Magrilless

So while Maggie was in Albuquerque last week, Bill and I got down and dirty with the kitchen carpet. I still don’t understand why anyone would decide to put carpet in the kitchen and laundry room. But whatever. We just know we didn’t want it anymore. It was ugly, it was dirty, it was stinky, and it wasn’t the greatest for potty training a naked child.

So we got down to business. We knew that it was ugly old linoleum under there, partially scraped off, partially covered in glue from some previous layer. And we were not happily disappointed. Mostly though, there was just a lot of dirt. Decades of fine particles sifting through the carpet and pad to be trapped on top of that confetti linoleum. Yuck!

We went to the big chain home improvement store and bought the cheapest laminate flooring we could find. When we redo the entire kitchen in a few years, we want something easy to remove, and something that wasn’t a big financial investment for that short time. Thanks to some help from Santa in the form of gift certificates, this project cost us just under $100.

And boy was that a good price for the results! We feel cleaner, healthier, less embarrassed — just better. It’s not perfect. If you’re a contractor or perfectionist, you may not want to look too closely. But it sure feels like a thousand times better to us, and it will certainly do the job.

Oh, and guess how many boards we had left over at the end. Zero! Last board in the last box filled the last hole. Booyat!

She still doesn’t do the smile on command thing. Well, she thinks she’s doing it. But, what would you call that? Pain? Gas? Sarcasm? One new skill that is improving: winking. It used to be she would blink both eyes when we told her to wink back at us. Now she closes both eyes but opens one before the other, so it’s kind of a blink/wink. Pretty cute and she’s proud of her progress.

Maggie spent much of this past week in Albuquerque with G&G Blech while Bill and I were up in Durango working on projects. By all reports, she was a champ, running the grands around just as much as she does us at home. For instance, they spent three hours swinging at a park one day (her parents just snatch her out after half an hour and pacify the screams with bribes of food). The my little ponies and squeaking finger puppets from my childhood emerged for hours of intent imaginings. And she managed to wreak havoc in some way that included bows, the toilet, soap, and Shaun the Sheep. But she adapted to a new room and new bed and new table with aplomb and didn’t even bother to say hi to us when we walked in the front door yesterday. First major separation a success!

An interview with Maggie:

Gretchen: What did we do special this week?
Mags: I don’t know.

G: Did we go to the library?*

M: Library. A dog ate my chip!

G: Yup. He did.

M: Maggie cried.

G: Was the doggie so soft?

M: Doggie so soft. I want to watch Shaun the Sheep.

G: Did we do anything else fun this week? Did we go to a party?

M: Party. Nora. Julie.

G: Who else? Did you make a new friend?

M: Make new friends. Milk. Milk. Milk Mommy. Milk.

G: I promise you’ll get milk with dinner. What’s your favorite thing to eat?

M: Bananas. I want a banana. I want some milk. Water. Water! Water!**

*We walked the whole way. Maggie on her own two feet. A mile there (an hour), a snack and puzzles at the library, and then a mile back (an hour and a half). For the way home, I had chips for walking. And then once the dog in someone’s front yard ate them out of Maggie’s hand, we had M&Ms, if she could catch me a house further down the sidewalk. It was a great big adventure!

** And then her cup smashed her fingers (as she was stomping it around on the table) so we have to distract. Ta ta!

This is what Maggie has learned from Bill and my nightly workouts. She thinks it’s pretty cool when she gets her own mat and can count with us. Sometimes she even adds sound effects like we do. It’s even funner when she can crawl around under us during push-ups or jump on our stomachs during sit-ups. Hey, if it means I have to take a break from push-ups, I say bring it on, kiddo.

The second half is her remembering that we dropped a segment of orange in the car on our way home. I think mostly she just felt like running and pounced upon the first excuse she could think of. This was somewhere around noon; at 5:30 that night she was still doing the exact same thing.

And that, folks, is pretty boring as updates go, but she’s pretty cute, so maybe that’ll make up for it. We’ve been playing and coloring and singing and going for walks, and she’s getting back into a good nap routine. (For instance, she’s already asleep today!)

And just for fun, this is what she looked like exactly one year ago today. Yowza!