Arianna has been growing by leaps and bounds and saying insanely cute things. Unfortunately, I am so busy I can't remember any of them. We did have a sad encounter yesterday, when we found a dead songbird on our deck; it must have broke its neck flying into the window. Arianna wanted to hug it and make it feel better, like she does with us (and vice versa). She didn't get the death concept. She and Andrew buried it in our flower garden and she asked if the birdie was asleep. When she woke up today, she asked if I could go and get it. I guess death is rather an abstract concept for a toddler. Hell, I don't even know what I think about it and no one knows what happens after you pass through the veil.
Anyways, back to more mundane matters. I have temporarily put my babywearing ebook writing on hold, even though I am so pathetically close to finishing it. I wouldn't do this without good reason, of course. First, someone has already written a printed book on the subject, so I don't feel like I am letting anyone down by not publishing mine yet. Second, Andrew's real estate investing is going great guns and he needs some reinforcement. We have refined our daily schedule and created a weekly schedule for the house and the business. We also write up a daily to-do list for the real estate business every night after we tuck Arianna in for bed.
I spent the last few days writing the copy for his ebay land auction. You can access it through our ME page at http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/nokomis*group. The land is gorgeous and I hope the ebay exposure will generate a lot of interest in the property, even if it doesn't sell within the ten days. It's difficult to seal a deal in that amount of time, but the leads you get from the auction are invaluable -- you can offer it to the "second chance" bidders if the winning bidder can't pay up.
He is also in the process of closing on another land deal he found in NH. He just got two calls yesterday from two different families in the area who want to sell him their house. Andrew found a great mentor in NH and I think that gave him the confidence and the additional skills he needed to plunge in. I am so very proud of him and I am happy to share in his business. We work well together and have wanted to start a family business for a long time. I would like Arianna to learn how to be an entrepreneur by helping us with our businesses.
It was poor planning on our part to realize we wanted to become entrepreneurs AFTER we had a baby. I haven't been this exhausted since my first trimester! But the rewards of learning a new (and lucrative) skill that we will be able to pass down to our daughter are well worth burning both ends of the candle for awhile. (I promise I'll keep better track of Arianna's developmental milestones, too.)
I haven't written much here about our business ventures and was wondering if this was interesting to folks or if you'd like to go back to the regularly scheduled program?
Thanks for sharing your opinion!
Rebecca