Goodbye Chelsea!

The first time that Chelsea came to visit us after Hannah was born, she drove over from Akron by herself, stayed for a week, played with the kids and helped me every way that she could while I attempted to regain my sanity.  Before she left I got a picture of her and the kids in the living room together, and accidentally started a tradition.

Since then every time that she's about to leave, she gets the kids together and we get a picture.  Although, Jayce was still sleeping when she had to leave for the airport this time.

 But when I was uploading these, I remembered that I never shared the pictures from the time when she came for Easter and a race, and Hannah was super sick.

 I also didn't share the time when Chelsea and mom had just come to help us pack up the house, because, well, I was kind of in the middle of packing up and moving out of the house.  We all looked like crap, the house looked like crap, the pictures look like crap, Chris was being even more uncooperative than Jayce, and I yelled at them all because this was our last picture together in this house and I didn't care if they wanted to take a picture or not.

But these make me laugh.  A lot.  And that is the real point of the pictures in the first place, right? 

The Week Before School

The week before Jayce started school, I wavered between wanting to fill our days with fun activities, or fill our days with lounging.  We did a little of both, but mostly the latter.

Hannah was up to what has become her usual bit, which is terrorizing the drying laundry.  She pretends like she's going to climb the drying rack, but then opts to simply remove the lower items from the rack and use them to "clean" the table, her hands, etc.  

She pauses occasionally to laugh in my direction if I try to redirect her, or yells baby gibberish in Jayce's general direction.  Or maybe it's at the tv.  Who knows?  

Jayce settles on the couch or hides in his fort for some tv watching.  

Both kids like this show called "Baby Jake," which is basically a real baby's face on a cartoon body that has adventures with other cartoon things.  It makes lots of baby noises and Hannah is completely enamored with it.  (Check out her face in the picture!)  It has the power to bring my little human tornado to a complete stop like nothing else: she just stares at the tv, occasionally mocking one of the baby's noises, or points to the screen saying, "Bebe!  Bebe!  Bebe!"  I'm not really a fan of letting babies watch tv, but this show only lasts for 12 minutes, so I let her.

We did some baking that week.  I got this fun kid's cookbook at the library and we decided to give the cookies a shot.  Jayce loved it, and you can see why: the pictures are bright and fun, particularly if you have a kid who likes to help in the kitchen, and mine does.  Also, it turns out that telling your kid to "make a grumpy face...yeah, just like that" actually elicits real smiles.  

We even got to cook with scale, a first for us both.  (Thank you for leaving it, previous tenant!)

I also did some baking at nap time for the big first day breakfast.  I got these adorable little silicon baking cups at the store when I was supposed to be getting something more responsible, but I was determined to put them to good use.    

So I filled them with these, banana muffins with Nutella swirls.  Mmmm.  Even Chris was a fan.

I laid down with Jayce for his nap time this week, which he has been requesting more than usual, and we've been obliging.  I don't get to see my big boy asleep as much as my toddler, but it turns out that he looks just as sweet.  I snuck out for my camera and then made myself go be productive instead of just lying there staring at him.

Also, I checked on Hannah, who had been partying hard in her pack n play while I tried to get Jayce to fall asleep.  She was sound asleep, like this.

Crazy kids. 

Happy

Hannah woke up from her nap the other day, and was in such a happy and sassy mood that I just had to get my camera.  It's hard to get pictures of her with any eye contact these days now that she is always on the move, and her confined in the highchair worked out perfectly.

I'd just been taking pictures of some of the little details in the flat, (living room, coming at you this week!), and wanted to get pictures of the little details of my girl too.

Lashes, fingers, smiles and sass.  Love her.

Our Little Walker

Moving In Outtakes

So, moving in.  The weekend when we arrived was a crazy one.  Not only did 4 other people descend upon the flat, but also 4 people's stuff, including various things that we had ordered and had shipped to the flat.  So for a few days we lived in and around empty boxes, boxes of things to be opened and assembled, unpacked suitcases, racks of drying clothes, various things that needed to be strategically placed to allow them to fit in the tiny storage areas, and overall chaos and clutter.  Which made me crazy.

Most of the pictures are in black and white just to help me deal with the crazy mess that is happening in them.  It makes it seem more like a funny memory than a stressful nightmare.

This is the kitchen before.  The after is here.

Chelsea and Chris taking the old couch downstairs, having a bit of a "Pivot! Pivot!" moment.  (You know, like Ross?)

The couch-less and furniture-less living room.  But even then, there were clothes drying.

We do have a piano, despite requesting for the landlord to remove it.  He said no.  So we let Jayce "play" it in short bursts.  

The other day Chris asked Jayce if he would like to take some piano lessons since we have a piano.

"Mmmm, no.  I'm already pretty good."

So there's that.

Since there is a shortage of toys at the moment, Hannah opted to just crawl into and play in her car seat.  Which is not what she wanted to do on the plane when she needed to be in it, ironically.

When I was putting together this table, Jayce turned to me and said, "Mom, you're a natural." 

Thank you Jayce.  I am a natural at putting together tables. 

Chelsea and I, however, were not naturals at putting together this desk.  It took us almost 4 hours because the directions were annoying and we didn't have the right tools.  By the end of it we were using pliers to try to screw in these screws, which there were millions of.  We had been attempting to use the only screwdriver that we had, which was one of those tiny screw drivers that you use to put batteries in kids' toys, and it was completely stripping the screwdriver and making it even more useless than it already was.  Our fingers were raw from trying to screw them in by hand, which forced Chelsea to declare at one point, "My hands hurt from all the screwing!!"

Which is really funny at 2 am.

Unfortunately, we had to leave the desk unfinished.  Chelsea flew out early the next morning, and without her help and Chris at work, the desk moved to the bottom of my list of priorities.  However, the next week a handy man was over fixing a few things in the flat.  While he was upstairs I quietly quietly snuck a few tools from his toolbox by the door, put the rest of the desk together, and snuck them back in.  And then I realized that Chels and I could have done the job in about an hour if we'd have only had the right tools.  Sigh.  But it was a funny night.