I'm going to be honest, I don't remember much that happened this week. It's a blur of tummy bug symptoms and a slow recovery for me and Alice. Unfortunately, we lost all our potty training. Our beautiful potty training. Our Alice-guided, no rewards or prompting required, easy breezy beautiful potty training. Gone, all gone. The tummy bug, without getting too graphic, required us to put Alice in pull-ups all week. By the time the sickness was gone and we tried doing away with the pull-ups, Alice had developed a healthy fear of all toilets and we had to start back at square 1. But this time rewards have been required, accidents have been frequent, and public outings are temporarily on hold once more. Just in time for spring break. I am feeling very cooped up, but at least I'm not feeling very nauseated anymore.
A highlight from our week was Jared and I attending my Dad's millennial choir concert. It was so lovely to be able to see one of his concerts in person after a decade of living out of state. The production was beautiful and the music was lovely. Can't complain about the company, either. It was nice to get out on a proper date. And now, some pictures from our week:
Another month, another tummy bug. Jack woke up painfully early on Wednesday morning, before Jared was even up for the day, and told Jared, "I'm not feeling so good." He proceeded to have a fairly awful and messy morning and stayed home from school for the next 3 days. I was distraught. Not only did we go through this painful song and dance already just last month, we were also coming off a 4 day weekend early in March, with a 9-day spring break happening at the end of March. What I didn't need in the middle of March was a 5-day sick weekend with everyone feeling terrible, messy, exhausted, and grumpy. But alas.
Jack went down first, and then Alice soon after. Tough times for my potty-training little girlie pop. I tripled down on hand washing and sanitization. Usually when sickness hits our home, I more or less have an attitude of, "Buckle up. The only way out is through." And resign myself to everyone in the family most likely catching the sickness and falling like dominoes. This time the feeling of violently throwing up and tossing and turning in a feverish fit all night was a little too fresh in my rearview mirror, and I determined not to go down without a fight. Jack went down on Wednesday, Alice on Thursday, and Jared ran out of a patient's room to vomit on Friday, then came home early. By Saturday afternoon, my hands were chapped from being washed every 3 minutes for 3 days, but I still wasn't sick and thought I had made it through unscathed. I think we know where this is going. Hooray--another blog post about sick symptoms!
Sunday morning I took a turn for the worse. Stomach cramps, exhaustion, muscle aches. By Sunday afternoon Jared was feeling well enough that we swapped positions and I took his place on bedrest. And it is from that bedrest that I am writing this blog post. I am holding onto hope that this is as bad as it's going to get for me and I won't progress to throwing up. I guess we'll find out tonight. Either way, I'm preparing to be unfit to write a blog post tomorrow, so drafting this post now seemed like my best bet for getting it up in time. I'm grateful the sickness has at least been staggered, instead of everyone going down at once.
And now, per usual, some pictures from our week:
Well that week was a wild ride.
Lat week I mentioned a home in Highland we were interested in. Mostly we were interested in the neighborhood, but Highland is very expensive and the price was right on this lovely new home in the neighborhood we loved, so we were seriously considering a home purchase.
On Monday we heard that the person who had been planning on buying the house still hadn't put down any earnest money, and so if we were willing to put down the earnest money that day, then the house would be ours. After asking a few followup questions we learned that the earnest money was only a couple hundred dollars, and it would buy us 30 days with dibs on the house before any further downpayment money would be required, and if we decided to back out during those 30 days, we would almost definitely be able to get the earnest money back anyway. We knew that wasn't a guarantee, but we were willing to put down a couple hundred to buy ourselves 30 days to make the decision. So that's what we did! We wrote up a check and started dreaming up what a life in that house/neighborhood might look like.
We had to rush home after writing the check, but that evening I drove back to spend more time walking around the lot our home would actually be built on, and walking through a home of the same floorplan that had just been framed down the road. I immediately felt a little bit "off." Not about the neighborhood, but about the house and lot. The model home we had walked to was up on a hill, with a nice deck off the back and a lovely daylight basement with 10-foot-tall ceilings. Our home would be on a lot lower on the hill, with a tiny fishbowl of a backyard being fully eclipsed by the house on the hill behind it (so no privacy, and no nice views). There would be no deck because we were on the bottom of the hill, and no daylight basement or exterior entrance to the basement. I was getting weird vibes about the neighbors next door (nothing specific, just a feeling). Keep in mind, this was the last home lot with our desired floor plan available in this community. We couldn't just pick a different lot. I decided that even though there were definite drawbacks to the lot our home would be on, living in this neighborhood could be worth the drawbacks.
As I drove back home, I left a voice message for my bestie to give her an update on the situation. I could not stop crying. I just felt so uncertain about which house/neighborhood we'd be happier in long-term, and it's a big decision! I also worried that now that we had put earnest money down, Jared would be all in and unwilling to keep considering the home in Lehi. Which obviously is not how I was feeling. I was happy to have 30 more days and made a plan and task list of places to visit and information to gather with Jared to be able to make the right decision together.
The next day, Jared and I drove back to the neighborhood to walk through a different model home with different finishes, walk around our lot together, and gather a bit more information. As we walked through the model homes and the lot, I felt nothing. I could tell Jared was really excited, but I couldn't get to excited myself. I didn't necessarily want to run, but I still felt uneasy and uncertain. When we had gotten back in our car to head home, we drove past two girls around my age talking to each other on a sidewalk behind where our house would be. I asked Jared, "Should I go talk to them and ask how they like living here?" And he said, "Yes, definitely." So I left Jared and the kids in the car and went to talk to these girls for about half an hour.
