Dancing

Just a quick  video for you tonight. Maren is a huge fan of 80s music, especially  Michael Jackson. She likes a little bit of Whitney Houston too. This is what dancing generally looks like from our physically cautious little toddler :)

Toddler life

 Sometimes life with a toddler can be challenging.  Maren has been throwing more tantrums. Sometimes she wants  to be held by daddy and daddy only for a prolonged period of time, and if Jeff sets her down she screams, but just thinking that he will set her down will start her screaming so sometimes she is screaming loudly in his face.  She is smart, and she has clear wants and desires, but sometimes she doesn't realize that her particular desire is physically impossible.

Maren wants to do more and more by herself, but she is not really capable of doing a lot of the things that she wants to do.  It can be hard watching her struggle, but it is much worse if we try to help when she doesn't want it.

Fortunately, her language is getting better and better, so she is more and more able to tell us what she wants, including when she wants help and when she doesn't.  At the same time, sometimes she asks for something and we can't or won't provide it immediately, which can lead to a tantrum. And if we do provide what she wanted  but we are maybe 20 seconds too late providing it, it is completely ruined and she doesn't want it anymore.

 It is incredible watching how much she is learning every single day, but it is hard seeing how difficult life is for her much of the time.  Being a toddler seems awfully hard.   She knows about so many things, like using the toilet, that she can't do. With teething, constantly falling down, being in a wet diaper all the time,   having tons of colds but being unable to blow her nose, etc.,  she is physically  uncomfortable a lot of the time. She wants to communicate and does her best, but sometimes we have no idea what she is trying to say. It must be terribly frustrating.

 I would say that most of the time things are pretty great though. If not most of the time, then enough of the time :-) Here are a couple of videos of recent fun times:

House

The last few weeks have been a bit challenging, partly because everyone was sick, but also because we have been working on trying to buy a house. This has been a ton of work, and has distracted me from most other things.

We like our current house, but it isn't really perfect as a long-term home. It is fairly small, close to a road that is essentially a highway (meaning we hear traffic noise), and close enough to the airport to occasionally smell jet fuel. It is open and bright, but that means that there is essentially only one space - it can feel messy unless the whole house is clean and uncluttered. At the same time, this house is very livable, and we have not had any interest in moving into a home that isn't quite what we want.

I have been obsessively checking real estate listings for the past year, and very few promising houses have come up. Then about a month ago, one was listed that almost seemed too good to be true. It is in a perfect location, right in the middle of my favourite neighbourhood - four blocks from the creek/path/park system in one direction, four blocks from groceries/shops/restaurants in the other direction, on a very quiet street, directly across from a playground and about one block from a K-8 school. It is much larger than our current house, and has much more character (built in 1919), but is structurally in better condition than any house we have seen in this city (aside from new construction). Also, it is within our price range.

We made an offer right away after seeing it, and the house passed all inspections. The one catch is that it is a two-story house, and I can't physically manage stairs multiple times per day. So after multiple construction company estimates regarding installing a home elevator and some back and forth with the bank, we had to consider other options. Putting in an elevator wasn't going to work.

But all was not lost. We looked into installing a stair chair lift, and it will work - and will be a fraction of the cost, and easily affordable. We signed papers with the bank on Friday. So we are moving!

I will post more about the house after we move, which we are planning for late April. I am so relieved to have made this work - I don't know when another house like this would have come on the market.

I can't help posting another Maren video - she is continuing to learn at a rapid pace, and amazes me almost daily. Here is her newest trick:

Fake spring

We are all feeling better compared with last weekend, although not 100% yet. It seems that Jeff was actually hit hardest with this cold, and it is the worst cold any of us have had in recent memory. Jeff and Maren both had fevers, and while Maren and I are both still coughing a little, Jeff has some nasty lung issues remaining. But we are all improving.

We are about halfway through winter semester, and winter lasts all semester long here. It won't really be until the end of April that winter is completely over and we are sure it is spring. That said, we have had a couple of "fake springs" this winter, where the highs are above freezing for several days in a row, and lots of the snow melts. We went out for a walk/trike ride today and it definitely felt like spring. We didn't even need to wear hats. But it is supposed to get much colder again soon, and probably will stay below freezing for a couple of weeks before we see any more melting.

The only picture of Maren on my phone from this week: