Still not quite out of the woods yet as far as stress goes… but I can say with happiness that we’re dealing with the drama MUCH better nowadays. Ok, *I’m* dealing with the drama much better. Joe already had his stuff together, and Ben’s just a happy camper all around.

Work is still insane, and will be until the end of the month, when we deliver (hopefully) a finished product that we’re all proud of. In the meantime, the house is s-l-o-w-l-y coming together, with a HUGE HUGE thanks to Joe’s mom and grandmother who swooped in two weeks ago to help us clear everything out. They did a fantastic job out in the yard, and even helped transplant a lot of our plants from the old house:

(look the hydrangea made it! we hope!)

Sadly, we didn’t quite get all the poison ivy out, and Joe’s mom found out the hard way :( I feel terrible, and she apparently had a pretty bad reaction. So we are definitely hiring someone to come and do a thorough sweep of the entire yard, and we are planning on just starting from scratch all over again back there. Lots of work, but I know it will be totally worth it!

His mom and grandmother cleaned a ton, cooked dinner for us, watched Ben so I could do some work from home… it was just REALLY nice and I really appreciate their visit. It really meant a lot! Joe and his mom worked really hard to finally get EVERYTHING out of our old place, and with no time on our hands to spare, we hired someone to clean the empty place so that could finally check out, and check that off our list. So this week, after everything was moved and cleaned, we sadly said our goodbyes at the old house’s management office. We have been in our co-op for 8 years… so it was very hard to turn in the keys and wave goodbye to our old neighbors. Well, the ones we liked anyway. We gave a big, immature-but-totally-worth-it middle finger to the people that lived below us. We let Ben take one last romp and let him run and bang to his heart’s content before we signed the paperwork… and god help the people that move in after us. I sincerely hope the a-holes below finally realize that they need to MOVE already, and let someone who can actually handle the noise you’d expect in a basement apartment live there. God knows the management company wishes they would ;)

So we’re back to owning one place, and really trying hard to figure out what the heck to do with all of our stuff. We are ordering a new couch (and putting the old ones in the basement), so that the living room will have just a couch, and a chair (maybe two, eventually). That will really open things up, and give more room for Ben to run. Then we want to get a computer armoire to house our laptops, and so that we can hide them when not in use, and get rid of the fugly folding table that they currently sit on. And lastly, we need a new TV stand, one that fits the TV, and works with our room. For the time being, everything is thrown around, but I wanted to post some photos so that we could see progress later :) Forgive the insane amount of boxes, clothes strewn about, and general over-the-top clutter… it’s a work in progress!!

(this we got for free from someone on my mom’s list. It’s an old diaper change center, cleaned up of course!)

(bad glare, but we finally can put our good china set out in our cabinet!)

(new washer and dryer!)

(this is our dumping area for boxes… excuse the disaster)

The only photos I’m missing are of Ben’s room… he was napping at the time of the above photos :)

And of course Ben is doing great. We got our photos from his 18 month photo shoot at the Capitol back, and we LOVE them! Stacey Blomstrom of Labor of Love Photography met us on a hot, super humid day, and took on the task of shooting a cranky hot toddler. She did a great job, and I’m excited to finally have a photo of Ben and I that looks decent and is actually in focus. Here’s a link to the album, and some of my favorites below:

As for sickness, we did go through another round of antibiotics recently, as his “suspected” pinkeye turned out to be true, along with an ear infection. And when those antibiotics didn’t work, and he ran fevers of 103+ for 4 days in a row, we found out his ears were STILL infected, so we had to try another round, and this one seems to have worked. Poor little man!

So house is coming along, work is insane, and we’re still dying from the heat, but hey, summer is almost over, and we can’t WAIT for the fall! We’re off to NY this weekend for the annual Lobsterfest celebration, and I can’t wait to see all our Long Island friends!

(Ben is 1 year 7 months 4 weeks old)

We’re at home today since Ben was suspected of having a case of pinkeye from daycare. THANKFULLY, we’re just getting over a nasty cold, so we’ll be back at daycare tomorrow! (Updated weight check from the doctor: Ben is 30lbs, 9oz at 19 months, 95th percentile!) In the meantime, I pulled out some of his old toys that we had hidden at our previous apartment. Our neighbors downstairs made it abundantly clear their opinion on these toys (read: they pounded on our floor relentlessly whenever he used them). So he was REALLY happy to see these again!

In other news, we had a contractor visit us yesterday to give an estimate on installing central air into our house. We’ve been MISERABLE in this heat and humidity… it’s made me cranky, Joe cranky, and no one wants to MOVE, let alone unpack or do anything productive. Given that we do not have any existing duct work AND given that we’d need to drop more power to the house and install a new circuit breaker box to have enough “juice” for the central a/c, their quote of $22,000 doesn’t seem all that far fetched. This guy came highly recommended… so it just looks like we’ll have to work through the next few years of hot summers while we save up for it. We are looking into a few other solutions for the summer… whether it’s a larger window unit for the living room, or a room a/c unit… SOMETHING needs to be done for us to function. We’ll figure it out. Soon, I hope :)

Unpacking is coming along slowly. I’m happy to report I found my work badge, so at least I can stop my daily trips to the security office :) I also unpacked all our towels, AND managed to do a few loads of laundry in our NEW washer/dryer. We purchased the front loading Kenmore from Sears. It was rated the highest and recommended by Consumer Reports AND it was 15% off :) We had a minor hiccup during the installation when our outlet turned out to be the WRONG kind (our old dryer was OLD)… but a quick call to the local handyman (who we have on speed dial now) had the outlet rewired and the dryer working in a few hours. THANK GOD. So we’re getting there! We also managed to find a new crib for Ben that looks very similar to his old crib, and that gets delivered today (and hopefully assembled tonight or tomorrow morning). No more pack and play for poor Ben! Then we can finally get his room in order. The biggest problem area for us is still the kitchen, and storage there. We desperately need shelving both upstairs and downstairs… maybe a trip to IKEA next weekend is in order.

