Since then...

The blog has been quiet since we moved but we've been busy! 3 little kids who have needs all day long make it hard to unpack boxes and get settled in, but we're getting there. Slowly but surely.

This is a hodge-podge post. Be forewarned.

Breaking in the family room the first morning...

We were so thankful the snow waited to fall until we were done moving! However, it meant that Rob had 2 driveways to shovel. By the afternoon, he had overdone it - not nearly enough sleep and too much physical labor with the move / shoveling and his back went out. I felt awful for him - at one point he literally could not get up off the bedroom floor.

The kids had fun rediscovering their toys as we unpacked. I'm not sure what Ellie was going for here, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it works.

Oh dear goodness this kid cracks me up.

The third child of course - snacking off the floor. I had to put this one in here because I love her pointed little toes.

I've been offering her little dices of ok-to-eat foods. She seems to like it - it's entertaining for her and I think she's kind of over baby food. It doesn't seem to fill her up or satisfy her. Right now her favorites seem to be melon, cheerios, and pasta. Not a huge fan of hot dogs:

Speaking of the little lady, we dedicated her on Sunday at church two weeks ago. We were barely able to make it, with Rob's back being so bad, but he toughed it out and we stood up to publicly affirm that we will raise Madeline to know the Lord and hopefully teach her how to love Him with her whole heart and life.

I hope it's understandable that I didn't take any pictures!? 48 hours after moving and 24 hours after Rob's back injury, the last thing on my mind was finding my good camera. We are all just happy that we made it that morning in one piece and dressed! (*I dressed Maddie in our seats at church, actually. But it was intentional - I didn't want her pretty little dress to get wrinkled in her car seat. ha!) I also knew that we would receive a DVD of the dedication from our church, and my mom was taking pictures too.

In my distracted state (remember - unpacking), Robbie keeps stealing my phone and has figured out how to turn it on, get into it (that swiping motion), and use the camera app to take pictures. Seriously - I have never shown them how, nor do they play games on it. It's strictly off limits. Aren't kids so smart? I was secretly glad that he snapped this picture of Ellie's cute pigtails as they were running around the family room the other day.

This past Sunday morning we stayed home from church because Maddie had been sick with a cold on Saturday. I think it is her first significant illness EVER! We have been so grateful for her health.

Little snuggle bunny with a fever...

Still beautiful even when she's feeling horrible.

The kids didn't want to be split up and wouldn't let Rob or I take them unless we were all going. So we stuck around here and got a lot done. By the afternoon we were getting stir crazy so I took the kids for a walk around the neighborhood to meet some of our new neighbors.

Not sure what is happening here...

Then the superbowl started, and we realized that it is incredibly frustrating to try to watch the game on TV with the kids awake. We are a Giants household, and so I did what any good wife would do for her Giants-loving husband. I put the baby to bed and took the older kids to Target to get them out of the house! Haha.

I got them chicken nuggets and nestled them into a shopping cart and we got a few groceries and generally meandered up and down the aisles. It was actually pretty creepy - the whole town was quiet, and Target was empty.

Since then we've been plowing through laundry...

...and happily adjusting to a new rhythm in a new home.

Every day is bookended by these two playing in Robbie's bedroom, always with Robbie in the center of his track, and Ellie close by with "Sevie-Lala" as she calls it in her hand.

The story of 'Sevie-Lala': It used to just be a 'lala' before she could say 'lovey'. Then she would call it 'lovey-lala'. And then, because she would beg for more loveys in her crib after I had given her all of them at once, including back ups that she had rejected in favor of the cat-headed one, I would tell her "Ellie you have SEVEN LOVEYS in your crib! You don't need any more." She's a bit of a gatherer when it comes to soft blankets and animals. So now she calls her favorite one 'sevie-lala', in reference to 'seven lalas'. If you don't follow, that's fine. I wrote it more for my own documentation of her at this age!

Also entertaining about Elle-belle as a 2 year old: her continued love affair with accessories, namely hats.

And her insistence to use the potty by yelling "POTTY!" just like Robbie does throughout the day, only she has no idea what she's supposed to do once she's arrived bare-bum in the seat. All she knows is that Robbie yells potty, sits down, and then gets a whole lot of attention and praise afterwards, so she wants in on it. :)

We had a little incident involving the older 2 in the bathtub while I was putting Maddie in her pj's. Robbie may have emptied a huge bottle of bubble bath that was sitting nearby and was not of the tear-free variety, and before I saw it happen Ellie was wiping her face like mad trying to get the bubbles out of her eyes. Which of course made it worse and made her want to wipe her eyes more. Vicious cycle! We got her all rinsed off as she screamed, and by morning she was good as new. Which made me feel better, because I was sure those eyes would be red and swollen for much longer!

We continue our snuggle-in-mom-and-dads-bed-after-baths routine.

But have added a mom-lays-with-everyone-for-a-few-minutes-in-their-beds-at-bedtime that isn't long for the world because it makes it impossible for Rob and I to eat dinner anytime before 8pm!

