Still packing

Our packing has been “almost finished” for about a week now, yet we keep filling up box after box of stuff. It’s like those “last few things” continue to multiply but I don’t have any of the things I need. The answer to just about every “have you seen…” question we’ve asked each other for the past two weeks is, “it’s packed.”

Lilia has adapted to the chaos pretty well and now I’m worried she’ll be wondering where all her fun new climbing toys and forts have gone to once we’re unpacked and no longer surrounded by cardboard.

To top off the fun, Lilia came down with a nasty virus yesterday that has caused lots of diarrhea, a high fever and kept her (and us) up most of the night, making for a long, cranky day completely absent of a decent nap.

I cannot wait to begin unpacking tomorrow. My nesting skills far outweigh my demolition skills. I am designed to set up house, not break it down. I feel confident we’ll be pretty well settled into our sweet new house by Monday. Wish us luck.

5 days and counting

Til the big move. Lilia’s face pretty much sums up how we’re all feeling.

Believe it or not the packing is nearly complete. Now we just have to figure out how to feed Lilia (and ourselves!) for the next 5 days.

Spider Free Locks

Lilia got a sweet new hair cut yesterday. I was tired of fighting the clip war and even more tired of not seeing her pretty blue eyes every time I lost it.

I love Lilia’s hair, and when she let me put a clip in to keep it out of her eyes, it was perfectly tame. Sadly she loves playing with the clips and often pulls them out as soon as I put them in.

It’s all my fault really. After her birthday spider clips she’s convinced there’s always spiders in her hair. Every time I put a clip in, she signs “spider” and grabs at her hair. “No sweetie, it’s just a clip…” but there’s no convincing her. Distraction works sometimes, but only for so long.

All in all I’d say it was $5 well spent.

Berry Lucky

In this scary and uncertain financial climate we have made some serious changes to our lifestyle including our planned relocation to the East Bay in just two weeks in order to substantially reduce our rent and utility costs. I did a lot of research to find ways to reduce our costs without moving, and while there are some great tips on Mamapedia and I received some awesome advice on Mamasource, as renters we can only do so much. We canceled cable and Netflix right after Lilia was born and eliminated eating out and other non-essential activities. We cut back so much that when we were deciding whether or not to stay in SF we realized we could afford to do more in the city if we left it.

I was at Trader Joe’s this morning picking up some food for Lilia and debated whether or not to spring for the large basket of blueberries. They were $5, but they are Lilia’s favorite and looked so fresh and delicious. In the end I opted to put the grapes in my basket back and purchased the berries. On our way home we walked past a huge line of people with empty grocery bags waiting for a food pantry to open and it really hit home. As hard as times feel for us right now we are still so blessed to have help and support both financially and emotionally from family and friends. When it comes down to it, we can still afford fresh fruits and vegetables for our family which to many must seem like a luxury.

Life is good, and as long as we’re careful, this too shall pass. In the meantime it puts our move into another perspective and I am more assured each day that as much as I will miss the city, we’re doing the right thing for our family.

Piggy Imposter

We have a backup Piggy for when Lilia’s love goes into hiding. We haven’t had to use him a lot but when he gets put in to switch hit she’s never batted an eye. It surprised me that she never seemed to notice the difference as the stand-in piggy is a brighter (not yet as loved) shade of pink and even though he’s the same exact brand he seems stuffed with a different type of filling and a lot less of it.

Well she wised up, darn it. I threw the stand-in Piggy in after a couple laps around the house looking for the real McCoy. When I handed him over she looked that thing up and down as if to say “who the heck is this pig?” She kept squeezing him as if she was feeling for the rest of him and poking around his snout and nose obsessing over a loose thread. She didn’t reject him outright but she wasn’t loving him either. Luckily I found the real piggy before bed so I don’t know if he would have been up to snuff or not come sleepy time, but I sorta doubt it. In any case, she’s on to us, so now we’re trying to get her to love both pigs.

No worms for this early bird

She prefers spiders instead.

Raining babies

Two of my friends are welcoming beautiful baby girls to their family and we couldn’t be more excited. Especially Lilia.  She got to meet Baby Mia this morning, and while she may have had a bit more fun playing with big sister Aria she took a moment to give Baby Mia a kiss. Best of all, she didn’t get a bit jealous of Mommy and Daddy cuddling another baby the entire visit.

Baby Lord is only two days old, so we haven’t met her yet, but Lilia really loved looking at her pictures online. I think she’s a little baby crazy!

Ribbit Ribbit

Our little wordsmith is getting very adept at repeating lots of different words she hears and makes quite a few excellent animal sounds. One of our favorites is “ribbit” mostly because of how well she enunciates both “b’s” and the “t” and says it so slowly and deliberately almost like it’s two separate words. She says “that” similarly, “tha-ttt.”

There’s no doubt that Lilia is coming into her words a little later than a lot of other babies we know, but it seems as though she was holding out until she could say them perfectly. Seems she’s going for a quality versus quantity thing and I can’t complain.

Some of her other favorite words are baby, out, up, book, eye, knee, waffle, and boots. All perfectly enunciated, of course.

MIA Mama-girl

I know Lilia Lately has been a bit more like Lilia Sometimes as of late but I’ll try to bring you up to speed. If I go radio silent here and you really need your fix, you can find me on Songbird’s Blog every Thursday. See, it’s not like I stopped blogging all together, I just need to find a better balance.

Packing and move coordinating is underway and has been priority number one. As un-fun as this is, it’s likely to remain my primary focus until early June so please bear with me.

Lilia is cutting some molars which has been at least a partial contributor to her sleep (or lack there of) getting all wonky on us again. I literally had a post underway titled Brain Reclaim that I had to abandon. For several weeks Lilia was sleeping great and I started to feel human and productive again. It was fantastic. Funny how it takes weeks to recover from a sleep deficit and only a day or two to spiral back into the haze after being all caught up. At least we know now she is capable of three hour naps and sleeping through the night in her crib so we can go to bed each night with the cautious optimism that perhaps tonight she’ll do better.

A Mother’s Day Tradition

I spent a lovely Mother’s Day with Lilia and Adam, as you might expect. Still, it wouldn’t be complete without my mom, or my mom’s mom and lucky for us we get to have it all.

I hope to add a new picture of our four generations of beautiful ladies for a long time to come.