved as well. 6-8 weeks to be exact. Then we can book our flights!

When will I ever learn?

I should have known to keep my mouth shut. Or at the very least knock on some wood.

The buyer faxed over his requests as a result of the home inspection at 11:30 pm last night. He had until midnight. We got the list this morning from our realtor. Most were reasonable; however, one was outrageous. Scratching my head, laughable, what were they thinking kind of outrageous. Another was a little reaching and concerning. I'll post about the requests specifically after an agreement with him is reached, one way or the other.

We went back to them accepting the list with the exception of the completely outrageous and the reaching requests. Now we wait. Again.