First, here's a picture of my favorite pair of sisters in the world:
Today, a new set of movers came to pack up all our furniture and the boxes!
Kayleigh did a great job of relaxing in her swing with all the moving madness around her.
We had our last date night before the big move- we went to Park Tavern- yum yum yum. This was called a frose- frozen rose.
So I don't know that I've mentioned this on the blog. If I have, I apologize. Our lease is up on April 30th. The owner has decided he wants to sell. We asked if we could stay for two and a half more months so we don't have to move in Annapolis before we move to Rhode Island in July. He said we could but had some unrealistic expectations and had he sold it, we'd have to move anyway so we decided to go ahead and move. Any time someone scheduled a showing, we would have to leave the house and I just imagined getting home from the hospital after McKenzie's born and getting a phone call that we have 30 minutes to get out. Not appealing. So... thankfully, there is military housing available for us so we're going to move about 10 minutes away. Any spare minute we have is used for packing/organizing/planning/cleaning. Liam's tired of it:
He really did almost fall asleep on the bottom stair today.
Anyway, I've been going through lots of stuff and I took on our "memory boxes" today. I found these pieces of paper we had put in a jar one year- we had this goal of anytime anything awesome happened, we would write it down and put it in the jar and on New Year's Eve, have fun going through all the memories. We started off strong. I don't want to keep all the pieces of paper but I want to keep the memories so I'm going to type them up here. They're all from 2013.
1-3: Liam measured at the 25th percentile for weight but 60th for head circumference.
1-4: We moved into our new house (how appropriate- this was Oregon City Street on Mayport's Base).
1-13: Liam rolled over and then slept through the night- both first times!
1-23: Liam came home from the hospital happy and on medicine to control his seizures!
1-25: Liam laughed his first real laugh- at mommy!
2-9: Liam rolled over every time I put him on his belly tonight- 5 times! The end of tummy time.
2-14: Liam at a few bites of avocado!
2-23: Liam's half birthday- lots of family and friends came to celebrate.
3-3: Zachary held a girl named Paisley the whole time we had nursery for the first time because she would cry if he thought about putting her down.
3-10: Easter Egg Hunt (A little early since Zachary was out for Easter)
4-1: The batteries made one fire alarm go off which made another go off at 3AM. Jeannie freaked out and stood guard at the head of the bed for at least 30 minutes.
5-13: 10 year anniversary; Liam ate bread at outback and then we saw Christian Laettner at Zachary's basketball game.
5-23: 1st Family Beach Trip
5-24: First time Liam had home made peaches (not Gerber), he ate a crazy amount!
5-26: Liam held his bottle and fed himself for the first time!
5-31: We all watched Rocky together! (I remember this so well... I surprised Zachary by finding it online- he'd been bugging me to watch it... He loved watching it with his wife beside him and his son on his lap)
7-4: Liam clapped his hands for the first time.
7-5: Liam gave John Dominey his first high five.
10-1: Liam waved at someone for the time in an Ikea elevator.
I wanted to document all of these since not every day of his life at this age was written about like I do now. Such good memories!
So I took Liam and Malia to the CDC this morning so that I could give 100% to packing and moving. A couple of weeks ago when we first started dropping them off there, there was a form we had to fill out for each kid and we learned we'd have to fill it out every time we went. One of the questions is if the child is on any medication. I thought since Malia doesn't take her seizure medication at the CDC they didn't need to know about it. Yes, she could have a breakthrough seizure but the only thing to do for her if she has a seizure is to call 911 and that's what they would do with or without my instructions. Well the second time we took them, Zachary filled out the paperwork and noted that she takes an anti-seizure medicine. Wellllllllllllllllllll they didn't like that. So the receptionist gives me a form that I need to fill out. It's made for kids with allergies or asthma- there are lots of questions that just do not apply to Malia's situation but they don't have a form for seizures so this was going to have to do. I filled it out to the best of my ability and turned it in. Well, I get an email the next day saying I had left the physician's signature blank. I didn't see it. I also think it's silly that a doctor has to sign a paper saying call 911 if a child has a seizure. Duh. I understand you need a doctor to approve if you say stab her with an epi pen or if there was a medication she had to have but the answer is just- call 911. So I forgot to get the doctor to sign it. I go to take the kids in today so I can pack and move stuff but I'm not allowed to leave Malia because the doctor hasn't signed the paper. I take a deep breath, remain very friendly, and chalk it up to getting to give Malia some individual attention. So now one of my top priorities is getting the printer hooked up and connected to the internet so I can scan and get this paper signed. Enough of that- here's Malia working on standing in the new place:
And here are the cats freaking out about their rapidly changing environment and hiding where they feel safe in the old place:
I mentioned yesterday that I took a picture of Liam in his room before moving any furniture in. Well I took a picture of him in his room after moving all the furniture out. Two weeks short of a year has passed between these two pictures. Too bad I couldn't get him to stand for this one- the first one was the first time he stood on his own. It's crazy how far he's come!
Zachary took this morning off so we could get started moving a little early. The original plan was to move on Friday so he had some friends lined up to help us out but then he thought it'd be awesome if we could move all the little stuff so that when our helpers arrived, they just had to worry about the big furniture and the last minute stuff so we started moving in today! We had been storing stuff that we wouldn't need before we moved in the garage and got all of that moved and we packed up a lot of the kids' toys so that they would be somewhat entertained while we did the boring stuff like put plates and towels and such away. The new play room is a hit!
