We've Moved!

It's official! We are a family of "Mainers" now. Our flight got in late Wednesday night, we picked up our car on Thursday, and we got our keys Friday.

Sofia has been an amazing trooper through it all. I feel horrible for all the stress of traveling, different residences every few nights, millions of new faces that she has had to endure. Not to mention the lack of routine or play space she's had to suffer. If she never learns to walk, I'll blame it on the move. Can't blame her for taking lots of naps!

While crashing at a colleague's place, waiting for the keys to our house, we already enjoyed some beautiful rain and checked out the farmer's market. 

Farmer's Market on the Town Green.  Remind anyone else of Gilmore Girls?
PS - yes they were selling lobster off the back of a truck. We ARE in Maine!

We got the keys to the house, but our moving truck won't arrive until Monday, so we're just camping out [sleeping bags and all] and standing in awe of this amazing place where we get to live. Oh - and enjoying the housewarming present Emily sent to Sofia - and alphabet book called L is for Lobsterall about the state of Maine. All three of us are learning so much! How Emily finds things like this never ceases to amaze me! Thanks Auntie Em!

We're feeling pretty happy about our new digs!

It amazes me that we don't still live in an apartment. The house is amazing. And yet, what I find myself totally captivated by right now is the fact that we have a yard. Last night, we picniced on our back porch and enjoyed dusk together. 

First meal in our new home. Gourmet!

I told Manny that I feel like we have our own personal state park. It all feels too good to be true. But I keep reminding myself that it hasn't started to snow yet. For now, I will revel in my bliss and take the weather as it comes. 

Today, we are off to a Lobster shack. Can you believe that Manny and I have never REALLY had lobster? Not a bad first place to check it out, eh? We'll let you know how that goes!

Thanks to everyone who has sent well wishes along our way. More updates to come on settling in as our stuff arrives. I hope you are all enjoying your weekend, Lobsters!

Snapshot Saturday #12: feets

Has it been long enough since a Saturday Snapshot was of my baby girl? I promise I try to aim my camera at other things, but it's real hard. Ever since she was born I've been astounded at how long her feet are. Also, I think Jack Johnson looked into the future to see this picture to find the inspiration for the song title "bubbly toes." Lastly, I'm a big fan of shallow depth of field.

What are some of your favorite photography effects or elements?

How to survive a long-distance move with an infant

Soon after I got pregnant, I started to worry about how we were going to be able to move cross country with a small baby. My friend, Faith, just made a similar trek [documented on her blog, The Pickle Patch]. She gave me hope that it was doable, but then again, she is amazing, so I knew she was making things sound easier than they would be for me. Just over a year later, the time has come. Here we go! 

Today is the day we've been promised to get the keys to our new house. So we've made it part of the way through the process. I've learned a few lessons about moving with an infant. 

1) Ask for help. I have a completely untrue fantasy in my head that I am a woman that can handle anything. That makes it hard to ask for help, but I know I need it sometimes. So far: 

• Our community group brought us meals so we didn't have to pack our kitchen at the last minute or eat out a million times. I think more than the meals, it was great to get to spend one last hang out time with each of them so we could say proper goodbyes. 
• Neighbors, friends, and family took lots of food and miscellaneous items out of our house that we couldn't move with us, easing my neurosis about anything going to waste. Neighbors also made us feel like we would be missed in our building, and that felt amazing.
• My amazing husband and my friend Amy's amazing husband [Paul] baby sat our baby girls so that Amy and I got to go see Bridesmaids. Oh how good it was to laugh for about two solid hours! This was my first movie in a theater since Sofia was born. What a treat! Thank you Paul and Manny!!!
• Our friends, Lexie and Jamie, let us stay in their apartment so we could be more ready when the movers arrived and didn't have to make a long road trip on the same day that the moving took place. They were so gracious. They cooked for us, entertained us, and were all around amazing hosts. [Technically, I didn't ask for this, they offered, but I accepted the help, so I'm leaving it under this point]
• Both sets of our parents came to help us pack, and by pack I mean they played with Sofia while we packed. Poor Grandparents. [ok, they did pack some boxes!]

2) Don't get divorced. Moving is stressful folks. Everyone who calls to check up on us keeps asking if the stress is ending our marriage. And I'll be honest. There were a non-zero amount of fights and tension. There were some talks about communication, equal work loads, gender roles, etc. Somehow we worked through that and we actually still love each other, I think, right Manny? It did not hurt that my parents made it possible for us to take some date nights by baby-sitting Sofia. We got to go out to dinner and a movie! Granted, I was too worn out to do both in one night, but that just meant we got to spread out the fun. MMmmm . . . rissotto balls!

