Moving Rules: Take a Break

As of this morning, one quarter of our family has headed off on the journey to Virginia. Meanwhile I am safely ensconcsed on my sister's couch with two sleeping babies in the bedrooms (still calling J a baby at 3.5 years, should probably get over that) and I will probably follow suit very shortly. 

The house was packed, cleaned and locked up by us for the last time yesterday. It was a good little house for our almost three years there, even though it desperately needed new windows. And carpet. And paint. And bathroom. And kitchen. Baby J did so much growing there (learned to walk, potty trained, moved into a twin bed, got herself a baby sister) and it was the only home #2 had ever known. I shall miss the memories in that house, we made lots of good ones.

This morning we sent Adam off with a car packed to the gills (not sure how it's all going to fit in the tiny VA apartment....) and the girls and I were delivered safely, and just a little sadly, to Ogden. Fear not though, I have decided what we have here is a mini vacation! We will see the sights (Treehouse Museum I'm looking at you!) and roundly enjoy ourselves before boarding a flight for DC on Monday morning. Carpe Diem!

Moving Rule: Sort your stuff

The movers are coming!The movers are coming! They'll be here tomorrow in fact. We've got 350 pounds of air freight sitting on the dining room table and various sundries strewn around the house in loosely organised piles. It seems that while a moving company will make the heavy labour of the actual day easier, preparing for them to come is not yet my strong suit. The crux of the problem (I'm telling myself) is that we have so many different destinations for our plentiful supply of stuff. We have stuff going in the car across the country, in suitcases with the girls and me on the plane, in an air shipment to Virginia and then even more stuff to storage in Maryland. The storage items won't be seen until months after we go to post and our apartment in Virginia has limited storage from what I can tell. The girls won't stop growing, no matter how much I try to convince them, and so we need items to accommodate that. It's a bit of a headache and to top it off, Baby M has a cold (as do I, but I am slightly better at managing it). She's not a great sleeper at the best of times but she's really exploring the definition of the phrase 'no sleep at all.' Such is life! So many moving pieces to consider and try to align, even my list making didn't really help. The task was simply too big! However, the movers are coming and there's nothing we can do to stop them. So we better go to bed.

Baby Rules: Be Blessed (and take pictures)

So, we blessed Maggie.
Keeping in line with our last baby blessing, we waited a nice long while to do it. I'll be honest though, there are some pros to having a baby who is a little older when they're blessed.
For starters, pictures!

A baby who can sit up is much easier to do a photo shoot with. However, this baby wasn't only sitting up but also trying desperately to crawl away. I missed my photo shoot window - it will never be easy again! I will say though, that M is a much more compliant baby when it comes to having a camera shoved in her face. Jo was almost never up for that and M at least humours me briefly. What you can't see here are all the outtakes. She's got a red nose for a reason and it wasn't the cold. She really wanted to get away and was bawling her eyes out about being continually redirected. It made capturing the whole of the dress ridiculously hard. Luckily it's the same dress I blessed Jo in and I got some fun pictures of the dress without either baby in back in the day. This dress is actually an antique that my Mum purchased in Scotland back in the day. 

  

I hope my girls aren't sad that I chose to bless them in this dress. I had the option to use the dress my sisters and I were blessed in and it was a tough call. 

The other benefit of blessing baby at your own leisure is, let's be honest, convenience. We were able to bless M at her Great Grandparent's home and I loved being able to do it there and include them as well as the other family members and friend (shout out to Irene) who were able to come. We kept it small and it was special.  Just like M. (I suppose she's only small to me, she's pretty much right around 50% for all her stats)

Orem Rules: Get Your Eyes Checked

Here's a little snippet from our life as we are getting ready to haul ourselves across the country and then to some as-yet-to-be-determined location around the globe. The unspecified nature of the thing makes the planning difficult, but there will always be laundry regardless of the unknowns. Which is almost  comforting. Almost.

Here you can see we have created a laundry, baby and toddler containment device otherwise known as a bed with a pillow wall. I am sad and quite ashamed to admit that it didn't work, at least not for long. Also please note the Maggie smile on display here (as it is regularly). This baby has love and mischief in her soul I believe. You can see it quite plainly there.

Next in our day comes the arduous task of dressing the baby, interrupted for feedings and an attempt to capture the hair of said baby in digital format. The mohawk is something we are always striving to achieve here.  The documentation of this hair update was quite the undertaking and since no single picture could do it justice, obviously I made a collage. Obviously.

Post afternoon nap we were off to the eye doctor. Who knows where we will be later this year and who knows if they will have optometrists in plentiful supply. They definitely won't have the one your husband has been seeing since he was a teen. Eye doctor visits require a fully loaded diaper bag and this is new diaper bag is serious business let me tell you. All locked and loaded for every eventuality. A babysitter would have been more practical but pshaw! who doesn't take two kids to the eye doctor?

While at the eye doctor Maggie discovered her love of the camelbak bottle. Her sister at least waited until she was almost mobile to discover my bottle. Sigh, I can already see a long road ahead of me training another child not to steal my bottle. Forget potty training, the preservation of a water bottle for my sole usage is my greatest parenting struggle. No I will not share!

And last, but definitely not least, let us all revel in those cheeks! Those cheeks though! Maggie has been sick and so I see more of the late night cheeks than perhaps I would like.  I take pictures to try and remember the sheer perfection that is my baby's cheeks and I feel much better about the situation. One day they will all sleep without me.

That's what I hear anyway.