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!

23 months

The highlight of month 23, as far as I can remember at this point, was our first trip east since moving back to California last summer, to visit my brother and his family in Connecticut. This was probably our most enjoyable travel experience with Elias thus far. The flights there and back were a mix. Despite the fact that Elias is a big and squirmy toddler, we wanted to take advantage of the soon-to-expire perk that he could, theoretically, sit in our laps and fly free one last time. And in the end it was fine, obviously: we made it there and back. But of the nearly 12 hours in-flight, there were about two to three hours (on the way there, when he literally did not stop moving the entire time before finally and suddenly - and quite literally - crashing for the rest of the flight) where I think we both thought we'd made a huge mistake. But 2 or 3 out of 12 ain't bad, right? That means the other nine or ten hours were only mildly miserable, and actually he did sleep for a couple of those so that was nice. I actually got to read my new Nook, an early Mother's Day gift. I'm now only about halfway through that same book, but that's neither here nor there...

Anyway, the visit itself was very relaxing. We didn't do much other than chill out inside and outside my brother's place and I think the lack of plans was probably key to our enjoyment.They have a large play structure in their back yard where Elias enjoyed his first non-bucket swing ride:

Elias hit it off immediately with my nine-year-old niece Adriana (he was holding her hand on the arm rest of the car seat on the drive home from the airport).  He reminds us of her at this age a lot, mostly in the way he fights sleep so perhaps they sensed some sort of kindred spirit in one another.

Following are some shots from one particularly photogenic outing to a nearby playground one afternoon we were there:

A playground with a steering wheel! Elias must've thought this was the coolest place. Ever.

Scheming, no doubt.

Aww. That's a keeper.  And here he is enjoying some quality, chilling out with Daddy time:

And some quality Uncle Brian time here.  When he says Uncle Brian it sounds like "Unk Buddy," which is pretty cute, don't you think?

Neither my brother nor my sister-in-law are particularly musical but it's something they've always encouraged their kids to do so they have a lot of musical instruments in their finished basement/most awesome play room ever. Elias got to try out the recorder here with Adriana:

And he played the drums a few times with Uncle Brian:

I try to play the part of laidback mama, I really do, but I have to admit, I was a little concerned for everyone's hearing.

As far as sleep goes, Elias did pretty well.  His schedule was way off, mainly due to the three hour time difference.  The first night, for example, he stayed up until about 10, and then slept in until about 8:30 the next morning.  Every day was different and we all rolled with it pretty well, I thought, considering how structured our routine at home sometimes feels.  He tended to sleep about ten hours at night regardless of when he went down and his naps, I think (I honestly don't remember), were hit or miss.  Here he is napping with Neal on the air mattress (oh the things you do after your kids reach a certain age that you'd never do when they're itty-bitty, like, for example, sleeping on an air mattress):

So yes, sleep was not bad. And there was some eating. Oh, boy, did we eat. Here's a shot of Elias, for the little bit of time he actually sat in the high chair, at a Puerto Rican restaurant about a half-hour away from where they live. Good, but not as good as Tia Marty's cooking.

My only request to my gracious hosts, other than a few doses of Dunkin' Donuts coffee (I'm a Peet's snob, don't get me wrong, but I do miss their iced coffee in the summer)...

 

...was a little Sweet Maria's. Elias enjoyed one of the buttcream cupcakes we brought home in addition to the whip cream frosted cake they had ordered in advance to celebrate Mother's Day while we were there.

The other highlight, thanks to the fact that my brother is a firefighter in the nearby town of Hamden, was a visit to the firehouse. Elias is a lot more interested in firetrucks since the trip, but what kid doesn't like big, red, shiny things with horns and lights?

And one last shot, on the short shuttle ride from the airport terminal to the parking lot, with trusty travel companion, Scout (or Puppy Pal, as we call him):

Eli rocks out

I promise to get around to the 23 months and 2 year (what?!) updates this weekend, but in the meantime thought I'd share another teaser in the form of a video we took of Elias after we got home from his party on Saturday:



As you can see, he is fully rocking the Meowsic he scored from our friends Amanda, Sai, and baby Milo. You can tell we're having a pretty good time watching him and I for one was completely surprised by the way he was holding the microphone to his mouth, bopping his head to the beat. I think he even managed to get out a "blum" - that's the sound he seems to think cats make - on the "meow" bit during the second song. Where did he pick that up?

bouncy seat, then & now

Elias, enjoying the bouncy seat at 1 and 6 months:

And, since we still haven't taken that thing to storage, here he is equally transfixed at nearly two years old:

Updates from month 23 and the 2nd birthday party to follow!

22 months

What's that you say?  My kid is actually 23 months and a day?  Well then, I'll keep this brief. I'm already starting to forget the details of the last month so I'll let the images do most of the updating on this one.

Here we are enjoying a visit to Berkeley's Aquatic Park, a recent addition to our rotating schedule of playground staples and site of Elias's 2nd birthday party next month.

Hopefully the weather will be warmer and the toddler less squirmy for the birthday festivities.  And here's Elias in one of Mommy's favorite get-ups: comfy pants and slippers.

