++Someone++

Someone we know started preschool this week...

We're so proud of the big guy! No tears. No lovey. No potty accidents (yet). We got him in with the 3-year-olds and he seems to be doing just fine. His school is much more of a preschool than what we did in the past. They have circle time and sharing and music and chapel. The first day he came home with a necklace of Froot Loops. What kid didn't do that in preschool? How fun. Now I just have to make sure he doesn't figure out that some people eat bowls of that stuff for breakfast.

++Six Months++

Our Little Claire...has it really been half a year since you joined our family? You sure have a big personality in that little package of yours! A 16 lb. 1oz package to be exact (more than 4 pounds less than Wyatt at this age!)

Here's a little about you at six months:
++ You are such a happy girl. You rarely cry or fuss, even when your brother pulls you across the room by your ankles or when your mom keeps you out long past your nap time.
++You are ON THE MOVE. You don't like your Exersaucer too much. It cramps your style. You prefer to be on the ground army crawling your way around foraging for small toys and crumbs. You often come to find your mom wherever she is, and flash your big smile when she talks to you. You usually wear pants. Not so sure what the story is here.
++You are extremely inquisitive and will work hard to investigate something that catches your eye. In this case...that baby you see reflected in the kick plate.++You are loving your solid foods. We haven't found one you won't gobble up yet. We introduced you to Cheerios and Puffs right around six months (in an effort to give you something more appropriate than crumbs and paper scraps to gnaw on). You respond like a dog in excitement when we shake the container (is it bad that we do this to you?) You are also getting pretty proficient at the sippy cup. You are still pretty much 100% breastfed. You'll take the bottle if that's your option, we just haven't needed it much (a sad, sad commentary on the state of MY life these days). In general you just aren't really that into milk though.

++In addition to your mobility, you learned how to sit right around six months too. It actually kept you in one place for a few days, until you figured out how to get from sitting to your tummy more gracefully. You are still working on getting back to sitting though. The result is a move that resembles the downward dog.

++Did I mention you are much more cooperative at photo shoots than your brother these days? Your mom is excited to see that your eyes are starting to resemble your brothers more and more every day. In fact, we think that in general the two of you sure do look like siblings!

It's funny. The other day I happened to look at family photo we had taken last fall. It's up on our mantle here and I look at it every day. This time when I looked at it just struck me as off. There were only three people in that photo. Our family that felt perfectly complete at the time now looks funny and unbalanced to me without our littlest member.

++Fun with Grandma and Grandpa++

The arrival of Grandma and Grandpa meant Mark and I had a chance to try to get the house in some sort of livable order. For Wyatt and Claire, it meant lots of fun and attention.
Claire and her Grandpa are quite fond of one another. She even found that he has a little chair just right for her!

Grandma and Claire enjoyed each other too. Grandma quickly learned what we already know: that holding Claire is somewhat similar to holding a hamster with all that squirming and trying to get away.

The troops did take a break from the unpacking and head to Boeing family day courtesy of Uncle Brett. Cameras weren't allowed (and the resident photographer stayed home with the baby) but from what I hear there was a lot of fun at the airplane factory. Uncle Brett even treated the boys to airport play sets.

I think Grandpa probably took a few extra naps once he got home to recover from his trip. Did we mention we didn't have TV or Internet the whole time they were here?
We tried hard to get them a nice picture of the kiddos. The little one was getting her teeth and the big one was being his generally uncooperative self. As hard as I try to master the camera operating part of photography, cracking the kid cooperation code is the true challenge!

++Moving In++

Once again the time has flown and I'm forced to do a little back-tracking. Humor me. I'll try to catch up just in time for us to move again...just kidding.

We stopped by the check out the place the night we took possession. This is my favorite spot in the house. The view from the breakfast nook. Nothing but super tall trees all around us.

Moving day can be a challenge with two little guys underfoot. We especially had to make sure the littlest one wasn't literally under anyone's feet. So, I just strapped her on and she helped me check in the boxes as they came in. Note the lovely outfit on me. It was chillier than expected and that was the first sweatshirt I could find.
Once you move with professional movers and packers it's really hard to go back. They get all sweaty, they do all the heavy lifting and you just stand there and watch. Not bad. The bad part is that as much as Mark's company pays for all this stuff to try to make these moves as easy as possible on us there is no one but us (me, really) who can decide where to put things and put them there...and that is a whole lot of work. We're getting there. Slowly. I laugh as I unpack some things and think of all the places they have been. Uptown, Ann Arbor, Downtown, Southwest Minneapolis, Memphis and now here. We should be good at this by now.

