PSA: Don't forget to put away the glue when you go to the basement.

I went down to do some laundry after dinner, and came back up a few minutes later to see Nigel smearing Nora's glue on construction paper. His hands are a mess. But I remember deliberately smearing Elmers glue on my hands when in elementary school, just so I could dry it and peel it off. So no harm done, right?

Wrong.

It is in his hair. He's got a very punk rock 'do now. But it was nearly bedtime, and he'd had a bath today already, so I need to put off trying to clean him up until the morning. Unfortunately, he really dislikes having his hair washed. Really, really dislikes it. And I think there will be some serious scrubbing involved. That is going to be one sad bathtime. yikes.



For those of you who know me, I took pictures. Let me know if you'd like me to email them to you.)

I should have named my son Harry

Because he's quite the escape artist.

I was out of the house for a couple of hours this morning, and my husband was at home with the kids. Now, our boy Nigel (22 months old) is quite a handful. He's a really fun kid, but he can also scale any wall ond open any door. So we've got baby gates and door locks all over the place. (It's like running the 25-meter hurdles to answer the phone, not to mention the locks on the medicine cabinets, drawers, oven, refrigerator, the list goes on and on.)

So, back to today's story. Daddy's playing with Nora, and all-of-a-sudden he realized that Nigel was absent. So he starts calling for him. No answer. So he looks upstairs. Looking all around, in our closet, the bathroom, etc. Still no Nigel. He eventually goes outside to find our "little" boy, bare feet, and still in jammies walking down the alley towards State Route 24, Half a block from the highway!

!!!

Daddy ran full tilt, and caught the little Houdini and brought him back in.

Turns out, he walked from the living room, climbed over the gate into my office, then through that door to our back door, unlocked that door, and then pushed open the screen door. He figured it was a nice day for a walk. Apparently also a good day to give his father a heart attack.

I hate keeping ourselves locked inside so securely that family and friends cannot just stop by, but we obviously have no choice. So if you want to come over, give me a call first, so I can be ready let you in.

Follow-through is not my strong point.

After all the dirt and grime from yesterday's carpet adventures, I'm not in the mood to work on that room any more today. Unfortunately, I really don't have a choice. I cannot let that grimy floor exist in this house any more. First, there's the odious task of trying various cleaners to figure out which one will do the most cleaning with the least amount of effort. Then, the actual cleaning of 189 square feet of 20-year-old dirt.

I guess I'd better get started...

Wall-to-wall carpet is yucky

I just spent the last couple of hours pulling up old carpet. It was gross under there. I will never *ever* put carpet in my house again. Area rugs? Sure. But if I cannot lift it up every month or two to sweep under there, it won't be in my house. no way.

Now for a late lnch, then on to pulling the hundreds of staples out of the pine floor.

We live in an old house. Thanks to some record-keeping snafus down at the county courthouse, we are not exactly sure how old. The best we can tell, it was built around 1900, then there was a pretty substantial remodel done in the 1930's (or early 40's).

When we moved in to this house last November, we thought the "family room" was a later addition, and didn't have the same wood floors as in the rest of the main floor. So we kept the dark green carpet from the previous owners. I didn't like it, but there really wasn't much money left in the budget to add new flooring in that room. And with such pretty heart pine floors in the other rooms, there 's no way I wanted to lay laminate flooring in the family room.

But then, we had a cat who decided that it was too difficult to go under the baby gate to the basement for her bathroom needs. So she peed in front of my daughter's play kitchen. ew. And then off to the side, by the toy box. double ew. So we shampooed the carpet. I swear it smells worse. I think that the previous owners had had an animal or two, and the carpet cleaning jut reacitvated old smell. {insert gagging sensation here}

So I said to myself "That's it!" and pulled up a larger section of the carpet last night, trying to figure out how much money I was looking at to replace the carpet with hardwood. My husband just got a bit of a quarterly bonus this week, and I could use that for the flooring instead of sticking it in the kitchen renovation budget. But, alas, I found that the spot I originally looked at (near the basement stairs) was not indicative of the whole room. Read: we have hardwood under there! I am ecstatic. I cannot wait until Monday to call some local refinishers and get quotes. There's some sort of adhesive on the boards, but I am sure that it's nothing a professional floor guy couldn't handle.

So today's mission is to avoid the temptation to attempt ripping the old carpet out of that room by myself, with my two kids underfoot. I don't know if I am strong enough to resist that temptation. I really really really want that stinky, ugly carpet gone.

I'll let you know tomorrow if I managed to hold off on the room destruction...