Otherwise, as I mentioned in the Easter update, month 22 was almost entirely spoken for by a nasty, lingering cold that eventually developed into pink-eye, the cold part of which Elias passed along to both Neal and me.  The pink-eye portion overlapped with two of Elias's three daycare days one week, leaving me less than a day that week to get all of my work done, and preceded yet another business trip for Daddy.  Needless to say I still haven't figured out how to successfully juggle this whole career/motherhood thing.  Fortunately I work for myself so it's not like I have to take a sick or vacation day every time he's out of daycare.  Unfortunately, the work I miss one day carries over into the next, creating quite a backlog of projects and orders in a really short amount of time.  I'm only now feeling a little bit caught up and that's mainly because I'm in a bit of a lull, between summer and fall weddings, which of course sends me into an entirely different sort of frenzy, worrying about how much I'm financially contributing to the budget and whether or not I can justify having Elias in daycare for any portion of the week.  But I'm just not sure how I feel about the possibility of being a full-time stay-at-home-mom again. 

So what did we do to address this dilemma? Increase Elias's daycare days from three to four, naturally.  I guess my thought was that for just a bit more each month, I'd get four to five extra days to work, and at least two to three daycare days each week, regardless of illness, holidays, vacations, etc.  I'm hoping I can take on enough new orders to justify the increase and have, once again, begun sending out resumes to 9 to 5 type jobs. So I guess you'd say we're taking a wait and see approach, for the time being at least. 

And, anyway, before you know it, this kid will be in preschool!

Easter Weekends 2010

Before I get into the 22 month update, I figured I should post some pictures and notes from the two weekends we celebrated Easter, first with a visit to Grandpa Ron and Grandma Stephanie in Browns Valley, California, followed by an Easter egg hunt in Sacramento on the way home. 

This isn't the greatest shot of any of the three generations of Grigsby guys pictured but that's how it goes with a squirmy toddler.  Elias did really well on this trip.  Especially as far as sleep goes, while we timed the driving with afternoon napping (none of which lasted more than 40 minutes, I might add, but at least he slept, which is more than I can say for today's nap, but I'll save that for another post...) the overnight portion was probably our most successful of any trip with Elias so far.  He needed a little extra coddling at bedtime but crashed around 7 (thanks to an early wake-up and that short car nap) and didn't make a peep all night.  Granted, he woke up at about 5:45 the next morning, while it was still totally dark out, his first word being "eat," but that's a huge improvement over our Thanksgiving visit to his other Grandpa (and that was a huge improvement over our trip to SoCal in September so, you now, progress!). 

The visit was otherwise a classic example of what a difference a toddler makes.  A cabin that's a fifteen minute drive from the nearest gas station would be extremely relaxing without child, but throw a toddler into the mix and suddenly all you can think of are all the things that toddler can get into (the hovering, the chasing! it's exhausting!) and what the heck am I going to do with him for 36 hours out here.  But the weather was perfect for exploring the extended outside area so that's just what we did...On Saturday afternoon:

And again on Sunday morning:

Elias seemed to get a kick out of going over this little bridge they have, which seemed perfectly scaled to a toddler.  Also a big hit was the animal-based yard art, including this guitar strumming frog that Elias appears to be posing next to but was, in fact, about to go into full-on stink-eye mode:

That's better.  Here he is enjoying some quality one-on-one time with Grandpa Ron:

We ended up leaving a little earlier than planned, and since Elias's car nap was again brief (over by the time we hit Roseville which, if you're not familiar with California geography, ain't long) we enjoyed a spontaneous Dairy Queen rendez-vous with Grandma Joanne, where Elias enjoyed his first official soft serve.

With a spoon, naturally.  Despite the surprised look on his face, Elias enjoyed his cone and ate most of it himself (which shouldn't surprise anyone...he is my son, after all).

It didn't take Elias long to get cozy in the age appropriate wheels and find the water-based play above on the final stop of our pre-Easter Easter weekend.  Our friend's folks host and so graciously invited us to this amazing Easter egg hunt, complete with a basket for every kid, delivered by a guy in a bunny suit! 

Elias seemed to get the idea of the hunt pretty quickly and this is probably the first holiday/special event that he anticipated just a little bit, probably because I bought him a soccer ball basket (you'll see that below) and some plastic eggs the week before. I swear it wasn't a competitive thing - it's not like we were practicing hiding eggs in the apartment or anything...

The following weekend, Easter weekend, we invited Grandma Joanne to visit.  It ended up being really bad timing, since Elias came down with a nasty cold that Friday night, slept horribly and was cranky and difficult all weekend, and I spent every waking minute he was sleeping finishing up a rush order I should have never accepted.  But Elias made out with some quality Thomas the Train merch (and on a positive note, that Friday before being our 5th wedding anniversary, a friend came over after Elias went to bed so Neal and I could enjoy - get this - our first dinner out since Elias was born! Seriously. Let me just say that was one of the best margaritas I've ever had!).  And, well, as we always do, we got through it.

And I'm happy to report he seems to be - finally - more or less over the cold (with a side of pink-eye about two weeks in, but I'll save that fun tidbit for the official 22 month update).  However, as these kids like to roll from one challenge right on to the next, he's now officially teething, getting those 2-3 1/2 year molars.  I've had my suspicions for a few weeks now (not at all surprised since he got all of his other teeth early and in sets of 2 or, shudder, 4) and could feel some swelling over a definite hard toothy bit that's yet to break skin on the lower right side.  At least this is it as far as teeth go for awhile. So it should be smooth sailing after this. Right?