++Ugh++

Not sure where to start. A lot has transpired since the last post.
++We're in our new house. Yea! So far we're loving it.
++We lived for an entire week without internet or TV. To put it in perspective...I had no idea that Ted Kennedy had died. Now there is isolation. We're back, but with some renewed resolve to make sure that electronics take up less of our lives.
++This has been the hardest move yet as far as putting stuff away. This house is slightly smaller than the last house and we got spoiled. The garage sale pile grows daily.
++Wyatt acts like it's Christmas with every box we open. He is super thrilled to see his toys and stuff for his room but just as thrilled to find the vacuum cleaner parts, the spatulas and some old hangers. He then proceeds to deliver them all over the house. No wonder we never get anything done.
++The help squad (aka Pacyna grandparents) have already come and gone. I think we would have still been swimming in boxes had it not been for them.
++LOVING the neighborhood so far. You can't tell from the photos but our house is on a weird lot that is tucked back from the street. It would be easy to forget we are here. We've had cookies, brownies, wine and Starbucks delivered along with a couple of other introductions. So nice. We also met 3-year-old Cooper who lives two doors down and were invited by his mom to a neighborhood play date tomorrow.
++Wyatt starts preschool officially next week. This week is orientation. Since he got the potty training job done I was able to enroll him in regular 3-year-old preschool. I was really surprised that quite a few places still have openings and I was able to find a spot at a school a mile from our house (sadly I think it's a sign of the economy). Wyatt came along for the tour and was really excited about the blue fire pole at the playground that's "just my size!"
++The other one keeps plugging along. She'll get her own six month wrap-up soon. Here's a short preview: sitting up, tooth, cheerios and almost crawling. She refused the let the fact that we had a lot of other things going on get in the way of checking off the milestones.
++We're still getting acclimated to things but our first impressions confirm that this is going to be a pretty good place for this family to live. As Annie said "I think I'm gonna like it here!"

++Lessons Learned++

Today is our last day in the apartment. I'm working on packing things up and continually wondering "what was I thinking?" as I see all the things we never touched while we were here. In my defense, as I packed I didn't know if we would be here for one month or six. I had to plan for six. A few reflections:

++No matter how many or how few toys you have, your child(ren) will only play with about 10% of them.

++No matter how many or how few clothes you have, you will probably only wear about 10% of those too. (I'm stuck on this one because if I keep paring back my wardrobe...10% leaves me with doing laundry all the time. There has to be a happy medium).

++Even though you think that living in a small condo with no yard to care for and no house "projects" to complete means that you will be able to tackle all those other things that were lingering on your to-do list--it doesn't.

++Even though the grocery store is literally right next door, it really doesn't make grocery shopping any easier when you have two kids. My dreams of walking to the store were quickly dashed when the dilemma of how to carry everything entered into play.

Next time, I'll know better. Oh wait, there better not be a next time!

++Filling our days++

We've been here almost a month now. Getting by in our little apartment. My mom asked me if we had met anyone yet...the answer was "no." You would think it would bother me more than it does. I have these two busybodies to keep me on my toes:

It's surprising. I wouldn't even say we were bored. Mark was gone for three days last week and that got long. The evenings are what get to me. We went to Susan's house one night and that helped. We've been seeing them a lot on weekends which has been fun. Last Sunday we had our first of what we hope will be weekly family dinners.

The kids keep going and growing no matter what is happening in their life around them. We try to keep things normal. We adapt as necessary. Wyatt has had more TV than he should. We go to the park daily though...that offsets it, right?

We spent most of our free time here house hunting and once that was taken care of, we were able to spend our weekends having fun. Playing tourist in your own town, something we like to do, is going to be super fun here. I have to remind Mark to pace himself. Our first stop, the aquarium.

Here's Dad reading the comics to the kids.

We've been playing a lot of the balloon game in our tiny yard. It involves a Chuck E. Cheese baseball bat and a balloon. I am sure all the other condo dwellers love it. This time the game was indoors and required a hat and "glubs" in order to mimic the guys on TV.

The little one is totally on the move these days. The other day she ate the directions I had jotted down on a post-it note. I'm learning. I frequently find her stuck under the coffee table (it's up against the fireplace so we have more play space).
Here's my buddy enjoying a favorite of both of ours: grilled cheese and tomato soup. He even breaks up his crackers to put in his soup. I'm so excited to have a full kitchen back and to start eating like we should be.
Speaking of eating like we should be. Everything is different with kiddo #2, isn't it? Claire LOVED licking the salt off this pretzel. Notice that that hand is not mine. I was too busy photographing the event to stop it though. She also loves ice cream. Lovely.

We're getting by. What I miss most is the order and routine of our previous life. It will return again...soon! Wyatt tells us often "I want to go home" last night he told his dad that he really missed home. It breaks our heart. Better days are coming little guy, we promise!