Looks like a safe neighborhood

It has been confirmed: we live in a safe community. Let me explain. We had to meet our Realtor yesterday around lunchtime (a long depressing story, maybe I will get into it later) and both girls fell asleep on the way home. I carried them both inside and put them in their beds. E. has been going to VBS every night this week and when we went outside to leave last night, the sliding van door was still open ... from 6 hours ago! All of the kids’ toys, a bunch of store returns, our new kitchen faucet ... everything was still intact. Man, am I so out of it that I would forget to close the door? The worst part is that it is an automatic door and closes itself with the touch of a button. At least that proves that I am not just plain lazy!

And inside the house, it is not so safe
P. is an official crawling machine. Nothing is safe anymore—she is getting into everything. She particularly likes the DVD player ... which now makes for three kids who are constantly messing with the thing. Hopefully the novelty wears off before we move or I will have to hide it behind the couch or something! It is so cute watching her crawl around though because she over-animates with her arms and slaps her hands down. After we move, it will be nice to know where she always is by the sound of her hands slapping on the floor!

You haven’t moved yet?!?
No, we haven’t moved yet. To leave out all of the grueling details, our closing date has been postponed yet again. We just found out yesterday that the title company requires an eight business day lapse between the time the final loan documents are submitted and the closing date. We found out this morning that our new closing date is now August 4th—more than two months from the point of our contract being accepted by the seller. And four days after our townhouse lease is up. And eight days after all of our new appliances are scheduled to be delivered at the new house. Sigh. So where does this leave us? On the street apparently. No, just kidding. We have had so many people offer for us to stay with them (thank you!), but we are hoping it doesn’t come down to that. I believe the latest plan is for us to beg our apartment community manager to let us stay past our lease. (Never mind that we have been begging them for extensions since our original lease was up in May!) Hopefully it will fly. Or we are looking at a double-move of sorts. Or renting a moving truck for a week and parking our possessions somewhere until we close ... or rather, IF we close. (My pessimism is sneaking in again.) I wonder if any moving companies give extra discounts for that sort of thing, like a rental car’s rates that go down the longer you have it. That would be nice!

More milestones
P. and S. have both been hitting new milestones lately. While Grandma and Grandpa Foutz were here last week, P. started pulling up to standing. I was pretty shocked since she was still doing her crawlstep-crawlstep-sprawl routine at that point. Papa Foutz took her crib down for us and she is now staying in her pack-n-play. [Why bother dropping the crib mattress for a few more days in our townhouse? Oh wait!] S. has also reached the new milestone of now being able to count 1-2-3. Very cute. E. was so proud of her, too. He immediately started to try teaching her 1-2-3-4!