Settling in

The theme this month in our household is 'settling in' - now that we are living in a house, of course.  The bittersweet goodbyes to the hotel staff, who for 6 weeks were a sort of extended family that greeted us, cleaned our room and fetched our cars, were rather short.  I was eager to get to our new apartment and unpack my suitcase that I lived out of for 3 months.  The shipment of our household goods arrived from England on the 11th of October.  If that wasn't mayhem enough, the shipment of our goods that remained in storage for the last 3 and a half years arrived the very next day, leaving us little time to cope with the first.  It was a maze of boxes and going through them was part excitement, part burdensome.  It felt truly liberating to drop off box after box at the Goodwill - there are just so many things that tend to accumulate over time, especially when you've moved around a lot, and you just have no idea why you've saved it all.  All in all, it has been a major purging event.

Finding the time and energy to unpack boxes while in the third trimester of pregnancy, with an excited little boy running around is the second, much longer half of this relocation saga.  Don took one week off of work to oversee the shipment arrivals and to help unpack.  We did absolutely as much as we could.  The rest of the general household organization has now fallen to me.  Thankfully, I've had some generous friends over to help me or to watch Aiden.  These little spurts of productivity really lighten my load and the brighten the gloomy overwhelmed feeling I get when I survey our still 'unsettled' space.  I have yet to hang a picture, but really the place is starting to come together and this is a big relief since the 'nesting' instinct is really pestering me with only a month to go until my due date.


In the middle of all of this, Aiden is growing and changing by leaps and bounds.  We now have a much more settled bedtime routine where Aiden goes to sleep on his own, in his own toddler bed, in his own room and mostly sleeps through the night.  I'm elated to have my evenings back!  His vocabulary and conversational skills continue to impress me and I love to hear what he's thinking.  He can count to ten (though if I don't start him off right, it goes something like this: 2, 1, 6, 9, 8!), say most of the alphabet and sing/shout the end refrain 'Now I know me [not a typo] ABCs, next time won't you sing with me!!'  He's getting better about listening and obeying, though some days are better than others.  I'm really proud of him when he says 'please' and 'thank you' without prompting.  People often ask me if Aiden is excited about the baby coming.  I think he doesn't have a clue.  Sure, he knows there's a baby in my belly and wants the baby to play cars, but I'm positive he is in no way prepared to share Mommy's attentions with a brother.



With the impending arrival of baby boy #2, we recently took a spontaneous weekend trip to Baltimore to visit with Don's family.  We won't be able to see them for Christmas, so it was nice to spend some time with everyone before the holidays.  It was also a welcome break from unpacking.  Additionally, Don and I got our first date night since July 11th!  I remember the exact date of our last date because it was the night before I left Cambridge for the last time.  We had a delectable dinner at the Melting Pot (my fave!) and saw a movie together for the first time since hmmmm... maybe May?  No idea really.

Unseasonably cold weather struck the northeast, but we managed to keep warm and enjoy some outside fall festival activities.  We checked out 'Boo at the Zoo', which was Aiden's first experience dressing up as Superman and 'trick or treating'.  We enjoyed some indoor play time on the day that it snowed.  Yeah, snowed. Then, we took in the crisp morning air on a hay ride at a local farm.


Whew, well there you have it.  The latest news from us to you.  The next you hear from us will hopefully be news of the quick and painless birth of the next little baby boy Baker...