I did it!

I did it! I think I have figured out how to shorten and upload a video! Hope you enjoy seeing Luke's first cereal! Please let me know if it doesn't work. :-)

Wicked Weather

A few weeks ago we had our first impressive midwestern storm. For some reason knowing that we have a basement has helped my renewed interest in storms. This particular storm had started in Minneapolis and hung together all the way through Chicago. I'm probably the talk of the neighborhood for being out there with my camera!

Luke is doing just great! We are working on sitting up and he's doing great with his butternut squash. Tomorrow, it's mushy peas!! He loves to chew on everything, leading us to hope that the moodiness we are experiencing every so often is due to a pending tooth! He loved seeing Grandma and Grandpa last week, and he's very happy to report that his room is no longer brown! In fact, it's been returned to a nice green color, although Mommy found one that wasn't as bright!

And So It Goes...

Our first attempt at rice cereal was....well....um....not too bad. He giggled in fact. I had hoped to upload a video, but I'm having some difficulty. I will keep working on that. Since our first attempt though, he's practiced his food avoidance strategies, which amaze me given that it's like 1 part cereal and 12 parts breastmilk. Well, not that much really, but I would have thought he wouldn't have minded it at all. And, often he just ends up gagging, the poor guy. I'm hopeful that he'll find butternut squash a bit more appetizing, which is on the menu for this weekend.

We start a rather large painting party today. Grandma and Grandpa are arriving around lunchtime and we hope to get the nursery and guest room painted while they are here. Both will require primer (the nursery is a dark brown and the guest room is bright purple), but Mike was a big help in spackling last weekend. I swear, these people NEVER repaired one nail hole in the 15 years they lived here. Here I was about to say to you, "fill the holes as you go - it's much easier." But, then I realized that these people got us to do it for them. After all, we still bought the house, right? So, to each his own. I for one will fill them as I change my mind about things, but I'm hoping not to look at spackle for a long, long time.

P.S. I really hate to rub it in to our dear friends in Richmond, who are once again dealing with 100's. But, I will. It's right now 68 degrees and a strong breeze so I have the windows open.

6 Months Old Today!

Where does the time go? Seemed like just yesterday he was such a helpless little creature and now he's grabbing, rolling, kicking, gabbing, giggling, and even responding to words like crazy. He giggled handily yesterday when I asked him (over and over) if he had tooted. Definitely all boy in this one!

A week ago, he was 19 pounds! Boy, that car seat is getting HEH - VEY! Still no solids, although the nice yet eccentric lady at the Starbucks in the grocery store the other day tried to take things into her own hands and offer him some whipped cream. I immediately jumped into Mommy mode: "Oh my gosh, there's germs all over the place back there; the whipped cream is going to scar him for life and he'll never be the same..." You know what I mean. A totally harmless friendly gesture turned into instant panic. In that split second, I composed myself and just quickly thanked her but indicated that it wouldn't be a good idea. She cut me off and now she thinks my son is lactose intolerant. It got the result I was looking for without any hurt feelings, so I know that I can return next week for my iced latte treat. Anyway, rice cereal tomorrow after we (hopefully) sell the Audi to Carmax (insert Taps here)

Thank you everyone for all the comments. Life in a new city is awfully lonesome at times, so it's wonderful to hear from you! We miss you all very much, too!!!

Help! The Couch is Eating Me!

Luke is one energetic kid. He is constantly moving! He managed to wiggle and turnover right into the crack of the couch. And, all Daddy had to do was get the camera and he just smiled like he was so proud of himself. He's quite proficient at rolling over these days, but not very interested in sitting up. His feet are way to intriguing and so pretty much every time he lunges to try and get his toes in his mouth and ends up falling over. But, we'll keep working on it. Not really looking forward to crawling. :-)

He's definitely a huge Daddy fan, too. Tonight, Luke had been getting fussy (i.e. hungry and tired) so I was getting ready to start bedtime. In walks Mike and Luke was all giggles and smiles. It was terribly cute! Although, now, Mike's upstairs trying to get our overstimulated little one to go to sleep. Oops. :-)

Technical Difficulty

I'm totally bummed. I have the cutest pictures to show for my blog entry and the darn things won't upload. Some sort of blogspot internal error. Bummer. But, hey, now you have something to really look forward to. :-)

It's quite a fun thing, this blog. Throughout my day, I make mental notes of ideas to blog about. It's even become a bit of a game that Mike joins in on. "Oh, Jen, you have to blog about..." such and such. It's really fun to do and it's great to get notes from everyone who reads it! (Thanks, Aunt Marlo and Mark and Karen!!)

