Not much action on the house this week. All the action went into keeping it ready for the action it didn't see. It's tough to make your house seem homey, and at the same time, as if you don't live there. Never anything on the kitchen counters...no dishes in the sink...no shoes on the shoe rug near the door...no toys out of the toy corner. This is how we have to leave it every morning when we go to work in case anyone calls to see it while we're gone. It's only been a week and already stretching my admittedly meager housekeeping skills.

The realtors toured on Tuesday and didn't have very nice comments for us. Three thought it was overpriced. Of those three, one thought it was a duplex (it's not) and said "you could get a real house for that price," another thought it didn't have a garage and the third thought it didn't have a basement (it has both.) So clearly they were not very careful or interested observers. Annoying, especially since these are the agents who work for the company with whom we have listed the house. Our realtor sought out the commentors (they're anonymous, but not hard to figure out I guess) and set them straight on the various things they'd missed or misunderstood. He held an open house this afternoon and said eight "groups" came through. Only one identified themselves as neighbors and even they weren't just there out of curiosity, but because they had friends who might be interested. So that's good news. Our agent says open houses usually draw primarily nosy/curious neighbors.

As far as Edward is concerned, the best thing about having the house for sale is the realtor lockbox on the front door, which he thinks is a telephone. He loves to push the buttons (which light up!) and say "a-lo, a-lo!" (We tried unsuccessfully to capture video.) He's figured out this aspect of phone communication, but hasn't translated it to actual phone calls. If we offer him the phone to talk to a grandparent or anyone else, he just stares at it and then grabs to push buttons. He never says a word. Luckily, he now gets to see one set of grandparents in person a lot more. John's folks moved to Coralville (neighboring town) this week so it's great to have them so close. We got to celebrate Bill's birthday today while hanging out during Ed's naptime and our open house exodus.