3) Sprinkle in some fun. Between parenting an infant, selling our car, arranging a cross-country move from three cities at once, packing, setting up utilities in a new state, the work load was exhausting. Did I mention that said infant had not one, but TWO teeth break through in the middle of all of this? 

This was in between tooth one and tooth two breaking.

It's not been the easiest month or two of my life. But it helped that we managed to have some fun through the process. Our friends, Nate and Annie, visited from the Bay Area. We got to visit my sister. My parents came and took us out to good restaurants and we took them to the Wild Animal Park.

I'm sure I'm forgetting many of our fun activities we squeezed in between the boxes and arrangements. But I think my favorite part was the songs Manny and I made up to sing to Sofia out of complete delirium. I think Sofia was properly entertained as well. Personal favorite? Start singing Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" in your head, now replace the sexual lyrics with "Boxy Lady" and fill in some text about packing and moving, and you've pretty much got it. Awesome. The things you do when you have a baby!

Somehow I fear that unpacking without all our great friends, family, and neighbors around means the hardest part is yet to come, but there's no deadline and things have gone well enough so far, so I'm hopeful. Wish us luck, Lobsters [and if you love Jesus, please pray]!  

Baby, baby, baby. Ohhhh my baby, baby, baby.

Unlike Mr. Bieber's raw musical talent, I have to admit that motherhood is not coming naturally to me. I probably should have seen this coming, since I wasn't a natural at pregnancy either - and by that I mean I never once craved a pickle and I never turned into a nesting cleaning machine. Which is a shame. Our house could have used a good scrub.


I love my Eiley Grace. She is beautiful and does cute things with her hands like thrusting them in the air after she eats (obviously thinking "VICTORY!") or rubbing them together (obviously plotting world domination) and her toes are fascinating and when she yawns it's the most adorable thing anyone has ever done and her cheeks are so wonderful that I have, on the occasion, been unable to resist chewing on them. Just a little though. I never leave marks.


But I tend to notice all of those things when she's asleep. When she's awake, it's a whole different game.


It took about two weeks for her to figure out how to latch. Both of us would get so frustrated that I spent all of my time either wrestling with her or dreading the next wrestling match and she would start to cry the instant I brought her to my chest. I don't know how we finally figured it out, to be honest. I think the Lord just decided to have mercy on us.


I'm mostly not good at comforting her either. Last week we spent an afternoon crying together, then Jeff got home from work and calmed her down within minutes. I'd like to think she was about to stop crying anyway, that I loosened the jar of silence before he pried it open. Who knows. I'm getting better at this though. Finding tricks to calm her down which generally involve a lot of bobbing her up and down. My arms are getting ripped. Luckily she doesn't cry a ton.


Finally, baby equipment doesn't come naturally to me. The Moby wrap was like a fabric jigsaw puzzle the first time I used it. The car seat buckles were complicated and twisty. And if anyone in the MacArthur Center parking lot saw me getting the stroller out of the car on Sunday, I hope you enjoyed the show. Yes, I did lay Eiley down in the trunk of the car while I figured that ish out. Ridiculous.


The good news is that I am learning. It's not coming easily and I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to work at home while she's here starting in a few weeks, but I'm learning and I'm 67% sure I'll figure it all out. In the meantime, I'll just focus on this precious mug and everything will seem fine.

Goodbye California

Goodbye California!

Today we fly to Maine with a one way ticket. 

Goodbye land of golden hills and glistening blue waves. Goodbye land of season-less perfect temperatures. 

Goodbye first home outside of the state of my birth. Goodbye to the state where I fell in love with my husband. Goodbye to the state where I gave birth to my first child. 

Is it possible that we will live more than five miles away from the Pacific Ocean? Is it possible that we will wake up to snow falling outside our window? Is it possible to live in a land that does not have In-N-Out?

You've given us so much. Road trips through your hills. Moonlit bonfires on your beaches. Both countless calories and the beautiful weather in which to burn them off. You've given us the saints Barbara, Francisco, and Diego to show us hospitality and new ways of looking at community, church, and communion. You've given our family four degrees and maybe even more education in out-of-school contexts. You've given us a few years to be in driving distance of Manny's family and "Auntie Nina"/my sister Lauren. 