So, in light of my brilliantly planned blog, I'll give you an update on the guest in our bathroom fan. Mike had talked about taking down the attic fan to "take care of it" and that gave me all sorts of visions of bats/birds/squirrels/rodents flying around our bedroom. Not exactly a good idea in my mind so I talked him out of it. We have had several noise-free nights in a row. Once in a while we hear a couple of taps and then it's quiet the rest of the night. I still think that a pestman who specializes in this sort of extermination might be worth a call. I'm pretty sure that whatever it is can't get inside, but a) I don't want to keep hearing the noise and b) now I'm really curious about what it is. Mike says bird and I say bat, and I kind of want to settle who's right.

The big adventure of the weekend was succumbing to the ultimate suburban stereotype - we bought a minivan. Mike spent several hours last week sitting in traffic in manual transmission no A/C car. That was pretty much the nail in the coffin for the Audi. It's been an icon for Mike, but he was ready to inherit an automatic with A/C and a CD player to boot. We had planned to purchase something this fall and had thought it would probably be a Honda CR-V. Although, after careful thought and prices to help, we decided that having a bit more room at this point in life wouldn't be a bad thing. We plan on doing longer drives, so a minivan or SUV fit the bit. You just get so much for your money with a minivan and we loved the way it drove. So, we are now the proud owners of a Nimbus Gray Honda Odyssey. It is pretty darn cool. Much easier to get Luke in and out, and I love sitting up higher. When I can upload pics, I'll include one of the new wheels. NOTE: Plenty of room to haul around any visitors who come to Chicago...hint, hint.

The highlight of my day today was receiving an email from our former Pastor Phil. He has accepted a position in Chicago as an intentional interim, which means that both he and his wife, Alice, will be up here a great deal. I am absolutely thrilled at the prospect of seeing their friendly faces and even though the church he'll be at is a bit of a hike, it might be worth it for a visit once in a while.

Things That Go Thump In the Night

It has been a small adjustment for Mike and I to not be living in a newer house. Either that, or it's just an adjustment moving into a new house period. I feel like I'd been woken up to strange noises the first couple of nights we were here but I figured that it was just my lighter sleep now that I'm a mom. Well, the other night, I settled into bed to watch the last episode of the Bachelorette (completely out of character for me to watch reality tv, but since I was home in Virginia by myself, I got into it and couldn't stop). Mike had made me go upstairs since he wanted to watch The Return of the Jedi. I heard this tapping sound every so often and just figured that one of our neighbors was hammering on something outside. Eventually, I didn't even notice the noise until Mike came upstairs. Given that it was now almost 10:00 and dark outside, we figured it probably wasn't a neighbor. We checked faucets, we checked cabinets, and finally, we realized that whatever was tapping was clearly something alive because it was too irregular, and that whatever it was was tapping the cover of our bathroom vent fan. I'm not sure who was more freaked out at this realization, but we immediately started hypothesizing about what it could be (Mike thinks bird, I think bat) and how on earth we were going to fix it. We settled on shutting the door to the bathroom, just in case whatever it was managed to find a way into our bathroom, and worrying about it in the morning. This worked fine for Mike, but I worried about it for at least another hour, until realizing that somewhere around 3 AM, the tapping finally stopped. Since the noise did not reappear last night, we are hopeful that it's gone, but if anyone has any good bat or bird deterrent suggestions, I'd love to have them.

Besides our unwanted houseguest, I feel the need to vent a bit about our air conditioner and refrigerator woes. First, we had an HVAC guy out here because the air conditioner seems to work really hard, even though it's not too hot outside, and several of the vents have no air coming out of them. After doing a lot of investigation and smoking a few cigarettes, he offered that the house probably could have used dual zone or a bigger blower. He also suggested running the fan constantly to help with the cathedral ceilings. I'm not sure that sounds like it would do us much good on our utility bill, so we may just have to get used to it.

Next, the air conditioner on Mike's car went out (again). Now, most of you know about the Audi...the check engine light works really well, the power door locks don't work, the dash only lights up halfway, and the dome light doesn't work. And, the A/C needs a new compressor, which we've decided not to do in the hopes we could stretch the car until this fall when we plan to get me a new vehicle. It's a great car...just has a few electrical problems.

