new house

Whew! Well, we're moved. I'll send out a new-address announcement soon, but if you don't get it by the end of the weekend, drop me a note-- I may not have your most current email address.

June was a total whirlwind. We had a nice visit with academic parent-friends from J's old stomping grounds (Pton) and their daughter Edith, whom Sam hadn't seen for a year, but that didn't stop him trying the well known "airplane behind the back" creeping-arm trick (smooth!):



We closed on the new place on the 15th, and immediately started moving stuff into the basement (we set up a row of utility shelves and bought some storage boxes to compensate for the relative lack of closet space, compared to the apartment we were moving out of). Then our friend Antoinette and her mum visited for a few lovely days, being very gracious about the chaos that was our early stages of packing. The day they left, Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt L. came to stay with us and attend the wedding of a family friend in Boston; they were an enormous help watching Sam over the weekend while we schlepped several more loads over to the new place. Uncle D. and Aunt S. also moved here in advance of Aunt S. starting a grad program in town; they live very close to our old apartment, and it's very very nice to have them in town (not least because they are two of Sam's favorite people). The movers came last Tuesday, the hottest morning of the year so far, and moved the furniture and books. After that, a seemingly endless series of "one last trips" with the car cleared us out of the old place, and then we began the long process of settling in. I think it'll be very good once we're in, and we'll post some pics of the new place then.

In the meantime, some pics and some Sam anecdotes:

The garden at the old apartment, a riot of columbines and a massive clump of irises (sorry, I can't seem to get the second picture to show up vertically...). I think yellow is the color of early spring (daffodils, forsythia), followed by the pinks and purples of mid-to-late spring (cherry trees, tulips, then columbines, irises, apple trees, eventually peonies), joined by oranges and reds in the summer (daylilies, black-eyed susans, etc.).





The new place has a mostly-enclosed garden, and the first lawn we've had to take care of. My push-mower skills will need to develop; we also waited way too long to mow for the first time, so I ended up flattening the long blades of grass as much as I cut them.

When Antoinette was here, Sam did his customary naked post-bath run out to the living room to say "D'night!" I mentioned to the assembled company how sandy he had been, and so she asked him, "Sam, did you have sand on your body? Was it in your belly button?" "No, my tushy," replied Sam (correctly, as it happens-- he must have lay down in the stuff, and it snuck under his waistband in the back). He then proceeded to back up to her, pointing to his naked tush, saying "This my tushy, right here. This my tushy."

Sam has been a big fan of the Allen wrench, most useful in dissembling and reassembling Ikea furniture:


He also loves loves loves to run. A couple weeks ago when I picked him up from daycare, one of his teachers told me that they'd gone to a park with a playground and an enclosed field with a track around it. Apparently Sam just ran around and around the track-- the teacher guessed 15 times. Whew. Which explains his recent monumental food consumption. He also likes to help carrying things, the bigger the better, including the big blue recycling containers, which he manages by himself all around the house and up the five stairs onto the back porch, hefting them one stair at a time.

After all that work, he surely deserves an "ojanj possidul"


He's getting much better at articulating things, which helps a lot with the dual toddler needs of independence--"Do it by self" has finally shown up, and with a vengeance-- and assertion of preferences-- "don't WANT it" is also very much in evidence, as is "wanna X! wanna X! wanna X!" where X = any of a huge number of things, like watching "mahna mahna" on youtube (usually doable, at least the first three times) or staying at the park, or driving the car (not so doable, though he thrills to sit in the driver's seat-- ignition key safely tucked into one of our pockets-- and move the signal-light and windshield-wiper levers and grab the steering wheel). On car-driving: Sam went through a phase of saying "Wanna do the driver!", which made me and J. snicker like 14-year-olds.

He's also more articulate about how he feels; the other day we were walking behind his daycare, where there's a little unpaved path that connects with the paved walkway heading to our department. Sam slipped on a little incline and I caught him, and then asked him if it was fun or scary. "Stary," he said, holding my hand as he trotted on toward "Daddy's office."

Omi and Opa are coming for a visit tomorrow (barring airline cancellations, of which there seem to be an alarming number these days-- fingers crossed they don't get stuck like they did the last time they were trying to visit).