roses for Elias

And just like that, we're all moved in!  When you race to unpack and settle in, it feels like maybe you did just snap your fingers and everything was magically done, but I know that wasn't the case.  And I have a few pictures to prove how crazy the last couple of weeks have been.

Elias's old room, pre-packing, throw-everything-on-the-floor stage.

If it weren't for the fact that our summer 2009 move involved crossing a distance of 3000+ miles, I'd easily say this move was my/our hardest to date (and I've moved a lot) but at least we only had to move our stuff and ourselves a couple of miles this time around.  Moving from an apartment to a house with a toddler and a micro business was...well, it sucked.  There's no way - or point - in sugar-coating it.  The move last year was most difficult in that it involved such a distance, a distance we were able to cover in a few hours but took our stuff several weeks.  That was tricky.  The details of last year's move are already pretty fuzzy but I do remember that last night and the morning of our flight being pretty miserable.  I remember, for example, cleaning the oven at 11 p.m. that night, the night before our early morning, one-way flight.  And I remember the amount of stuff we chucked in the end and yet still had to pay for overweight baggage!

So at least we didn't have to do that.  That was nice.  But the two weeks between getting the keys to our house and moving in were a mad dash to simultaneously coordinate the few repairs and updates we did at the new place before moving in, cleaning the new place,  wrapping up business, packing, packing, and more packing, moving, unpacking, cleaning the old place, and more unpacking.  Oh yeah, and taking care of Elias.  When you're childless you treat time very differently in these situations, working 12+ hours straight to get a project done.  But when you have a kid, the buck stops at their schedule.  And I for one have a really hard time stopping work on a project when I'm right in the middle.  Most modern mamas pride themselves on their multi-tasking prowess.  I do not. I hate multi-tasking and if we had a relative we could schlep Elias on for a few days, we would have.  But we don't.  So we all had to suffer through. Together.

And to his credit, other than a poorly timed cold, Elias handled things pretty well.  He really seemed to just roll with it all, for the most part.  It was kind of like those final weeks on Big Brother, when things start to disappear and the house-guests notice something's missing.  Or when the producers suddenly reduce the table size and the house-guests wake up one day to eight seats instead of sixteen.  Elias seemed to really notice what was missing day by day but more or less accept it and understand that we were moving and that our home would be located in a different place soon.

And obviously we packed his room last (the day before the movers came, just like last year) and tried to make sure his schedule and activities were as uninterrupted as possible.  On a bonus "Mommy day" the week of the move, we spent the entire morning out and about, first at Barnes & Noble for some old-school train table fun and a snack in front of the fire (oh, Bay Area summers), followed by a play-date at the Oakland Zoo with daycare buddy Hazel.

Less than one week in, we're settling in nicely.  We have a dozen or so boxes left to unpack, mostly books, and a garage already filling up with boxes to store.  We have a long list of projects to tackle but I don't think either of us is feeling too overwhelmed just yet.  Sleep has much improved since but our first night was pretty awful - Elias wanted to go home, presumably to our old place, fought bedtime like it was nobody's business, coughed until he threw up not once, but twice, requiring some spontaneous unpacking of boxes originally intended for another day (who knew we'd need three crib sheets our first night), continued to cough off an on for all but about five hours of the night, waking up so cranky and unmanageable I kept him home from daycare (of all days).  Also, through the night I was additionally woken up by one of two crazy productive persimmon trees out back dropping fruit on the corrugated metal that covers the patio.  Either the tree has to go or the patio cover or both. Who plants two fruit trees in the middle of the yard? And who puts metal over the patio? Ah, the mysteries of a new home.

roses from our back yard

But since that first night Elias has done remarkably better, even, dare I jinx it all and say he's had a longer stretch of sleeping through the night than he's had in a really, really long time.  Maybe apartment living just wasn't a good fit for him.  Or maybe it's pure coincidence.  Or maybe he'll wake up three times tonight. Who knows. The adventure continues...

