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!

Signing Off from RIC

The movers come tomorrow, so this will be my last blog from Richmond. I just want to say a very big thank you to all of friends here who have helped make so many wonderful memories here. It's been fun reminiscing with many of you about the last 9 years, about the good ole' times at Capital One, about the night Mike and I met, and about our dinner parties. I believe Fail has requested that we now include airfare as part of our dinner party reservations, so we'll take that under advisement. Richmond has become as close to "home" as a place can get - it's where we met, got married and started a family. We will miss everyone terribly, but please know that the door is always open in Bartlett, IL.

And so, on to Bartlett we go....let the craziness begin!

Correcting an Oversight

Auntie Laura pointed out that I have neglected to put a picture of her and Luke on the blog. A major oversight on my part, given all the help and support she has given me! She's certainly a very proud aunt and Luke adores her! In fact, she inspired his very first giggle fit. It had to be one of the funniest things ever. Mom was visiting us and we were all in stitches laughing with him.
Well, it's the beginning of my last week in Richmond. Our realtor came by this morning to pick up the lockbox, and in the course of our conversation, he said, "Mike's coming home this weekend to help with the move, right?" Apparently, I must be crazy to think that I can handle the movers AND a 5 month old. Call in the cavalry! Luckily, I have Laura and wonderful friends and neighbors to help.

I've started the dreaded task of saying final goodbyes. Yesterday was especially tough - my last Sunday at Trinity. I got to sing with the choir one last time and they gave me my hymnal signed by everyone. It was so thoughtful...sort of like having your number retired. :-) I will miss our entire Trinity family and all of the wonderful friends we leave behind there.

5 Months Old (Yesterday)

Luke was 5 months old yesterday. My gosh, where does the time fly! As of two weeks ago, he was 17.5 pounds, but I haven't measured his length recently. He's growing like crazy!

More Photos of the New Digs

I gave Mike the task of taking pictures of the new house when he went for the home inspection. Thought you would all enjoy seeing them. Mike is so excited about our July 4th dinner in our new house, assuming that we've unpacked enough. We can't wait to get there on July 1st!

Booch at the Beach

We had a fantastic time at the beach last week! We were in Nags Head, NC, and Luke experienced his first ocean swim. Okay, not exactly a swim. More like Daddy dunking his feet in the very cold ocean surf momentarily causing Luke to start his very cute wail. He didn't think it was very funny, but here are a few photos of the ordeal:

It was extremely hot the first few days and a pesky wildfire inland in NC caused pretty significant smoke issues. We've never seen anything like it. I woke up in the middle of the first night convinced our house was on fire. It was like a dense fog that just took your breath away. Needless to say, we didn't spend much time outside the first few days, so Luke spent a great deal of time supervising Pinochle games. It was a relaxing time, with lots of extra hands to let Mommy have a little break (and sleep in a few mornings, too!)

Moving on, I can report that Sydney and Pinochle have safely arrived in Chicago, IL. We owe Mom and Dad big time for hauling the cats with Mike for 13 hours in Dad's truck. My husband desperately wanted tranquilizers (for the cats, not him) but the vet suggested a safer alternative in the form of a spray, Feliway, that is apparently like aromatherapy for cats. Mike was massively skeptical about how well it would work for Pinochle. He's our high anxiety car rider, hyperventilating and producing those gutteral cries constantly. I have to say that I was moderately skeptical myself and just thankful that I'd be here. I sprayed the carriers before we loaded them, and they did absolutely fantastic! They were quiet and calm most of the trip and even slept quite a bit. And now, they are just busy checking out their new space in the apartment. Somehow, we'll come up with a way of repaying Mom and Dad.

My Sentiments Exactly

Luke says it all. All of the excitement going on in our lives has us both completely exhausted. I hope that I don't lose any loyal readers because of my lack of recent blogging. In the end, it was between sleep and blogging, and sorry, but sleep won out. I didn't quite expect that being the single parent of a 4.5 month old and trying to keep a household and trying to move a household could be so exhausting. I mean, lots of other people do it, right? All I can say is that it's only 23 days until we move, and I can't wait to be settled.

We've had lots of excitement this week. I've been trying to cram as many doctors/dentists visits that we can before we leave so that I don't have to be in a mad dash to find new ones. Of course, I didn't quite bank on cracking a tooth and needing a crown (BTW - our new dental plan won't pay for anything "major" for the first 12 months, let alone the first 15 days). And, we're trying to get lots of visits with good friends in before we leave, too. I hosted a baby shower last Saturday for our good friend Jill (here she is demonstrating her ability to distinguish various baby foods despite the questionable taste). I had it all planned out ahead of time - even had my list for the last grocery items to get Friday afternoon after we got back from Chicago. Then, as luck would have it, I went to start my car after loading baby and all the gear at the airport and had a dead battery that required replacement before any shower preparations. But, Jill had a wonderful time, which made it all very worth it!

So, if you're a male and/or the least bit squeamish, I recommend just skipping over this part. On our last day in the hospital after Luke was born, there was a small mixup in my OB-GYN office. My doctor had not come to make rounds and her partners were not aware until lunchtime that I needed to be seen by one of them. As you can imagine, her partner was not the least bit pleased about having already done rounds and then having to come back to see me on his lunch hour, let alone perform the snip-snip for our new baby boy. Now, fast forward 3 months...as time has gone on, there has been what I will call some excess skin, almost making it look like the procedure might have be repeated, although possibly could have been just the pudginess from his baby fat causing the problem. Our pediatrician recommended that we have it looked at by a pediatric urologist. As if I didn't have enough going on, I managed to squeeze that in this week. It turns out that Luke will likely need what the doctor called a "revision." That seems to mean that in 3-4 months, he will need some corrective surgery to make things all look normal down there. Poor guy. My mom was here to go with me, and our immediate thought was that the original procedure was not performed correctly. That doesn't seem to be the case as much as we would have hoped for it, and the good news is that there will be no problems with any functioning later. I'm just going to try not to think too much about having to hand him over for surgery...not looking forward to that one.

We head to Nags Head, NC tomorrow for a week at the beach with my parents. Very looking forward to a little vacation from moving to re-energize before the final push until the move. We are on track to close here Jun 30 and then in Chicago on Jul 1. My last day in Richmond will be Jun 30. I'll be back after this week with some good pics of the beach. For now, enjoy a few extras of Luke!

Reading with Grandpa Luke