Long standing jokes with Noah

I can't believe our boy is going to be 8 in a few days.  It's getting harder to remember life before him.  (At my age that's not really surprising!) 

I started playing with his little feet while Ching was still pregnant.  She'd be asleep, I'd have insomnia, and Noah would be moving around - I assumed it was his feet.  Somewhere along the way I started joking with him at bedtime that I was going to eat his feeties.  I'd joke how delicious they looked, that I might put some bbq sauce on them.  He always squeals and says NO, Don't Eat The Feeties.  We still do this some nights.

The other thing we've done for a few years is joke that whenever he has the hiccups it's because he's growing.  Every time he gets them I tell him to stop growing. 

Traveling Man

As school was ending, Noah was telling his teachers about his upcoming trip to Colorado.  His special ed teacher has worked with him since kindergarten and loves to hear about his travels.  We got to talking about how many places he's been to.  Here's the list - not really in any order:

Texas - Dallas, Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin and Galveston.  Some multiple times to visit family.
Las Vegas, NV  He was too young to remember this one, too.  Now he wants to go again.
Nashville, TN  Twice. Ching and I wanted to go, it's the most like Texas without flying.
Ocean City, MD  I think 3 times, he likes the beach there.
Atlantic City, NJ  He was too young to remember his first beach.  Second time he was scared of the aquarium.
Warren, NJ  to visit family
Philadelphia, PA
NYC, NY.  His idea - he loved taking the train there and everything about it.
West Virginia - we took a scenic train ride that was cool.
Denver and Breckenridge, CO.  So happy he really enjoyed the mountains!

That's a lot in seven years!  He loves it.  Before we even left Denver last week he was asking where we're going next! 

I, like so many other moms who blog about their kid(s), started off strong when he was a baby and toddler, then lost the thread as he got older.  Some stop because the kid asks them to, or the kids become more aware of being written about.  Some because like just gets too busy. 

For me it just became easier to do quick updates on facebook.  But now we know they're evil.  And, honestly, it would be very time consuming to get all that in a format that he could show his kids. 

But, Noah is still such an interesting kid!  And I love him more than ever.  Maybe I miss writing 

Our boy is a planner.  And a master asker of questions.  When I told him he was going to have dance rehearsal this Saturday, the questions weren't just about what time, and exactly where, but down to the level of would I walk in with him or just drop him off.  Ha!

Bath Time With Noah

He again told me just how very old I am. Which led to more talks on dying. I told him I'll be around to see his grandchildren. Which led to having to reassure him that girls have babies and not boys. Then he told me him and his bestie had babies in the 80s. (not sure where he heard "the 80s" but he thinks it's ancient history) HUH? So I asked if he was going to live with (marry is not really a word he gets) her in the future. He said yes, but he still wanted to live with me, too. And in this house, he doesn't want to sell this house.

If he wasn't in the bathtub I would have tried to record some of this.  He's so crazy.  

Real Estate Update

There have been no updates because there has been no real estate.  I spent the first few months after I got my license doing the normal new agent stuff.  I sent out letters and postcards to my neighborhood.  I hosted a couple of open houses for another agent.  (This is supposed to result in getting buyers who don't have agents yet to work with me.)  I tried helping another agent find tenants for his rental listing.  (The goal here is that potential renters either decide to become buyers, or over the long term become buyers in the future who will remember me.)  None of this resulted in anything.  Nothing.  I didn't even end up finding the renters who moved into the rental. 

During all of this, my personal life was going through some of the most down times maybe ever.  The worst of it hit just as about the time I was going to finally start cold calling people in my neighborhood. 

Now, it's summer and Noah is home.  And while I know there are tons of moms who make work and being a stay at home mom happen, apparently I'm not one of them. 


So I'm at a professional impasse.  I can't do anything for a couple more weeks until Noah is at least at summer school three hours a day.  But it's hard to be any kind of motivated when the meager effort I've put forth so far has been futile.  I'm not ready to call it quits yet.  I just need one thing to go right.

Conversation With Noah - Puppies

Our boy listens to everything.  Every.Thing. 

While putting him to bed, I told Ching she can talk with the vet about when to schedule Bloo's girl surgery.  (Bloo was in there with us being her little bit crazy self.)  Noah asked what we were talking about.  Now, not only do I have an extremely hard time lying to him, we also have a general policy of telling him the most truth we can for his age and such.  We simply said Bloo would have a little surgery so that she wouldn't have puppies in the future. 

Oh My.  First, it took a long time to clarify that there are currently no puppies in Bloo's tummy.  He's very familiar with babies in tummies because two of our friends have very recently had babies.  It was also difficult to explain "never in the future" because he's not great with time, and his "future" generally consists of stringing together tomorrows - ie. the day after tomorrow is "tomorrow tomorrow". 

Then he asks us Why Do You Hate Puppies??  And we busted up laughing.  He thinks puppies are wonderful and beautiful even when they come out the belly button and are a little bloody.  (Oh yes.)

At this point we really wished we'd been recording this whole conversation.  It was quite circular. 

Noah now wants to breed puppies so he can give them away. 

God is Good Part Two

How funny I never got around to publishing the previous post.  Probably so many reasons for that. 

I can't really explain the last four months at this time.  I have traveled from one of the darkest times in my life to one of at least renewed hope and optimism.  Ching has had her own journey during this time as well.  I'll leave that to her if she decides to share.  I tend to see these journeys at Divine intervention.  In the darkness I was able to reach out to a couple of friends just enough to ask for prayer. 

Anyway. 

The other night we took Noah to his first concert.  We've been listening to Clean Bandit since Rather Be was getting decent air play.  When Ching saw they'd be playing at DC's 9:30 Club we thought Noah would really enjoy it, even if it did fall on a school night!  Zara Lasson was the opening act, and while I didn't know her name, I had heard a few of her songs.  She's really good.  Noah seemed to like her music, he was sort of head banging and then dancing his little heart out.  It filled my heart with joy for him.  We didn't get to hear all of Clean Bandit's set, but that was ok. 

It was also refreshing to me to get out and hear some live music and recall all the shows we went to see back when we lived in Austin.  It did my heart and soul good. 

Back to the previous post and Ching's job situation.  It ended up even more convoluted than written.  The company that took a chance and hired her before they knew if they'd won the contract - did NOT win the contract.  Sigh.  Once again, though, the recruiters there were so cool and found Ching another job within the company.  Even better, it got her back to her previous salary.  Worse, it's now at CIA headquarters - which will be her worst commute yet.  Today was her last day at the location she's been at for almost a year and a half. 

Due to the transition period, she's been able to be home in the mornings and cook some breakfast and spend time with Noah.  We're really going to miss that come Monday. 

As for me and the real estate endeavor - I'll try to write about that later.  So far, nothing is happening.  But I'm going to keep at it a while longer.  Nothing in the past four months has been conducive to getting a lot done work wise.  We'll see how that is going forward.