Moving out

Ugh. You what the problem with moving is? You have to live while doing it. 

Very inconvenient. 

We have all of our essentials packed 

Just kidding. We need him right up until moving day (in 12 days!)

We are making progress but it's so hard to see what has been done and what is left through the mess and chaos of boxes and life. 

We've donated tons, trashed a sad amount and buy-nothing's our little hearts out. Yet there is still more crap. 

Michael probably has it worse than I do since he's lived here twice as long as me. (And I say with love is a little more likely to hang onto stuff than me). 

So we are plugging away at it. 

The weekend was good regardless. 

Thursday was nice. Andrew was the luckiest person at the gathering and basically everyone there was a relative or close friend to him. 

I made no- knead challah which wa sore try but had some texture problems. 

Friday was packing and cleaning and taking a few things to the new house!!!!

And pillow mountains. 

My younger sister came and spent the night and the next morning she and I watched mockingjay part 2. It was only ok but I'm happy to have seen it and together (thanks M!). 

We also have had a great potty weekend. Which resulted in letting Andrew pick out 21 pairs of character undies in celebration. 

He's living the dream. He could go weeks without laundry...if he weren't pigpen. 

He's been hilarious and slightly ridiculous since. He wants a new pair each time he goes potty. I know the feeling of being excited about wearing new stuff. 

Our neighbors have started turning on christmas lights so we've taken a few short (FREEZING) walks to see them. 

There has been lots of play dough action. 

Emily's masterpiece

Today we have been doing laundry and packing. We bought a BOB on Craigslist and an oven from Sears. 

All of this has been in the context of being nearly 37 weeks pregnant and sick with some ridiculous cold. 

Good but exhausting. I'm guessing that'll be the theme of the next few weeks and months. 

Parenting downside

You always get stuck pulling 3rd shift at the fun factory trying to get the lines clean again. 

Stretched

Because I’m keeping it real (if I cared enough to learn how to find/make/insert GIFs I’d totally be putting in Murray from Clueless right here. But I don’t- if that isn’t what you thought of when I wrote that, go watch Clueless now) I am feeling stretched.

Physically and mentally.

 

The physical is livable, and mostly because I know it is temporary and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. And most of the time I have been feeling pretty good, just marveling at how big this baby’s movements are.  

 

The mental is draining me. I feel like Michael and I have been swimming hard but there is just too much of a current. And that’s pretty defeating. In behavioral biology a testing method for rats is to put them into water- they will swim for a very long time if they have their wits about them. If they are depressed they stop swimming and sink. I keep having sinking rat moments. Evenings that I feel relatively awake and relatively comfortable and KNOW I should be pushing hard to accomplish shit but instead sink deep into the couch. Work days where I might use a 15 minute incubation to write reports or something that I now spend shuffling papers and wait. Lunch time when I know I should be on the phone to daycares or movers or {insert professional here} or going for my walk but instead head deep into the amazon looking at things for the baby or the house that I’m too freaked out to buy for lack of space/desire to have more crap to deal with/fear that this house stuff and my maternity leave and the general $ suck of children makes it out of budget.

 

Then there is the crap I want to be doing. I want to be gearing up for a fun Thanksgiving. Trying recipes with M, griping about how much we bring to the gathering while truthfully loving an occasion to go for it- I haven’t mentioned to M yet that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving has a big study planned and I’ll need to be here for sure. Decorating our house for Christmas and the subsequent joy that would come for Andrew. Settling his life down as much as possible before it gets shaken up with moving and sibling invasion. Holiday adventures with my boys.

But instead I am a sinking rat. 

And when I'm not I have screwed myself so royally that I have to bust butt to even catch up. 

 

And again, I understand that all of this work is to get to some really great places. But there are just miles to go before we get there and it is draining. 

I will pat us on the back for the one place we do put a significant and worth while amount of energy. 

This guy is fun, chatty and awesome and we are soaking up as much A time as we can get. 

We've played lots of Lego 

Hit up the kiddie museum a few times 

And tonight we made rainbow waffles (well pale green, blue or purple waffles). 

So we haven't gone off the deep end entirely...just closer than we might like. 

Wordless (actual Halloween) weekend

Daycare party on Friday 

He was wearing the pumpkin when I got there. Then he saw joy on my face and started pulling it off. 😂

That's ok. His teachers put on quite a shindig!

Saturday morning I thought the costume thing would be a slam dunk. His Marty mc fly costume was just clothes. But it was many many layers. I tried to be cool about it but even a two year old recognized that it was "too much. Too much clothes mommy." 

But he looked cute. So did Michael. 

 

My bacon wrapped shrimp costume turned out great. My colleague suggested I make a fringed toothpick  but I never got around to it. Sadly, as often happens without the cocktail toothpick, my bacon fell off! Without noticing I dropped my bacon before we left for brunch. So I just looked weird. 

Saturday night we just handed out candy and hung out followed by a lazy day at home on Sunday. 

It was a good Halloween and probably the last we'll have where Andrew isn't too clued in on candy. I've loved these simple says.