Status of our house

As of right now, we haven't shown the house in over 2 months. We dropped the price by $5,000 when we came back from our vacation, but still no bites...not even any lookers. The price of gas isn't helping make our house look anymore attractive either with it being 10 km from town. As of today, the price of gas is $1.29/L which translates to $4.88/gal. So buyers can buy a house closer to town for more money than our house, therefore closer to their work (presumably) and shopping, and end up saving the difference in gas. I can hardly blame buyers for not being interested in even looking at our house. However, I am not that interested in building another house that I am willing to give our current house away at a low price.

The house we wanted to build is almost identical to the house we currently live in. We just figured we could sell our place, make a tidy profit, and be able to afford to build a brand new house for not much more mortgage than we currently have. As the price that we would be able to get for our current house goes down, the amount of our mortgage on the other end would go up, and we are not interested in that. So this is our plan of action...

Our real estate contract ends at the end of June. In the meantime, we are getting quotes to do renovations at our current house to make it everything that our new house was going to be. This includes changing out our wood/forced air electric furnace for a heat pump, replacing the roof, replacing the siding on the house and garage, adding a full bathroom/laundry room in the basement, and completing the entryway complete with closets and shelves at our back door area. And we're not changing our listing price, so if somebody comes along and is willing to pay, we will sell and build. Otherwise, we will let the contract run out and start into our renovation projects in July. We intend to fund this renovation project with the sale of our other building lots, so we still won't have as much into this house as we would if we built a brand new one. Not to mention that our landscaping is already done here which is one thing we weren't including in the price of our new house.

I will let you know how this turns out.

Aly Update

Aly's mom found another place for Aly to go until she is finished her part-time job in June. T told her that it wasn't necessary to take her out now, that she would continue keeping her until June, but she started at the new place this week. For 2 years, Aly's mom has had Aly on a waiting list for a daycare at the school she wants her to go to, but the waiting list is years long and I think she is still 15th on the list or something. Ultimately she wanted Aly to go to the school's daycare program and T was just an interim daycare provider. I sure hope Aly gets the care and attention she deserves.

As an aside, I haven't had any trouble dropping Makayla off at T's anymore. She is excited to go there again.

Trouble at the babysitter's

Over the last couple of months, I've noticed that Makayla hasn't been as excited to go to her sitter T's as she used to be. It wasn't really obvious at first, but I could tell there was a slight change.

Makayla is a kid who likes her own personal space and doesn't like other kids up in her face. She comes by this honestly as I am the same way. There was one little girl, Aly (2 1/2), who is a very "in your face" kind of kid. She was always excited when Makayla got there and would come up very close to greet her at the door. I would try to block Aly a bit so that Makayla could get her coat and boots off. This seemed to work.

During this time, problems had been escalating with Aly. Aly wasn't listening to T and she was being very rough with the other kids, some of them only 14 months old. And the younger ones were starting to imitate some of the more negative sides of Aly's behaviour. T had a chat with her mom to find out what sort of discipline she was using at home for these sorts of things so the sitter could be consistent. The mom's response was "I just ignore it." T knew that ignoring it wasn't an option at her house since the other kids were getting hurt.

I'm not sure I can adequately describe this woman. The mother (25 years old) just finished up her education degree, so she thinks that she knows quite a bit more about how to deal with children than most people do, because she read it in a book somewhere. She would recommend books for T (who has looked after children in her home for 14+ years) to read. The mother would belittle T and often criticize how she was looking after her daughter. But yet, even when she wasn't working (spring break, etc.), she still brought her daughter to T's because she needed a "me day". She would threaten to take her daughter to another daycare (which T secretly hoped would happen). Not only that, but the mother criticized some other parents (myself included) because our children weren't including her daughter often enough for her liking. On top of that, she had the nerve to tell off T's husband when he dared to look at her thong when she bent over in front of him. There is no love lost between this mother and many of us.

I knew her teaching job was coming to an end at the end of April, and secretly I was glad since I suspected that Aly's behaviour was affecting how Makayla was enjoying her time at T's. Just before she finished, she found out that she had gotten a part-time job at the school for 2 mornings a week for 6 weeks. So she asked T to keep her daughter during that time and possibly another day each week since she would need at least one "me day". She would then be off for the summer.

Aly came back on Tuesday. During that morning, after some pretty serious incidents, T realized that she just wouldn't be able to keep Aly any longer than the end of June. T has only ever had to recommend to 2 mothers that their children would be better off going somewhere else, and she really struggles with this since she wants to please everybody. But she figured that since Aly's behaviour was deteriorating instead of improving, she was obviously doing something wrong with her and she might be better served going somewhere else. When she brought this up to Aly's mom, she started blaming Makayla (not yet 3) and another kid that they weren't including her daughter enough which is why she was acting out. This comment (and others) reminded T why she had to do this.

