Tractors!

As I have said before, my son loves tractors. Following Park Day on Wednesday, we drove by the property and saw that a tractor had arrived to remove the dirt from the trenching and smooth out the area where the foundation will be laid. My son was overjoyed at seeing the tractor.

It was nearing lunchtime, but I took him out of the car and we introduced ourselves to the men working. I told them that my son just had to look at the tractor. One of the men offered to give him a ride. Oh what joy filled my little boy's soul! Did he want to go for a ride on the tractor? Did the Earth revolve around the sun? What a silly question.

Thankfully I had my camera and we now have video of the infamous ride on the tractor. Sometimes I think we decided to build a house just for my son's enjoyment in watching it being built.

Decisions, Decisions

It's official, our first cosmetic decision regarding the house has been made. We have chosen a roof color. It took us over a week. But I have called our contractor and the order has been placed. There is no turning back now.

Sometimes I wonder why three adults with no aptitude for decisive decision making decided to build a house together. The number of choices that will need to be made between now and the completion of this project are daunting. But at least we made it through decision number one fairly unscathed.

I had to lobby my mother and husband on going with my choice of roof color, but I was successful. I can be pretty persuasive. If anything, they finally agreed with me to get me to stop talking about it. I don't think I'll win every choice, but I can certainly try!

Pushing Dirt

What a difference a week makes! I guess it has been a little over a week since my last post... Things have really been moving at the property--and I mean that in a literal sense. Grading took place a week ago Monday. B was thrilled to watch the bulldozer and loader work. The man grading the lot was very nice. He let B sit in one tractor while operating the other one.

At this point I have to digress to explain how significant this was to my son. My son is fascinated by big tractors and construction sites. My mom has said that we moved to the right area with all the construction in progress in the Victor Valley. In our backyard, my son has set up his own construction site. I can't even begin to count the number of tractors he has in our backyard. The grandmas love showering him with tractors because of his absolute elation in receiving them. So I cannot stress enough how utterly, completely thrilled my son is to watch tractors at work. Imagine how even more thrilled he was to sit in one of those big machines.

We returned to the property a couple days later to watch the backhoe trench the property. This time my son brought one of his toy tractors to "push dirt" while the backhoe was working. Even C got into the occasion and used her hands to shovel large amounts of dirt (and to try to eat the dirt as babies often do). The only way to convince B to leave was to bribe him with candy and the assurance that in a few days the concrete mixer would come to the property.

Today the forms were laid for the footings and tomorrow rough plumbing will be installed. All in all, it has been amazing to watch the transformation that has occurred at our site. When the property was graded, I was amazed--it was so beautiful. Each step has increased my vision of what our home will be like and so far, I am thrilled.

DDR

On Saturday my family and I traveled "down the hill" to visit my sister and her husband. I told everyone we were going down to celebrate Easter together, but that was just a ruse. I have to be honest and confess... we went down to visit because I wanted to play DDR. What is DDR you ask? It is one of the hot video games out, one of the first interactive games on the market, it is Dance Dance Revolution.

My first exposure to DDR came while I was a graduate student at Cal. A friend held a pool party at his father's home in Marin. In their basement was the arcade version of DDR. It seemed like a lot of fun, but I don't frequent arcades often and I'm not going to spend $1 for less than 5 minutes of play time.

Now I've never been one to play video games. I spent some time playing MUD games on a local BBS while in high school, but even that got a little old after awhile. My sister has always been more fond of video games and her husband even more so. After playing DDR recently at one of my niece's birthday parties, I called my sister to tell her that this was a game she MUST have. She told me that her husband had offered to buy it for her, but she refused. Thankfully she listened to my advice and they are now the proud owners of DDR. And now I have to think of another good excuse to visit my sister, so I can play DDR too.

Bath Time

There is something about bath time at my house--it's hard to explain. It always seems like the kids are thrilled with the announcement of bath time, but by the time their bath is over one or the other or both are crying and mommy is red-faced and unhappy. But all the unhappiness of the day before seems to be forgotten the next day when bath time is announced again.

Because of the problems I've experienced with having a 3 year old and a 9 month old bathing together and being civil, I have been giving each their own bath after dinner. My daughter always needs one because she is in the "I can eat by myself--even if half of dinner lands in my lap" stage and my son spends most of his time outside digging with tractors so he always needs one as well.

Following dinner last night I announce it is bath time. My son asks, "C going to take a bath with me? You want to take a bath with me little girl?" How could I deny his petition? I decided to be brave and attempt to bathe them at the same time.

At the mention of bath my little girl begins pumping her arms and legs in anticipation--bouncing like a little jumping bean. When we get to the end of the hallway I leave C at the doorway to the bathroom. B races ahead of me because he wants to "start" the bath. No sooner had I helped him turn on the water when, to my amazement, I see my daughter climbing to her knees next to the bathtub. C began crawling a few weeks ago, but never has she moved so fast! She definitely didn't want to be left out of the fun.

And bath time was different this time. No one was crying at the end; we truly had a good time. Perhaps this is why my children are so thrilled with the announcement of bath time--we really can have a good time with one another. I just needed to be reminded of how much fun.

Nicknames

My husband has a particular knack of finding nicknames for people. I have had a series of nicknames throughout our courtship. So it is none too surprising that he has been equally skillful in finding nicknames for our children.

My son's most popular nickname is "Bundles of Joyfulness" or "Bundles" for short. This is why I refer to my son as B in this blog. Just recently my husband has settled on a nickname for our daughter. She will now be known as... "Cutesie". This is why I refer to her as C in this blog.

I have no gift in this particular subject. I often call my son "Baby" and my daughter, to distinguish herself from my son, "Baby Girl". Not too brilliant, eh? I don't know what I'll do when the next one comes along; "Hey You" is probably not a good alternative...

Let the Waterworks Begin

Let there be water! Our home plans have gone through the necessary approval process and our contractor has been chomping at the bit, ready to get started building. We have been a little more hesitant in starting since we own a home that we want sold before we start building our new home. A few weeks ago our house went into escrow so we decided it was time to get the ball rolling on our new house.

The first order of business? Install a water meter on the property. We went through the necessary paperwork and were told it would be 3 to 6 weeks before the meter would be installed. So we figured things would start happening around the end of April.

Imagine our surprise when we drove by the property Monday and several sprinklers were running! We officially have water. However, water in the desert is very expensive. Today, we found the sprinklers still going or in the words of my husband, "Money is still raining on our property." We talked with the builder and learned that these sprinklers must run for a few days to completely saturate the ground. That will be one water bill I am not looking forward to seeing.

Elephants

So my son, whom I will refer to as B, is almost 3 years old. These last few months have been a trying time for our relationship. Of course, my daughter, whom I will refer to as C, complicated my relationship with B. And then there is the potty training bit... I won't even go there.

But one of the fun things about this age is my son's new found ability to introduce imaginative play. Just today, right after breakfast, B comes running into the family room saying, "Mommy, look! An elephant! He's not scary. Come and see!" At which point he gleefully grabs my hand and pulls me along to the hallway. I, of course, play along with this ruse, "Oh, no! An elephant? Oh, I'm scared." B reassures me there is nothing to fear--after all, it is only a baby elephant.

At the end of the hall, we come face to face with the baby elephant, say our hellos, and then B scoops him up (evidently this baby elephant came palm sized). I suggest the baby elephant would enjoy being outside. B agrees and off we go to the backyard. B has a certain fascination with all things tractor related so his first order of business is to introduce the elephant to B's backhoe. The elephant rides inside the scoop of the backhoe while B pushes.

I then suggest the elephant may want to check out one of the slides. B hands the palm-sized fellow off to me and we walk over to one of the small slides. We watch as our little elephant slides down and then B picks him up to take him to another slide. At this point I suggest that the elephant may want B to slide down with him. So B climbs up the slide and down they go!

We had a few other adventures before the baby elephant bid us good-bye, but it was fun being pulled into my son's imaginative world for a short while. It is a wonder to watch my son continue to grow and learn. He amazes me.

We Own Dirt!

So the first part to building a home is to find land. Fortunately, we live in the desert so there is plenty of dirt to choose from--albeit expensive dirt. My mother sold her home first and used the proceeds of that sale to buy land. We now own 1 acre of dirt.

There is very little vegetation with the exception of weeds. But there are also some beautiful Joshua Trees. Some people do not care for Joshuas, but my husband loves them and is so happy to build on a lot with Joshua Trees.

Our lot has a good backyard view of the valley. It also faces North which is good for energy efficiency. One element most important to my husband is that our lot is serviced by a public utility. Many of the homes in the area are on well water, but my husband does not want to deal with a well.

So, we own dirt... expensive dirt. And soon our home will be built upon it.

Beginnings

At the advice of a good friend, we have decided to begin a blog of our own. The objective of this blog is to keep family and friends current on our lives. Since we have viewed very few blogs ourselves, this will be a work in progress.

I will probably be the author of most of our blogs, so let me introduce myself. I am a late twenties wife with two adorable children, my son who will be turning 3 this week and my 9 month old daughter. My husband and I currently live with my mother. She can no longer care for herself in her own home (even though she lived only 3 doors down from us), so we have decided to sell our homes and build one house for us all to live in comfortably.

Part of our decision to begin this blog is to chronicle the building of our new home. But we would also like a place to tell of our other adventures--most notably, the raising of our young family.