(Far from) Free Parking

Our house now has off-street parking! After a two year battle, the private alley is easemented (love that verbification) and we have a parking pad in our yard. We did a one-car gravel pad -- we wanted to lose as little of our yard as possible and liked the removability of gravel for re-sale value, you know, in case the next owner cares about cars and wants to build a garage or expand the pad.

Now our yard is oddly shaped. We are annexing the end of the private alley into our yard. It is our land and no one needs it for ingress or egress. The fencing contractor will build-in a storage bench, two planters and two short benches to turn the space into a conversation pit or, as I like to call it, a make-out nook. We are also fencing in our front yard, along with our three ajoining neighbors (no return between our houses), to keep out the trash and dog crap.

Most of my free time has been spent gardening these past weekends, hence the hush. That, and our Spring Dance Card has been overbooked. Bloody social whirwind. No room to squeeze in so much as a foxtrot on the blog. We are going up to Michigan for a long weekend, so I'll bring Jasper (my computer. Yeah, I named my computer, wanna mess?!) and write up a gob of stuff -- and perhaps post a slew of glossies of a certain baby doll -- to compensate for my recent poor showing. Promises, promises.

Sittable

Yelena was successfully babysat twice in May, first when we went to see Arcade Fire and, second, when we went to 2 weddings in one day. (Yup, a veritable Niagra of nachas.) She had different babysitters each time and both declared her an easy sit. We were very concerned about bedtime, since our otherwise highly agreeable child is a tiny but mighty sleep warrior. Her first babysitter -- who sits regularly and for a couple decades -- said that, except for one child who puts his head on the stair and points when he's ready for bed, pretty much every kid she's ever babysat makes a fuss over bedtime and Yelena was on the low end of the fuss zone. Ha! Our second babysitter had a very easy time getting her to sleep, perhaps because he's a yoga teacher and probably wore her out. All he did was cuddle her for a couple minutes and she was out.

I took it all remarkably well (pat, pat), surprising Eli who thought I 'd be a neurotic mess. I spend time away from Yelena and I spend sufficient time with Eli after Yelena's bedtime, but it was great fun to actually go out with my husband and not have to worry about the diaper bag, swearing or drinking.

Not being held hostage

Still kicking, all's well, et cetera. Busy metaphor mixing butterfly will report again soon.