It's over

The Honeymoon Phase in the apartment is over. Things are starting to bug us.

1. The neighbors are really loud. The listen to music super loud. We can feel bass lines thumping in our bones. They listen to the television super loud. I don't even have to turn on House; I can just listen from their place. And gosh, they fight a lot!

2. The water heater, which we can't change, is turned down super low. I mean, instead of a hot shower, we take luke-warm showers.

3. The trains go by 47 times during the night, and it must be mandatory to blare the horn right outside our building. I get worse sleep now than with a newborn.

4. Hauling bags in from the store is a nightmare. We park on the third-level parking garage and live on the seventh floor. How in the world do you haul even six Target bags and two toddlers up four floors? Like today, I had one bag from Lowes, one bag from Michael's, and three bags from Target. I had to drag out the stroller just to get the stuff and the kids into the apartment. I miss our garage!

5. Something that irritates the heck out of me is that other mothers at the park are constantly telling me how to parent my kids: he has a stick, she took her hat off, he's going to fall, watch out for her, blah, de blah, blah! And it's not like I'm off reading a book or playing Bejeweled. I'm standing right there three feet from the kids.

6. There is a little boy in our building that terrorizes Ivy every time we're down at the pool. The rotten child has radar on how to make Ivy cry. He takes her ball, splashes her, tries to throw her towel in the water, tries to jump to me when Ivy's going to. I mean, seriously, the kid is awful. And there his mom lays in this skimpy bikini, listening to her iPod, not paying attention to her spawn of Satan. Come to find out, she lives two door down from us.