Sadie's New Friend

No, it's not herself :-)


Our first friend in our new neighborhood is a real live girl, as opposed to another one of Margot's entourage. "A" lives in the house down at the corner and turned 3 in June (they'll be in the same class when they start school in a few years, of course).

Now besides location, what makes this match perfect is that "A" has quite an entourage of imaginary friends as well. While Sadie seems to collect Mexicans, this girl has dinosaurs- apparently she's recently watched The Land Before Time and it's had quite an affect on her.

We met at the playground yesterday and the two quickly began racing around the playground trying to escape from the "hot water." Not sure what the story was there but they seemed to be in a jungle.

Sadie was not shy at all (I think we're all hoping that she'll be our ticket to meeting others in this neighborhood). She also was not bashful about forgetting the little girl's name. "Hey kid" she would yell to her and "A" would ignore her not expecting to be called "kid". I tried to remind her what her friend's name was only to get an "Oh, Mom" accompanied by the eye-roll (I thought that wasn't supposed to start until she's at least 10).

The girls played and I was able to chat a little with her mom and then potty-time signaled the end. I just have to say, I'm so glad our house is close to the playground, especially when someone suddenly has to go potty.

Drive-way, Dump-truck Luge

This is our new entertainment at the house. I should probably discourage them from doing this but they're having such a good time and I actually get a kick out of Caleb doing something reasonably dangerous. This might all change when they end up needing a trip to the ER.

All Aboard!

So I'm trying once again to post a bit more frequently about our days, instead of having to write out long posts that take forever. So here it goes... :-)

Today was huge in our world. Caleb did 2 major things-
1. He pretended that he was a train conductor and took Sadie and I on a tour of the states.
2. He tried a tiny bit of pork chop and kept it down. Plus, he decided that he liked pork chops.

Now for any other child this might not be huge. In fact, Sadie often is a different character every hour of the day and she also tried pork chops tonight. But for Caleb, these things are more challenging. Caleb has been insisting that he is Policeman Caleb since he was 2.5. No matter what the game of pretend we are playing. It took us months to get him to let us pretend to be different things (I thought I was forever going to be Ballerina Mommy). We've tried lots of things to help him with this but nothing worked.

So the boy wants to be a policeman. What's the big deal? Well, it's not really but our little man is spending more and more time interacting with other kids and we've had situations where the kids want to pretend one thing and The Policeman doesn't fit in. This is a part of play and a part of socializing that the little man needs to learn and it's huge to see him take that step today.

And the pork chop... well, everyone knows a picky kid and funny, we've learned that pickiness is contagious. Caleb has also had eating issues. Right after turning 1, he went from eating everything to only eating a handful of things. It's a little more than just being picky. Even when the boy wants to try something, he will gag and vomit either as soon as he puts it in his mouth or even after he's managed to get something down. It makes mealtimes rather stressful. And as I mentioned, it's contagious. The little princess sees that brother gets special meals and doesn't have to eat what Mommy and Daddy eat, so she throws a fit.

This week we decided to try something new- a food chart. I read this somewhere and thought it might work. The kids each have a chart with 3 columns- Foods that I like, Foods that I tried, Foods that I don't like. They can put anything in the I like columns but for the dislike column, they can only put something there if they've already tried it and marked it in the tried column. And of course there is a reward. We tried having the same reward for each kid but our kids are motivated by different things. If Sadie tries 10 different foods, she gets a trip to Bruster's for ice cream. If Caleb tries 10 things, he gets a Captain America action figure. I'm really praying that this continues to work. It would be lovely to only have to cook one meal an evening instead of 3- what andy eats, what i can eat, and what the kids can eat.

Okay, so this hasn't been a really short post but maybe I'll get better. Now, a photo from this evening. This is where we found Sadie sleeping. Too cute :-)

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

So where have I been for the past month...backpacking through Europe? a cruise in the Mediterranean? undercover, saving the world from imminent destruction? Nope. We've been moving and not even to an extravagant location. We moved from Oakland to the North Hills. Please, don't misunderstand, I absolutely LOVE our new house, it just seems like there was a whole lot of work going in to a move only 15 minutes away.