And you've given us so many friends we are sad to have to say goodbye to. 

Farewell ocean, farewell hills, farewell apartments. 

It's been a glorious decade! 

Move: phase one

In June, I wrote about the movers I decided not to hire. Since then and now, I've been a little bit nervous about my choice as it took weeks for them to get the actual contracts to me. I was afraid no one would show up when it was time to go. BUT! despite my fears, last week, the movers I did hire came and moved all our stuff out. We spent about a month preparing and packing, pacing ourselves due to the infant factor:

Somehow, miraculously we were ready when they arrived. We'd even started cleaning the apartment a bit. This was a great contrast to our move last year when we were still packing at 2am the day before we were supposed to leave, and had to leave the apartment almost entirely unclean and several items of furniture in the dumpster. That was a stressful day. This moving day was 100% different. I would even say it was a bit boring.

These guys really knew what they were doing. They were professional, efficient, and friendly (but not TOO friendly). Two of the guys were parents and were talking about being dads, cute things about their kids, how to celebrate birthdays - it was precious. One guys' daughter has my middle name and he was excited to make that little connection. They all gushed over Sofia. But how can you blame them? They went on and on about how well behaved she was, which helped ease our stress.

One of my favorite parts about the guys was how uplifting they were to one another. It's one of those elements of professionality that too many people seem to forget these days. Instead of showing off to each other, being independent or grumpy, these guys were constantly teaching each other tricks about how to pack or lift things most safely and effectively. It made me feel reassured that they were all being really thoughtful about their process, and that there were at least half of them who had a very great knowledge about how to do things right. It is also encouraging to see people uplift one another.

Last year, packing up less stuff took from about 8am until 2am. These guys knocked out our apartment in less than three hours, including taking a break. It was unbelievable to see what professionals can do!

Of course my big question was going to be how they would handle our mattress situation, which I spoke of in my last post about movers. After hearing multiple other movers freak out over this problem, I watched in awe (so much so I had to record it the second time around) as they took care of our mattresses in 34 seconds. Fantastic.

I felt strange tipping them and saying goodbye because I couldn't believe they did it all so fast. We had the whole afternoon free to grab lunch, recuperate, and get the apartment cleaned and keys turned in days ahead of schedule. So far, these movers get an A from me. But the job is not complete, I'll have to wrap up the full report when our stuff arrives at its destination. 

In the mean time, I have not a single key on my key chain. I have no office key. I have no car key. I have no house key. We stand in limbo, waiting for all our earthly belongings to travel across the country to our new home and our new life. I am placeless, and at the mercy of others to let me through their locks. I just have my man, and my baby girl to love while we levitate in placelessness. Not the worst arrangement, don't you think?

Movie Review Monday #11: Super 8

What I already knew was that I like J.J. Abrams productions, I enjoy science fiction, and I like to make occasional sacrifices out of devotion to my husband who wanted to see Super 8. So when my parents afforded Manny and I our first chance to go out to a movie since Sofia was born, I was happy to pick Super 8. 


What I realized as the movie got started was that I LOVE movies about little boys being friends. Sandlot, Christmas Story, Newsies, love them all. I think it reminds me of the stories my dad tells about being a little boy running around his neighborhood with a pack of hooligans, marking their territory and inventing crazy creations. Super 8 is just such a movie. 


I found myself wishing for a baby boy as the movie got started. But the more deep dark holes or flaming explosions the boys ran straight into, the more I started to take back my wish. There seems to be something about being a little boy that necessitates such opportunities, but as a mom, I can't see myself sitting well with letting things like that happen to my baby.


You barely see the alien, which going in seemed like it would be the center of the whole movie. I'd heard several people say this was supposed to be the new E.T., a favorite of mine as a kid. I honestly don't really see that connection, other than aliens wanting to go home. Instead, like a good J.J. Abrams production, it was much more about good character development. Boys being boys, children losing mothers, victims becoming heroes, men trying to figure out how to be fathers, and boys and girls falling in love. It seems like they managed to engineer touch points for everyone to connect to someone in the film. 


The action was so important to actually see in a theater. I definitely gasped multiple times and almost leapt up to figure out how to turn the volume down so as not to wake my baby - instinct clearly over-riding reality there for a minute. There's a little pyromaniac in the gang of boys, and every time an explosion goes off he brings great comic relief to the moment. 


Seeing as how our chances to get out and see a movie are so rare these days, it really says something that I give Super 8 two claws up Lobsters! Have you seen it? What did you think?