We are definitely enjoying the sunshine and nice weather in Raleigh. Here's a picture from the other day. It looks positively Ferris Buehler-ish to me (every day is like that here, it seems). The pic is taken from the balcony of the townhouse we're renting for the month. We're subletting it, but it's been fun to see what the other owners are like. It appears the requirements for living in this little townhouse community are 1) Be around 30, give or take a few years, 2) Be single and good-looking, 3) Own a dog (if female, own a small, annoying dog. If male, own a medium to large sized dog.)
Today we took the kids to the pool, and I felt totally out of place among the young singles sunning themselves there (they don't actually go IN the pool, of course). There were no other people there with things like spouses, kids, thy-cellulite, minivans, pool toys, etc. I wanted to declare, "You good-looking people may smugly look on at this frumpy housewife with 3 kids and a big pregnant belly, but I AM YOUR FUTURE!" Of course, I'm probably not actually their future. Jared points out that we probably personify the opposite of everything they believe in. They're probably saying to themselves, "dude, I'm NEVER going to have all those kids and get frumpy like that." In fairness, all the young single people sunning themselves were very nice (the ones who spoke to us were, anyway). And then I felt bad for assuming they were all smugly judging us for our over-abundance of children, floaty toys and strollers. Maybe they even enjoyed having a bunch of two-year-olds whining over the sounds of their top-40 radio stations. Who wouldn't?
As for housing, on Monday, we officially went forward with buying
the house. I spent every spare moment until 5pm on the day our contingency period ended (much to Jared's dismay) looking at alternatives, trying to satisfy myself that this was really our best option. And I think it is. Not exactly my style, but it's a great house and the ward looks to be really wonderful as well. We had some trouble wiring our earnest money, and didn't get it in by the 5pm deadline, but everything is going forward anyway without a hitch. So on June 29, we'll be the owners of a house in Raleigh!
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| Trajan and Seville playing at the park. Wearing shorts. |
The next hurdle was registering Seville for Kindergarten, which involved making an irrevocable personal ranking of the 15-20 schools in my "choice" area, with no ability to tour the schools (except a couple), no idea which one they will send my child to, no information on how they decide, and no time to do decent research without losing my child's place in line. It's the worst, most confusing system ever. I'd talk more about it, but the thought makes me tired.
Here's me on the news whining about it though. Someday maybe I'll elaborate. Suffice it to say, for now, that I am reassuring myself with the fact that we have pretty good odds of getting into a school that is not too terribly far away and seems pretty decent to me. They have a strong parent-community, they're part of the
global-schools network, and I think they're probably a great little school. Fortunately for me, most parents seem to look heavily at test scores (I couldn't care less. What do test scores tell you? Either that this school is full of white, privileged kids, or that the teachers "teach to the test," or that the school is academically rigorous - none of which are things I think are appropriate priorities for Kindergarten/early-education). Anyway, this one school gets bad test scores, but has a lot of other great things going for it. If I'm lucky, we'll get in. If not, heaven help us.
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Oswell running around at the park.
That's sunlight on him, people! |
Seville came to the school with me to tour it. It got her super amped up for Kindergarten, and since then she's bee practicing writing "words I might need for Kindergarten" and reading her new
Bob books that I bought her at Costco the other day. It's very cute to see. Almost a shame Kindergarten doesn't start for 2 more months, but I'm glad for selfish reasons. It's all full-day Kindergarten in Wake County, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be lonely with my little friend gone all day :-( She really is such a delight to have around.
