Gabi & Bella: House Hunt

The girls and I flew to Little Rock at the beginning of April for a house-hunting adventure. Gabriella and Annabelle enjoyed being lovingly spoiled by Lolo, Lola, Ninong and Ninang. While we hung out at Lolo and Lola's house, the girls played with cousin Steven's toy musical instruments. Lola took time off work to watch the girls while I looked at houses, which I greatly appreciated.

Bella investigating a maraca

Gabi wanted to have a duet on the xylophones

Annabelle likes the xylophone, especially the mallet

At naptime, I let Gabi pick one stuffed animal to take with her to the bed. Guess which one she picked? A mini-Wuffel, a small version of Daddy's boyhood bear.

Gabi's naptime companion selection

Of course, Gabi didn't stay in the bed with her one animal. She climbed out and piled stuffed animals on top of her baby sister and made herself a nest of stuffed animals to rest in. I tried to discourage this, but it is hard to enforce rules when you are supposed to leave the kids alone to sleep. One day I went to investigate why Annabelle was crying, and I found a music box and a couple metal bars (for another part of the playpen that wasn't set up) on her head. Big sisters can definitely be trouble! That Gabi girl was just trying to help calm Bella down, I know, but her approach needs modification.

Gabi building Tinker-Toy towers with Lolo

Finding where the magnetic shapes belong
in this wonderful book from Cousin Steven

Playing chase with Cousin Steven

Annabelle with Ninang

The House Hunt

We almost bought a house with a beautiful ivory hall bathroom and a whisper-pink girls' room. I loved the house, although it was a bit small overall. The living room needed serious updates, and I had a couple other renovations planned for the master area, but the house was great. In the end, our real estate agent advised us against it because of some previous mold issue that might make it hard to sell later (just as a "perceived problem" for prospective buyers, not an actual problem we would have to live with). I think I will copy their theme of light pink walls and white furniture for Annabelle's room in our new house, though.

The evening after I finished my house-hunt, a tornado tore through the neighborhood where we were hoping to live. My favorite house was not hit, but one of the houses on my short list did have a tree fall down in its backyard, tearing a bit of soffit and fascia off the corner. No major storm damage was visible to any of the houses I was considering, but it certainly heightened our reliance upon an inspection before closing. Here are some pictures from the neighborhood around Gabi's school and near many of the houses I toured. The pictures were taken three days later, so work crews had already cleared most of the streets, covered roofs with tarp, and cut up many fallen trees.

Tornado damage

Our new house, looking into the living room from the kitchen:

This house isn't in the neighborhood around Gabi's school, but it is in a location that I loved when we lived in Little Rock before. The floorplan is very open, with open walkways between the entry, living room, kitchen, and sunroom. Through the doors on either side of the fireplace is the sunroom, and outside the French doors is a deck. Interior doors in the living space have window panes to allow natural light to illuminate the house. But I really fell in love with the laundry room -- an actual laundry room, quite large, with a double sink!

Unfortunately, the neighbors built a retention wall, so this house has water drainage problems despite being on top of a hill. The sellers promised to fix it, but after each rainstorm, I got reports of standing water. My realtor said they initially used a plastic flowerpot liner with holes in it to hold the sump pump, and she claimed they stole a manhole cover from the city to put over the sump pump, and she hired an irrigation expert to tell her that the current "solution" had drainpipes running uphill from the downspouts of the gutters. We had a huge headache trying to get the sellers to fix it properly, but they insisted that they had fixed it properly. Finally, a big storm this Saturday tested their final drainage work, and Lolo and Lola checked out the house on Sunday (yesterday) to find a dry yard. Hooray! That was a very last-minute relief, as closing was today (Monday)! So we are now able to relax instead of starting over on our house-hunt. Thank you Lolo and Lola!

The Anthony School

The week before this house-hunting trip, Gabi was offered a spot in the three-year-old class at The Anthony School, where Daddy attended kindergarten through fifth grade. We were very excited to receive this news and scheduled Gabi's "interview" (kind of a placement test, which the teachers will use to plan their curriculum) during our stay in Little Rock. Gabi is already able to spell her name, trace words, and say the basic phonetics for each letter (not to mention name all the capital letters, most of the lowercase letters, and the digits 0-9, plus count to 13). This school has dedicated one-on-one learning time, during which they may use the four-year-old linguistics workbook with Gabi. She'll also begin Spanish, take a computer class, and learn to roller skate!

Gabi's new school

I used to think I would definitely send my kids to public school, but as there aren't any public preschools, we had to look at private options for next year. This school has so much to offer that we are very likely to keep Gabi in it as long as we stay in Little Rock (currently set at 3-4 years, so through kindergarten or first grade). It would be nice for her not to have to switch schools except when we move. Now we just have to finish potty training (otherwise she can't attend the Anthony School yet)...