We ended up moving both of our refrigerators from Richmond. One went in the basement and one went in the garage. Neither work. We think that with the one in the basement, it's just an outlet issue like resetting it or flipping the right switch. However, the one in the garage was lighting up when opened, but wasn't getting cool. So, I looked online to find a repair place and called them up to send someone out. Does anyone know what a replacement SHOULD cost for a relay overload thingy?? Let's just say I'm wondering whether I got charged for replacing the entire compressor, even though he just put this new little plastic thing in there. And, now the company won't call me back so that I can verify the price. There is nothing I hate more than feeling ripped off.

On a positive note though, we are getting more settled. I try and unpack at least 2 boxes a day. At this rate, I should be done by Christmas! Hee! It's another beautiful day in Chicago, so I plan to get out and walk with Luke this afternoon. I started my diet on Monday and so far so good.

Highlights of our First Week in Chicagoland!

We made it! Here we are landing in Chicago on Monday:

No wonder everyone always says that moving is so stressful. All things considered, this has gone pretty smoothly, although it has kept me from blogging sooner.

Top Ten Highlights of our First Week:

10) Strep Throat - Luke tested positive on his early 6-month checkup the day before the movers came. I wasn't feeling too awful well myself. Enter Daddy to the rescue! Mike decided to fly in Saturday morning to help with the move, allowing us to fly to Chicago together on Monday. Boy, was that what we should have done from the beginning. My "big girl" approach to trying to handle everything AND take care of an extremely active 5.5 month old wouldn't have boded well to keeping my sanity this week.

9) Babies - Elijah Copps Rosenfeld was born on June 27th to Linda and Kevin, our good friends who live in South Hill, Virginia. Mark Henry Porter was born on June 30th to John and Jill. Unfortunately, we didn't get to meet Mark yet, but he's a terrific excuse for a visit!

8) Illinois Drivers - Can I just tell you how freshing it is to sit at a light at a busy intersection and not see 1 SINGLE PERSON on a cell phone?? I swear, it happened. And, people don't really seem to speed much around here either. Might need to slow down myself.

7) A High Temp of 73 - Amazing! Our first weekend was spent without A/C. A very pleasant break from the triple digits we'd been having in Richmond.

6) Poor Planning - Mike and I are just really anal planners, so I generally have to calibrate my expectations. However, I didn't quite expect what we'd show up to on our "final" walkthrough before the closing on Tuesday. Let's just say that the previous owners were not even close to being moved out. Very nice people, but I honestly think that they figured they could get by with moving out late in the day so that their movers could go straight to their new house. Our closing was at 1 PM, and their movers had not even showed up yet. In the end, we decided to close, but held back some funds in escrow until we were satisfied that there was not any damage since our walkthrough. Well, the money is still being held because there is a rather large area of drywall needing to be repaired that was conveniently behind their entertainment center.

5) Chicago-Style Deep Dish - We tried our inaugural deep dish pizza tonight. Very, very, very yummy. I can get used to this (although, my diet starts Monday, so it will be a while). Hopefully, we can entice some of you to visit us by dangling some.

4) Not One, But Two - That's right, two visits from Comcast to get us set up with phone, internet and basic TV. It seems as though the previous owners' disconnect order was executed after our installation order. Ooops. I love Comcast. I couldn't make this stuff up.

3) Preparing for Solids - Luke took an inaugural spin in his high chair. Rice cereal starts tomorrow!

2) Chipmunks - Sydney had managed to find terrific entertainment at the apartment watching the chipmunks dart around outside. Right after I took this picture, I realized that these chipmunks weren't as nice as Chip and Dale. One darted right at her! It was hilarious to see her freak out momentarily forgetting that there was glass in between them.

1) 316 items and 20,000 pounds- That's what our stuff totaled, although there was a slight miscalculation. Saturday afternoon, our terrific movers Ron and Sean called for backup because they didn't think that all of that would fit on the 53' trailer AND allow room for my car to go on. So, they drove another truck out to pick up the car. Luckily, we were still all out by late Sunday night. I know, you must be thinking about the use of "terrific" and "movers" in the same sentence. I really could not have been more impressed; they took excellent care of our things and were very nice guys.

Speaking of, that's 20,000 pounds of things we have yet to unpack! We've managed to get the kitchen done, but everything else is still in progress. My goal is to have the basement done by Christmas. :-) To sum it all up, the house is good, Luke is good, Mike and I are good, but exhausted. Looking forward to settling in more each day. We miss everyone!