We also had some fun exciting news… Joe’s cousin Ann had her babies yesterday!! So a big CONGRATULATIONS to Ann and Richard on twins Grace and Frances! We can’t wait to meet them, and wish you a speedy recovery!!

My sister was also here for the weekend, and we had a great time hanging out. I hope she and Jamie had fun being tourists, even despite the ridiculous heat. Ben got a big kick out of Martini (the pug puppy), and I know for sure Lily misses her already :) Hope to see everyone again sometime this fall!

(Ben is 1 year 7 months 5 days old)

First week in our new house, and we’re getting there. With more sleep and finally using the A/C at night, I have a much better outlook on the move :) Boxes have been semi-unpacked, and while most of the house is still in chaos, and I can’t find my work badge or Ben’s nail clippers, it’s coming along. We have most of our dishes unpacked, and were able to cook dinner two nights this week. The heat is awful… I won’t lie. We totally overestimated our ability to deal with not having central A/C in the house. We actually have a contractor coming on the 19th to give us an estimate for installing A/C in a house with no duct work (we have a steam boiler and radiators for heat), and that has moved to the top of the priority list. Sleeping at night is no problem with the window units… but wow, just hanging out downstairs is tough, let alone trying to move and unpack furniture and heavy boxes. Our home inspector gave a rough estimate of about $20k for the A/C… here’s hoping he was grossly overestimating. Otherwise it will be a few more summers before we can get it installed.

We still have a few problems that need to get resolved ASAP. The first is Ben’s crib… it got broken when we attempted to dismantle it for the move so he’s been sleeping in his pack and play for the past week. It breaks my heart because I loved his crib, and had hoped to use it for the 2nd baby (eventually). But the railing split near the bottom, and I don’t trust it to be safe enough to salvage. It was a craigslist find, so it wasn’t expensive, but I just have a lot of sentimental feelings attached to it, and I’m really, really sad that we can’t assemble it in the new place. So now I’m on the lookout for another crib on craigslist, and I have a few leads. He’s not *quite* ready for a toddler bed yet, especially since we haven’t babyproofed his room or the upstairs yet. So we can’t trust him to be running around unsupervised. So crib it is.

The second is our washing machine. It broke the second night when we attempted to try a load of laundry. Joe called me down to point out a puddle of water collecting at the base, and when we consulted the local handyman, he confirmed it was probably a broken pump. So now we’re in the market for a new washer and dryer, and hope to have those installed this weekend.

After that, we just need to focus on getting all the last items left at the old house transferred over, and then scrub down the place and turn in our keys. I’m hoping we can get that done next weekend, and be ready to turn everything in by the 1st week of August. Then we need to order a new couch (courtesy of Joe’s grandparents and parents), an area rug, a new TV stand, and a new computer desk. We are beyond ready to ditch the folding table and metal filing cabinet we’d converted to a makeshift desk… it looks horrendous in the living room. So our plan is to find an armoire that can fit an external monitor and a laptop so that we can hide it for company, and also find a matching or coordinating file cabinet. That should help tremendously, and make our room a little more livable.

Once we have that, we’ll need to finish putting up window treatments in the rest of the house, hire somone to repair our chimney cap and rainhat, repair the windows that won’t stay up on their own, put up a fence along the back wall in the yard for Lily, and clear out all the poison ivy that’s left. Those are our priority items, and I feel like the list just keeps growing…

In more fun news, Ben loves the new house, despite the heat. He can bang and throw and make as much noise as he wants, and it’s SO much less stressful not having to yell at him for it :) He also loves running in and out of all the rooms upstairs, and pointing to all the ceiling fans. He’s a pro at opening and closing doors, and even figured out how to move things out of the way if he can’t close it. He now says the words “Go!” and “toe” and “door”… and is fascinated every time I tell him something is “stuck”. He tries really hard to say the word, but it always just comes out “uck” or “ick”. He is obsessed with blueberries, and will point to the refrigerator and say “buh-bee” for “blueberry”, and still refuses to eat any sort of vegetable. At least he’ll eat any fruit we give him! We’ve branched out to eat more ham than chicken, but still LOVE LOVE ketchup with chicken nuggets. He’s also a big fan of chips if we bring some home from Subway, but his favorite is still strawberries, blueberries, and chicken nuggets. Never turns those down! We set up his table and chairs that he got as a Christmas present from Nonna and Grandpa Bob, and he loves just sitting at the table and playing. We have a little “Ben corner” in the living room where all his toys and books are, and as soon as we clear out the furniture, he’ll have more room to go crazy.

Lily also loves her new yard… and it was really fun watching her run like crazy the past few days. We still take her for walks in the morning, and it’s really nice walking around our neighborhood and seeing everyone’s house.

So things are settling. My mom was here to help wrangle Ben during the move, and she was a super big help. She left on Wednesday morning, and my sister is actually driving in from Michigan as I type this. I’m excited for the visitors and can’t wait to make more progress, and hopefully host other people over soon!

(Ben is 1 year 7 months 1 day old)