This all started back in February, right after the ridiculous snowfall. Andy and I had come to the realization that our little house in Oakland was not going to cut it forever. It was a nice little 3 bedroom place but that third bedroom was smaller than many walk-in closets around these days. It was not going to work and having a boy and a girl, they weren't going to be able to share a room forever. So we decided to start looking for a bigger place. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of houses on the market right after record breaking snowfalls. I was looking online and found some new construction websites. I had always been curious about them. Andy agreed, so we decided to check out a couple.

I never thought we would actually do this. Of course, the model homes were gorgeous and we thought, there's no way we could afford something like this. Then we started doing some more research. Andy and I are not fix-it-up kind of people. We don't like spending weekends re-modeling. The idea of having a house already done and better yet, we pick out how it looks, this was looking better and better. Then the first week of March we got a call. There was a big sell off of lots in the community we were interested in and so if this was what we were going to do, then we needed to decide quickly.

So on Andy's 30th birthday, we bought land, or rather, our lot for our future house. They set a closing date for August 25.



And over the course of the next 3 months, our house began to come together as we got to decide cabinets and flooring and counter tops. It was very exciting and very overwhelming at times. We also had to put our house up for sale. Amazingly, it sold after only being on the market for a week and a half. And our buyer happened to be a girl who lived across the street from us. Selling the house was not the best experience but thankfully, God brought us through and worked out all the details.

Then it was time to pack. Little by little, boxes began to fill up. And we were also able to take little trips to watch the progress of our new house. I think this was so incredibly helpful for our little man who struggles with change and another reminder that God knows how to take care of us. Caleb and Sadie both were very excited by the new house but were also full of questions...

"Will our toys come to the new house?"

"Will our beds come to the new house?"

"Will our new house have a bathroom?"

The bathroom thing really seemed to have them worried. They we relieved to learn that the new house would have 3 bathrooms. This is big when you come from a house with 1 very awkwardly shaped bathroom.




May came and went. June 1st we closed on our old house (and started renting for the next 2 months). Then it was July. Then mid-July and oh my, we needed to get going. All the while, we kept visiting the house and seeing how quickly it was coming along. The second to the last week in July, we learned that it was possible that the house might be finished early. (Duh, we thought to ourselves and then scrambled to get the paperwork together for closing).







Amazingly, everything came together. We changed around movers (since we no longer needed to put our things into storage) finished packing, painted most of the old house (and hired painters to finish that) and closed on our new house July 30 almost 1 full month ahead of schedule. The moving truck dropped our things off at the new house and we went on vacation. That's right, our family vacation to NJ had been planned in 2009, way before this craziness started, and we really needed a break so we took off for Ocean Beach, NJ. We had a wonderful and relaxing week there and we were able to leave the kids with G'ma Jody and PopPop Pat for a few extra days. With the kids at G'ma's house, Andy and I were able to get beds assembled and the kitchen put together without extra helpers.

So we are well into August and enjoying the added space (and multiple bathrooms) in our new house. We're slowly unpacking and organizing. We're trying to coax our lawn to not completely die on us and slowly starting to meet neighbors. Most of all, we're enjoying the quiet that is part of living in the 'burbs- no speeding hot rods and motorcycles down our street and no helicopters circling overhead.

Usually it takes Andy and I a ridiculously long time to make purchases, even something as little as a toaster oven, we'll research for weeks (in the midst of that right now). Buying and building this house over such a short period of time was completely out of character for us. The only explanation I can find is that God has a plan for it. There was a plan for us 4 years ago when we learned we were unexpectedly expecting Sadie. There was a plan 2 years ago when Andy was looking for a job and only had offers in Pittsburgh. There was a plan for us to be in Oakland, walking distance to Magee Hospital. I know there's a plan for us to be
here.