I asked them what they liked and didn't like about the neighborhood, schools, home builder, etc. And honestly, even though they both insisted it's a great neighborhood, they had an awful lot of concerning tidbits of information to share, without an excitement level about the good parts to match the concerns. They mentioned LOTS of issues that everyone in the neighborhood had had with the homebuilder. Big, structural issues. They mentioned a paranoid neighbor who was always knocking on everyone's doors and yelling at kids and filing complaints with the police for weird things. Most concerning, and what closed the door completely for Jared, was the mention that the neighborhood sat right in the path of where a lot of the mountain's snowmelt would flow, and they had had issues with flooding in their own homes (which the builder wasn't helpful about fixing), and the lot that our home would be on seemed to have the worst flooding problems of them all. In fact, there was a bit of a pond on our lot already, even without having had rain recently.
When I asked the girls if they loved the schools and big park across the street, which were selling points for us, they kind of shrugged and were like, "Ya! They're great." But they didn't seem overly jazzed or have any points of excitement to share like, "There are flocks of young neighbor kids who play night games in the park all summer!" or "We just love all the teachers we've had at the schools so far." It was more like, "Ya the schools are great. They're all really far and the bus drop is far too, so you'll have to drive your kids no matter what. And they can ride their bikes but there's a crossing guard who only shows up half the time, and they'll have to ride in front of the paranoid neighbor's house and he'll probably come out and yell at your kid. And the park has great walking paths, but you know there's no playground, right?" Just, not the level of excitement I would have expected for the two things that had drawn us to this area in the first place. And when I asked about the wind they said it was just as bad in Highland as it is at Traverse Mountain. So . . . it was a bit of a buzzkill conversation, but also really enlightening. Jared was a firm NO on the flooding risk. I asked if I could have a few days to be certain and come to peace with backing out.
By Wednesday, Jared told me that our earnest money check still hadn't been cashed, and he would like to back out now before that even happened if I was willing. We spent a few hours hiking around the Lehi neighborhood next to us and both felt really good about continuing to pursue our home in the Lehi neighborhood. Two things that helped a lot with that decision were (1) The sudden presence of an enormous water retention bowl being dug about a 3-minute walk from where our home would be. It will likely have grass planted on it and be a great place for the kids to play. And just off this bowl will be access to mountain trails. So basically, our biggest draw in Highland will now exist right here in our Lehi neighborhood. And (2) Asking Jack if he'd rather move to the area with the big park across the street but have to start over at a new school, or stay here where he's started to make good friends and enjoy school. He thought about it for a while and then said he'd rather stay here. When we told him there would likely be a big grassy bowl here too, it was a no-brainer for him. So now we are full-steams-ahead on buying a home here in Lehi. With even more confidence than before, too. That made this wild week a worthwhile experience in the end. But wow. I am very ready to have a year where we don't have an enormous life change coming up or huge life decision to make. Probably in 2027. That's going to be a chill time--you'll see. (Famous last words.)
We are officially potty training! We were hoping to start over the weekend so that Jared could be around to take it in shifts or get Jack out of the house if the going got tough. But Alice had other plans. She was so excited to have her potty seat arrive, and so intent on pulling off her diapers constantly, that we ended up starting on Tuesday. She took the reigns entirely. I was still dragging my feet, hoping to wait until Jared could be home on the weekend. I needn't have worried though--she basically potty trained herself. She didn't have a single accident the first two days. She went both ways in the potty and even had some successful outings. I didn't pump her full of liquids. I didn't need to use any rewards. I didn't set a timer and give her constant reminders to go. She would just wait until she felt the need, yell "frog!" or "potty!" and run herself to the bathroom. Our biggest problems those first few days were (a) she is very independent and wanted to do 100% of the wiping herself, and (b) she was very upset when we changed her out of her undies and into a pull up to sleep (she's still in a crib--we tried transitioning her out of the crib this week but it was just too much change at once).
We've had one or two accidents since then, but overall she's doing great. I know it'll be a few months before things feel easier without diapers than they did with. (I forgot about needing to keep a car potty handy and being aware of where the nearest restroom is on every outing, and having backup clothes in case of an accident.) But she's excited to be taking on this milestone and we are so proud of her. We love our Alice Lark. And now some photos from our week:
Our Jack is 7! That number feels like the beginnings of "big kid" years and out of the little boy years. Bittersweet. Jack chose to celebrate with a pizza dinner, then bowling and arcade games at Fat Cats. Grandma and Grandpa Haines came, and then we went back to our house for cake and to open presents. He had a wonderful day, and it was a reminder that we don't need to do something elaborate to make it a great birthday. Jack getting to do exactly what he requested--bowline and arcade games--was the perfect, happiest birthday he could have had. Jared had a happy birthday too because our bowling lane kept glitching, so halfway through the game when the kids were starting to wear down anyway, he requested a refund and we were able to move onto arcade games and cake before it got too late.
We're starting to get some warmer weather, and Alice wants to spend all her time "outside." She's starting to talk more, and she is basically begging to be potty trained. We ordered a potty seat that looks like a frog (she chose it). It arrives today, but she has spent the last 24 hours yelling "FROG!" to let us know that she wants it here now. When she says "frog" it sounds more like a particular bad word, so it's a bit of a jump-scare when she yells it out of nowhere. We will start potty training later this week once we've prepped physically and emotionally. Wish us luck. And now for some pictures from our week:
