Update on the Move

Who would have ever thought I could be so happy to have meals to cook and a home to clean. Aaah! The slow life! Thanks be to tranquility! Boy, and when I say a home to clean. I really do mean C-L-E-A-N. In my last post I wrote that our temporary apartment was outdated, but "at least seems clean enough." It was not. Not even remotely clean at all, much less "enough". When we moved in here on Sunday it was outright disgusting. Horrific and gross. Putrid comes to mind. Filthy.

Okay, you get it.

"Why?" you might be wondering, "Oh why did you move in if it was so dirty?"

Well, for starters, when we arrived here Sunday evening it was after a whirlwind weekend in Kansas, a three hour drive, and we had no place else to go. When we did our initial walk-through (of a different apartment than I originally toured) we didn't notice the grime. We just were thankful to have landed. Someplace. Anyplace. But after the lease was signed and once we started looking around we quickly noticed our mistake.

There were crumbs on the counters, the stove, as well as in and on the microwave. There was food specking the wall behind the stove and in the fridge. The coffee pot looked as though it had never been wiped down...ever. The carpets weren't vacuumed, the towels smelled funny, and the sheets, well lets just say we weren't about to sleep on them. To make it worse, we had no place else to go. All the other places offering corporate housing were either booked-full or too small. This was it.

So, we've made the best of it. That night we drove to Walmart and bought towels, sheets, and groceries. The next morning we went to Sam's and stocked up on some heavy duty cleaning supplies. And until I got management to bring us a new vacuum (and refund the $80 cleaning fee!) Normy spent all his time in his Pack-N-Play.

He wasn't usually so peaceful stuck in here!

I must say, after a couple days worth of sweat, bleach, and elbow-grease things are starting to feel down-right livable around here. I certainly wouldn't say "like home", but maybe "like home enough for now."

The good news is that we put in an offer on a house yesterday...and after a series of offers and counter-offers we have reached a compromise! We are buying a house!!!! I am thrilled with this cute little home. When I met Smoochy he owned his own home, (I of course rented a shoe box) and that home quickly became my home as well. But, I didn't help pick it, and even once we were married it always felt a little like Smoochy's house. So this house will in a way be MY first house. Pretty cool, huh?



Man, and if you could see it you would probably agree that it is the perfect house for us. For starters it's OLD. The house was built in 1913 and it retains much of it's original interior wood. Hard wood floors, thick oak baseboards, and a beautiful shelf flanked mantel in the living room. Of course what really captured my heart was the sunny yellow kitchen with PLENTY of cabinets. The bedrooms are small and so is the yard, which is fine by me as we aren't exactly yard-work kind of people (as I'm sure our Georgia neighbors will attest to!) The house has a lovely wooden deck in the back, and to top it off is in walking distance to a beautiful park and is literally in the back yard of a Catholic Church (so there's no more excuses to miss mass.) So there you have it...I'm thrilled!

In Normy related news: He is adapting nicely to our new little apartment and we are all trying to get on a schedule. We both have nasty cold so that has been no fun, but it hasn't slowed him down half as much as me. He's still trying to figure out walking. Some days he's more adventurous than others. Mostly he just takes a few steps here and there between us or the furniture. He has FINALLY after six months of consistent dinner time signing started doing the sign for "all done" when he is through with his meals. He still hasn't gotten "drink" or "eat", but we're working on it. He's really in to opening and closing anything he can, and he loves to take things out and put things in. This apartment came equipped with a clear plastic 1/2 liter measuring cup and he loves to put his LittlePeople into it and then, one by one, take the LittlePeople out again.



Normy is such a lover boy right now. He loves to kiss things: the picture of Sheep in his Fix-It Duck book, his monkey, and of course he loves to kiss his Mommy and Daddy. He is a kissing fool. I love how when I scoop him up he hugs me tight and gives me open mouth sloppy baby kisses all over. Then he tries to eat fist-fulls of my hair. It's an improvement, at least now he's not pulling hair as much, just eating it.



So, all and all things are pretty good for us right now. I'll close with everyones favorite, Normy Vision!


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