Oh, and Ellie has found (where, I actually have no idea!) what she thinks are 'band-aids' and keeps coming downstairs to bandage us up. It gets my funny bone every time.

I took my first bath in years and I'm so glad I had forgotten what I was missing because ohmygoodnessbathsaremyfavoritething. Now that we have a legitimate tub that is deeper than 12 inches, I'm trying to squeeze one of these in whenever I can! I can't believe how relaxing it is before bedtime. Which brings me to: why are my kids rambunctious in the tub when they could be calmly soaking!? Baths and naps are wasted on little people. When you want them, need them, and are old enough to appreciate them, they elude you. ;)

Back to blogging as usual...

MOVING DAY

Rob and I woke up well before the sun had a chance to rise. We kept throwing things into boxes, that awesome part of packing and moving where you can't even label the box appropriately because how does one assign a room to a box full of random kids' toys (those found beneath the couch once it was moved), cable splitters, a fly swatter, and ponytail holders? :)

My mom showed up at 7am, just as the kids were waking up. I snapped a few pictures before I got each of them out of their cribs, because at this point we had decided not to build 2 of the 3 cribs at the new house. Goodbye, days of 3 kids in 3 cribs. We probably hung out there for far too long anyways.

Welcome to the start of all of my days for the last year:

For some reason it made me very sad to send the kids off for the day.

However, I don't know how one moves with kids around / underfoot. It was so much easier to have them gone as the trucks were loaded up and we continued to make individual car trips of our valuables over to the house.

Our moving company was REALLY good. If you need a recommendation, let me know. I thought this picture of the truck as they were about to unload it at the new house was hilarious.

(I wonder if a moving truck has ever been T-boned? What a mess that would be.)

And then we started to pile boxes up everywhere in the new house. I had asked our wonderful babysitter to help me unpack and get the kids settled on the afternoon and evening of the move, which was such a good idea if I do say so myself! Ha. Cheryl came back over as well to help unpack and she also brought an amazing dinner - chicken cordon bleu, seasoned roasted veggies and fruit salad. My parents brought the kids back and my sister came with them, and we had a full house. It was so much fun.

Cheryl had also brought us lunch over during the move, and had posted signs on the kids' bedroom doors that had pictures of them and their favorite toys. It was the cutest idea to help them be excited about their new (separate) rooms. And because I'm a sucker for any excuse to put a bunch of balloons by the front door, I brought a few home to welcome the kids with when they arrived.

During the day as the movers unpacked the trucks, we were able to meet one of our neighbors when they came home and realized that someone was moving in. We were warmly welcomed and it was a nice way to begin our relationship with them.

We spent the evening unpacking, talking around the table, and getting the kids down for bed. They all went to sleep without a problem in their new rooms, and Robbie and Ellie both slept for the first time in big kid beds like it was no big deal. No one even fell out of them through the night! I love it when transitions like that go smoother than you are expecting.

I realized that with an additional bedroom, I was now short one monitor and one sound machine, so Cheryl and Kelsey ran that errand for me so that I could keep an eye on all 3 kids through the night.

And that is the story of how we moved across town!

Countdown to the move - Day 1

Well last Thursday was day 1 - our last full day and night at the old house.

What I remember is that we packed boxes as quickly as we could, and our stuff just would not go away. I packed bags for the kids for the next day, we got Chipotle for dinner and the kids played in our bedroom as we all got ready for bed. There was a spare rubbermaid container out so Maddie had fun playing in it while the kids hid in Rob's closet.

And then I flipped the container over, stood Maddie up and put her hands on the top of the container - and she surprised us all by not only standing confidently but pushing it forward as she took a few steps behind it!

I was so proud, and shocked! (We don't expect walking until well after 1st birthdays around here. Maybe Maddie will be our earliest walker!?)

The kids polished off the last of the guacamole before heading to bed.

Robbie requested to play footsies with me. What a little love.

We put the kids to bed and thankfully they fell right to sleep. My sister came over to study and be at the house while Rob and I packed and made a few trips over to the new house with things we didn't trust the movers to move. My friend Cheryl had offered to come over and help us take all of our food and refrigerator items over that evening, so we filled boxes and coolers with food and made trips with that stuff as well. She came bearing scones so that we would have breakfast the next morning. She thinks of everything.

Rob and I thought we had a pretty good handle on finishing up the packing until it became 11pm and we still had a LOT yet to box up. (At this point we realized that we would have been SUNK without Kelsey and Cheryl's help!) Around this time, he was sort of wandering around with eyes glazed over, just looking in closets, and said something like "I didn't realize how much more we had to go! I don't think we are going to be able to sleep tonight." And I responded, "We HAVE to sleep! Just keep throwing things in boxes and don't think about it. It'll get done." Ha.

Well around 1:30am I had had it and insisted that we go to bed for a few hours. The thought of pulling an all nighter, then moving, then having the kids back with us and trying to settle in to the new house and unpack made me nauseous. We slept for almost 4 hours and got up again at 5:30am to keep packing.