Only hate the road when your missing home

Hi all! So we've moved. Flown the coop. Relocated. I would have updated you before now but it took a while to get the old internet up and running, and blogging on my phone is an exercise in pain. But now, here we are in Traverse Mountain, and life is rolling along. We're all still in the adjustment stage, some of us being cooler adjusters than others. Maybe a family member rundown is in order. I'll even throw in some pictures from the photo shoot my cousin did for us right before we got bored and decided to move.

And here's Ethan! Kid has an obsession with cords, vines, hair and all things he can pull. He is having fun at the new house and probably cares least that we moved. He has been sleeping so much better since he got his own room. He's made it through the night a few times and is not perfect but getting better at self soothing. It helps his bedroom is across the house so if I forget to turn on the monitor (which I usually don't do on purpose, but in a sleepy haze at 3 in the morning when I turn it off so Jessie doesn't wake up, it doesn't always go back on), he really has to get worked up and loud to wake me up. He has gotten to be quite a fast crawler and is just discovering the lure of the stairs, so we should really locate our baby gate. Which, besides the screws to the crib, is one of two things we lost hardware to when we moved, because we are smart, so Ethan is dwelling in a pack and play. He is also learning that it hurts to fall down on wood floors. Lucky kid gets to learn to walk in a death trap. Yay!

As far as sleeping goes, Spencer is the only one really struggling. He doesn't like sleeping downstairs even though it's only about twenty steps from our room, and he doesn't like napping in a new place. So he goes to bed about 9:30 and has taken about 3-4 naps in his bed since we got here. In an unlikely turn of events he is currently asleep (thus the blogging) but it's on his floor. At least we're getting closer. He is a crazy whirlwind of devastation and stress. He gets lost every time we step out the door. At the museum the other day he was gone for 20-30 minutes and we had security scouring the building when he magically appeared right where we left him. He breaks everything he can get his hands on. He threw a toy at our tv screen and cracked it pretty good. Then it developed the annoying habit of going completely white, black, or rainbow every thirty seconds until you pounded it with your fist, and now I'm pretty sure the pounding has spread the cracks in the LCD and now we can't see anything. So that's cool, and the most expensive thing any of our kids has broken. Spencer is cool like that.

So disclaimer, I had to steal these pictures off of facebook since only Jessie's computer has a CD drive, and apparently all the pictures I uploaded of Kimberly were in black and white, so she gets to be cool and different. Kimberly loves having her own room, goes to sleep great, and in fact has been taking more naps than Spencer, although they are generally on our couch or the aforementioned hardwood floors. She does not like going to a new primary, but on only our second week actually attending all three hours of church, we discovered she will consent to stay if she can sit with the little girl up the road with whom she has become good friends. This means she doesn't sit with her own class, but baby steps, right? She is getting into puzzles again but isn't as good as she was when she was two because she isn't as patient anymore. We blame Madeline for that one. Speaking of our little drama queen:

Madeline does not like being out of school and does not like that we moved, so life is pretty much terrible. Well, besides getting to go to museums and have play dates and have her own room and walk in closet and go on vacation to Bryce Canyon and all the other bazillion fun things we have done for her lately, life is pretty much terrible. She has already made several friends but not nearly enough because their are some moments of the day they are all busy. She has been busy writing notes about what we all do all day and drawing pictures and otherwise making messes.

I've been packing. Then I was cleaning. Then I was unpacking. Somewhere in there I held a baby and lost sleep and tried to keep Spencer from dying. There was that weekend all the children were gone at Bryce Canyon for a couple of days, and Jessie and I pretended to go on a date while we doing all day errands and cleaning our townhome. It was nice to be able to go places without having to buckle in fifty people or pack snacks or plan around short tempers and multiple naps. Ethan was gracious enough to be understanding about our largely ignoring him to get things done. Things are starting to calm down now, and I've decided to turn a blind eye to the rest of the stuff we need to organize for a while. Because YOLO or something.

Jessie has also been a busy bee. He's been working hard during the day with some stressful busy stuff and then pulling double duty coming home to a messy house and organizing. Not to mention all the random fixer upper stuff he's been responsible for. Home Depot is his new best friend. (For all our home reapir needs, we go to Home Depot. For all decorating and household needs we go next door to Walmart. We're so classy.) Hopefully we haven't killed him the past month. If you see him out wandering through your neighborhood with a vacant expression and a chocolate chip cookie, don't worry, he's just on his break.

So that's us. We're loving the new place and trying to figure out what's next. Start a major corporation? Run for President? Adopt 10 kids? Don't worry, we'll figure it out. We just don't want to be bored for too long, sitting here twiddling our thumbs and watching our children throw well-behaved tea parties.