I think a lot of Aly's issues stem from wanting attention from her mom. Her mom is a great one for telling us all what the books say about raising children, but I think she's spending too much time reading and not putting the information to good use on her own child. She has great intentions when it comes to how she wants to help the kids at school, but she should really start at home with her daughter. T has mentioned that she is certain Aly understands when her mom drops her off for her frequent "me days". T has even caught the mom driving by her house after work (i.e. going home for some more "me time") without picking up Aly. I really feel for this child because she is a good kid.

Punta Cana vacation

Clay and I returned from Punta Cana, Dominican Republic one week ago. We usually go away with other couples, but we couldn't convince anybody to go this year. Due to that, we decided to stay at a 5* resort since we didn't have to concern ourselves with anyone else's vacation budget. We even splurged and upgraded our room to a swim-up room. Well, it was worth every penny!

We stayed at the Majestic Colonial.
From the time we arrived in the lobby, we were in awe at how beautiful this resort is.


Once we got to our room, we couldn't believe that we were fortunate enough to stay here for a whole week. Every room at the resort is a suite. We were greeted with champagne when entered our room.We had a nice large room with lots of space to unpack.
There were even the double sinks in the bathroom area. I didn't get a picture, but the shower was big enough for 3 people.
The whirlpool tub in the middle of the room was a nice feature. We noticed in the newlyweds rooms, the maids would set up a bubble bath for when the couple returned to their room.
This was the extra we got with our swim-up room upgrade - an outdoor Jacuzzi tub and our own lounge chairs which were much more comfortable than the regular ones.
There is no way that I could adequately explain the pool. It ran throughout the middle of the resort. It started near the lobby and ended down by the beach. It must have been 1/2 a kilometer long. There were about 5 bridges that crossed it so you could get from one side to the other. There were a couple of jetted areas in this pool. The water in those areas wasn't any warmer since it was just a part of the regular pool.


Now the beach was out of this world. I have never been anywhere with such a beautiful beach. You could walk for miles in either direction. There were all kinds of chairs and shade umbrellas so you didn't have to get out at the crack of dawn to reserve your seats for the day. We spent our mornings on the beach and our afternoons next to the pool.




One of my favourite parts of the trip was when Clay and I went parasailing. He has wanted to go for years, but I've been too chicken. He finally convinced me...and I loved it. We will definitely do this again.

Overall, Punta Cana was lovely and the resort was the best I've ever been to. I would highly recommend it to anyone. In fact, we may even be back there next year!

Makayla update

Makayla will be 3 years old in two months. As of now, she knows her left from her right and has started to recognize words and not just letters. She recognizes her name as well as some short words (cat, me, no, yes). She loves to play games on the computer. She knows how to put the CD in the computer, start the game, play it and shut it down all by herself. She has some Disney preschool games that she loves to play.

She has been faithfully using the toilet since 2 weeks ago and hasn't had an accident. Last week, she started waking up dry in the morning and now doesn't want anything to do with a wet bum. There were a couple of nights where she woke up in the night to pee, but overall, she has been sleeping fine and waiting until morning to pee. I have to start paying attention to when she is drinking in the evening so I can stop her with enough time before bedtime so she won't get up in the night. The funniest part is that she has been sleeping in a twin bed with a bed rail for quite some time, but she still won't get out of bed herself. She still calls for me to come get her out even though she can get out on her own.

Clay and I leave to go to the Dominican Republic in just over 2 weeks. We're really looking forward to the trip as this has been a long winter. We've been prepping Makayla about her staying at Nana's house while we're away. She was fine last year when we went away and I know she will be fine this year, but she is the type of kid who needs to know stuff in advance. She doesn't work well with no notice.

Still so much snow!

Our house hasn't been showing that much as we still haven't had the best of weather. We just start to get some nice mild days and then it snows again. Our realtor tells me that the whole real estate market in the city is slow right now due to the weather. She says that buyers want to see what is under all that snow. Unfortunately it could be July before that happens!

Here is what our house looked like in the fall.
Here it is now. We are buried in 4 to 5 feet of snow around the house. Our plowed snowbank next to the garage. We needed a loader to push that snow up there. This is our back walkway that has walls of snow around it. Now you can appreciate why I don't bother shovelling it anymore. My arms can't lift the snow up on top of that snowbank. Here is all we can see of Makayla's swingset. There is a slide and a Little Tikes car parked beside the swings, but we haven't seen them as they have been buried since December.
I am counting down the days until our vacation in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic!

Potty training - Follow-up

I think we have potty training down as we've had no accidents since last Wednesday. Makayla is still a bit nervous to poop on the toilet, so she will hold it until she urgently has to go. But she will use the toilet at that point.

She woke up this morning and I could hear her calling to me "I have to go pee" over and over again. I went in to get her, and lo and behold, her diaper was dry. We went to the bathroom where she peed. I guess we'll see if this dry diaper in the morning thing happens more often.