2 years

Eli gettin' his mud on.

This is the last of the monthly posts. Part of me worries I'll never blog if not for the nagging monthly "birthdays," but I think it makes sense to switch to a more event-geared blogging style at this point.  Elias doesn't change as much from month to month like he did the first 18 months or so.  It's just one big blur of getting not quite enough sleep....Just kidding!  Wait, no I'm not.

Anyway...Since his second birthday (over a month ago, yikes!) Elias has been a little more difficult than usual.  I thought he'd already flipped his toddler switch but I'm now starting to think of it more as a dimmer.  He's been slowly amping it up over the past year until he clicked it fully into the on position (I think. I hope.) right around his train-themed birthday bash.  Rather than expect things to get easier any time soon, I like to think of his second birthday as the halfway point to a time when it seems like most toddlers evolve into "big kids," and, dare I say it, thing seem to be maybe just a tiny bit easier.  Or more enjoyable. Or something.  I'm sure my readers with older kids are thinking there's a very good possibility I'll be eating my words in a couple of years, but that's my hope.  For my readers with younger kids, sorry for the spoiler alert. When they told you at your baby's miraculous birth that the first 3 to 4 months were crazy, what they really meant to say was the first 3 to 4 years.

But things have been a little calmer in the last week or so (hence the blogging...I'm also doing just about everything but packing for our move next week.  Oh yeah, we're moving.  Again.  Didn't I tell you?).  Pretty soon, seeing as how Elias is getting his last set of molars, I won't be able to blame teething.  But that's the latest scapegoat, in addition to a fun summer cold that he passed on to me.  Before I get too ahead of myself, though, let me a share a few images from his birthday festivities.

Well, I guess the birthday boy can have a cupcake before the guests arrive, can't he?

We had his party, the theme of which was very loosely based on his obsession with Thomas the Train, the weekend before his actual birthday, at one of our go-to playgrounds, Berkeley's Aquatic Park.  Other than being insanely windy that morning, the brunch bash was a success.  You can read more about the overall event design on my other blog. 

Elias gets a lesson on gift-opening from "big kid" buddy, Ivan.

Here he is getting a little instruction on opening gifts from his "big kid" buddy, Ivan (who will be 4 in September. We're counting on him to show Elias the ropes.).  It was a small party (and I think therein lies the success).  We invited just a handful of little ones, including a few friends from daycare.  Since his actual birthday was on a Monday, rather than pull him from daycare for the entire day, where I figured he'd probably have more fun playing with his friends than running errands with Mom, we picked him up early and took him to nearby Fenton's for a little birthday mac 'n' cheese and first banana split.

The amount of ice cream we left behind still haunts me.

Even ordering the "junior" version between the three of us we left a staggering amount of ice cream behind (not realizing then that you can get your ice cream leftovers to go!).  He's not a huge fan of ice cream because it's, in his words, "too cold." I'm hoping he'll get over it between now and his third birthday so that we can make this an annual tradition.

It's a train! It's a cake!

I made this train cake to take to daycare during the week for Elias and his daycare buddy, Hazel, since her 2nd birthday falls just a few days later.

Sadly, he had to wait almost an entire week to ride the much coveted tricycle he got from his Uncle Ryan and Aunt Kelly. Even though we've only been here a year as a family and I can't say I'll really miss our apartment or apartment living in general, I will miss this neighborhood, where Neal and I lived for about six years before moving to Boston.  It's been a great landing pad for our return west, with so many family-friendly destinations within a ten to fifteen minute walk, especially considering the first half of our first year back I was home with Elias full-time.  But we're also looking forward to moving into our first house and exploring our new neighborhood in a couple of weeks.  I have a few other blog posts I'd like to get to before the move but realistically I should probably bid adieu until the dust settles later this summer.

Oh, and uh, wish us luck. With just over a week to go, we have, to date, one box packed. Yep, it's going to be a great week!