When we moved into the apartment in May I took a picture of Liam in his empty room- so I thought I'd do that again- this room is about half the size of his other one which I do not think is a bad thing- I'm hoping that with a smaller room and not a lot of toys in it, he will learn that bedrooms are for sleeping. In the old place we didn't have a playroom so his bedroom was the playroom.
Here's where the kitchen table will go:
Liam's a big helper :)
And Malia is too- that toilet paper really needed to be destroyed.
One great thing about this apartment that we're moving out of in a few weeks is that there is tons of storage. We have a storage cage downstairs that looks as creepy as it sounds but we also have a room upstairs for storage which is equally as creepy. These used to be the maids' rooms. Each family living in military housing was assigned a maid and the maids lived up stairs in these rooms that now house the stuff we moved up from Jacksonville but never went through and everything else we didn't have room for in the apartment. Anyway- here is Malia supervising us organizing through everything.
We were going to go to NC for my mom's 50th birthday but they were both sick so we stayed at home- we're trying again for my dad's birthday!
I hate traveling. I hate packing, I hate riding, I hate having the car perfectly packed and uncluttered at the beginning of the trip and then realizing there's not enough space for my feet one hour later. I hate pumping in the car, I hate traffic. I hate finding a perfectly good radio station that turns to static five minutes later. But I love seeing family. I love spending time with our parents and I love watching my kids spend time with their grandparents. It's absolutely, one hundred percent worth it but man. This was Liam's Valentine's Day present that was temporarily lost in the toy box that I resurrected specifically for this trip. Good move, Mom.
First let me start with a cute picture taken at Target:
Okay, now that that's out of the way- we are definitely moving! The morning after we had 95% decided we were going to move, I got an email that we needed to avoid using the water until someone had come to check it out and I immediately felt like we had made the right decision. Until I decided to check out our upstairs storage room:
There isn't any storage at the new place- there is a garage that I was hoping to put my van in but it's looking like that's going to be our storage room. It's definitely time to get to work! We move in on the 17th and out of here on the 20th so that we'll have the full weekend to get things out. Zachary and I have decided we're packing a little bit each day or at least organizing- somehow moving towards packing every day so we're not so very overwhelmed at the end- and I think we will start upstairs.
I excitedly announced Malia's new skill but at the time didn't have any photographic evidence- here we go!
Also- we have been thinking about moving recently. Anytime the temperature goes below a certain degree marker, the heat goes out. That's right- when we need it most, it goes out. Our neighbors who lived here last winter said the same thing happened last winter so it'll happen again. Also, we've been having trouble with the outlets in our kitchen. When we first moved here and tried to use our toaster, it didn't work. Figuring it broke on the trip up, we threw it away and got a new one. Well the new one didn't work either. Common denominator = outlets. So we avoided using that outlet. Then Zachary started charging his phone in the kitchen because that was the most convenient spot for him. A couple weeks later, his phone started going crazy. It would randomly shut down- things that I have had phones do in the past but we're starting to think it was the outlet. The next victim was my baby food maker. And then a roast. I put a roast on and made sure it was warming up before I left- I came home and it had stopped working. So people came out and revealed there were loose wires behind the outlet plates. Loose wires? That makes me nervous. Also parking is a nightmare here. Especially with two small ones. When we were looking for places to live up here, I wrote down all the possibilities and their numbers- I called each one and asked what the parking situation was. First of all- I do not parallel park. I will park half a mile away and walk but I'm not going to try to fit my car in between two other cars. I am not okay with parking half a mile away and walking to my house every time I come home so I needed a place with a parking lot or garages. The people at the place we chose said there was a garage in the back that you could park one car in and then space behind the garage for another car. That sounded great but I was pregnant and aware that Liam and soon to be Malia would have some grandparents very eager to come visit them so visitor parking was important to me too. They said there was parallel parking in the front that was first come first serve. A couple months after we moved here, they decided to change that rule- now only one resident per apartment can park in the circle- no visitors. Where are visitors supposed to park you may ask- well I never got an answer for that. I'm curious what families with a driving teenager do. But anyway- they do not enforce this rule so I don't dwell on it too much but if they did start enforcing it, that would be bad news for us. Zachary has wanted to move for months- since the heat started going out- but we got space heaters and I thought we could tough it out but what finally drew me to the dark side was I saw two kids walking around with guns. I'm assuming these are toy guns but they don't look like it. Zachary followed one of them one time and discovered they are pellet guns that look very realistic and that there was a group of five of them that gather right behind our apartment and shoot each other! We are guessing these might be the people that keyed our car- from the front to the back. After I saw that- I said, if you want to move, you've got a short window that I'm willing to consider it so get to work. Well tonight we looked at two townhouses- I'm pretty sure we're going to move into the first one we saw. This one has a garage and space behind the garage and it's connected to the townhouse- you don't have to walk through a creepy dungeon-like space with narrow and dangerous stairs to get inside. And their heat works! And we saw girls walking their dogs instead of boys shooting each other. And there are three floors. So gone are the days of Liam dragging his easel, his car, other large toys, from one side of the house to the other. There's a play room downstairs that we are going to make completely baby/toddler friendly and that's where all of their toys will be. Their rooms will be for sleeping which I hope will encourage better sleeping habits for Liam. I think I will be really happy about this decision once we've moved in and especially this winter when we have heat.
