Karl and Angela Rees

To make a long story short, we didn’t close on the house this weekend because we hate our lenders.  Wait.  Hate’s a strong word.  And we don’t like to bite the hands that feed us.  But yes, they’re not our favorite people.   Very non-communicative.  We feel like we’re pulling teeth to get information out of them.  Anyway, we’re fairly confident it will be sorted out by the end of this week.  The underwrite wants guarantees that certain repairs will be made within a month or so of buying the house.  And so we have to get separate bids to do small individual projects that we would have been doing already anyway.  So it’s a big and entirely unnecessary hassle, in our opinions.  What’s the point in buying a fixer upper if it has to be fixed before you can get a loan on it?

The heat wave at the beginning of the week was nice for swimming.  Karl took Thomas Tuesday night while Angela was at enrichment, and then we went together on Wednesday too.  Thomas took a little time, but he eventually got very excited by “swimming.”  He’d kick and wave his arms while one of us supported him.  He’d hang on the ledge and keep his head out the water without our support.  He’d try to jump into the pool.  He tried to blow bubbles in the water.  We were surprised by how quickly his attitude changed.  (By the way, today the high was about 35 degrees cooler than last Monday)

Other than that, we worked a lot this week.  Talking to contractors.  Learning how to tile.  Shopping for appliances.  Busy things, not very interesting.

On Sunday we had Wayne and Becky and Paela over for one last Sunday dinner before they leave.  We took some good video of Thomas and Paela together, playing around the house, blowing bubbles, chasing each other through wildflowers in the park next door.  We think they’re really going to miss each other.  Well, hopefully we can get Thomas some new friends quickly.  If only he hadn’t suddenly become afraid of us leaving him alone.  He wouldn’t stay in nursery by himself on Sunday, so Karl took him to primary class and told him he had a choice of just sitting still with Karl or playing in nursery.  He had no problem sitting still.  In fact, he was better behaved than the primary kids.  Probably he was interested in the singing.

Thomas has started singing the ABC.  True, he starts with H, and after about V he departs into his own made up tune.  But it’s awesome.