First the moral of the story. Moving is hard no matter what. Faced with this difficult task we chose to see moving as an opportunity. An opportunity to organize and shed skin and plan ahead. And also to rip up carpet, finish wood floors, tear out and rebuild a bathroom and freshly paint every room in the house. But seriously, the logic is clear that all these improvements will be much easier now before we have all our possessions here. But we may have confused the notion of easier with plain easy, which it was not. A recount of our most momentous transformation since Solly was born:

On March 22^nd Rachel began her new job as a Nurse Practitioner; more days, more hours, more responsibility.

On March 23^rd we took possession of our new home after an amazing roller-coaster ride of events. I have recorded these events in my journal for posterity, but would rather not re-live the stress through telling it here if possible because what is important is that we are in our house and we love it.

On March 29^th I began my two-week leave from work. This time was set aside to take on the many improvement projects in our new home and pack and clean out the old apartment. Walking into the empty, unheated house that Monday morning I saw my challenges anew: a living room painted blue like superman’s tights; a lavender office; a bathroom with pepto-bismal tile, original linoleum, and a custom plywood vanity; a yellow bedroom with grey carpet. The goal was to complete the transformation before the big move on Saturday.

I called in as many favors as I could from family and friends during this week to help. Rachel’s mom Deborah joined us the whole first week to act as the nanny for Solly so we could both be productive. Her dad Greg arrived on the 31^st and quickly painted 3 rooms. Good friend Bryan helped demolish the bathroom. Brother’s Paul and Gabe gave their time to multiple jobs on multiple days. My parents brought dinners…my dad installed new baseboards…my brother John set up the wireless network. The results are fantastic! See if you can tell the before and after:

....And then we asked them to help move the furniture!

On Saturday April 3 our cute little house was waiting for us to move in and we had a firm deadline of 11AM to move all our stuff out – the new tenant at our apartment was planning to move in on Sunday and the carpet cleaners needed the majority of Saturday to clean away the stains we left after 3 years there. A fantastic crew of supportive friends made quick work of our things and we were physically moved to our new home before noon. But that is of course only half of a move - the other half is arranging the furniture and unpacking boxes. We convinced everyone to move the furniture into the right rooms and even put the boxes correct closets - then the celebration began!

It may have been foolish of me to think that we were near finished with the big move after everyone left. A whole week left on my break and all I had to do was unpack! Man was I wrong. The best metaphor of the week following the move is of a rubick's cube; in order to move the clothes into the closets - the boxes of books need to be moved out - and they should move onto the bookshelf which is covered with tools - which need to be put back into the garage - which is full of boxes! It was during all this that my body began to tell me that it was not interested in a career in moving. Aching shoulders, tendonitis in my wrist, even lower back pain. Every night after the box/furniture shuffle I would allow myself to eat and drink well to guarantee the good sleep I would need to do it all over again.

And each morning I would also rev myself up for the day with the new luxury of fresh orange juice from our big tree. Thats living!

Conclusion:
We love our new digs. We now have our space capsule for our life ahead and our trajectory in life is good. There will be so many memories here....I can't wait to live them.

We owe so much thanks to all the assistance we received from our circle. Without all of you, financially, physically, and emotionally, we would not be here in our own home. Thank you Deborah, Greg, Tona, Dave, Frank, Gabe, John, Paul, Bryan, Willow, Robert, Tamara, Jed, and everyone else who contributed to this major event.

Big changes - just about

Solly has definitely been the most powerful force of change in our family so far. All of our routines and many of our past times are greatly impacted by his needs and preferences. Parents must be great at adaptation otherwise you'd go crazy! But Solly has been living within the world that we prepared for him - and on the horizon are two big changes to that world that now he will have to adapt to.

The first big change is that at long last it looks like we will be buying a house to raise our family in. We are so relieved to be nearly done with this very long process - if you know the saga you know that we've been at it for over 12 months. We are also so very thankful to our families for the creative financial assistance they have given us. We also give thanks in advance to everyone for the help in the preparation for the move and the move itself. As it stands, on April 3 we are scheduled to move ourselves into a cute little 1943 bungalow in the Bret Harte neighborhood of San Rafael. It has what we need; 2 bedrooms, a guest room/office, a kitchen with potential, and a garage. Plus it has what we want; a friendly neighborhood full of families with children and a big flat backyard ready to accommodate both a play structure, a vegetable garden plus with plenty of room to spare for outdoor entertaining. We even have a fully mature orange tree in front - that spells fresh squeezed orange juice! Needless to say we are super excited for this change- stay tuned for the housewarming date!

The second big change is that Rachel is taking a new job as a Nurse Practitioner at the U. of California hospital in San Francisco. This is different from her current job as a Registered Nurse in a few ways. First, it puts to use the degree she received last June before Solly was born. Also, it gives her a new level of responsibility of care as NPs often do much of the same work Doctors do including diagnosis and prescribing medicine. Most of all, it requires her to work three days a week, up from two days currently. Again we are blessed with the support of family to help with this change - Aunt Diane stepping up to take care of Solly 3 times a month and Ya-Ya (Grandma Tona) able to expand her care to take Solly on the Fridays that Rachel will now work. Less time at home is not preferred for Rach, but working 3 days with 4 days off still gives the family the majority of her time.

So, I guess what is interesting to me is that Solly will, for the first time, have to adapt to changing conditions around him. Adaptability is a virtue that I think has a great deal of value and I know my job as a dad will expand during this process to support Solly's adaptation. Those of you parents who have done this before and have suggestions on how to build a bridge that keeps him comfortable - I welcome the advice. But even if all this change is hard, I feel that we are moving into a schedule and a surroundings that will be more lasting - the vessel of many of our memories-to-be. Come and visit us there. Now we will have a spare room for you to stay in and fresh squeezed OJ for you to drink!

Six Months OMG! Where did the time go!

I am in disbelief that the last post describes Solly turning 3 months old - he will be 7 months old on the 24th of February! There have been so many great as well as challenging moments in the past few months that its hard to decide which to share. I've felt this feeling before when trying to summarize the events of some long period of time during a phone call with an old friend. So I'm going to skip over months 4 and 5 and tell you about month six.

Solly is no longer a helpless little newborn. He is a very verbal little boy who when well rested, likes to sit on the floor and play with his toys including his favorite toy, a red and yellow dump truck. He coos and calls and chirps and laughs to himself. If you play with him, he'll laugh even more.

He is also moving beyond his breast milk only diet. We have started him on some of the early solids like banana, sweet potato, spinach, and rice cereal. I was given a great old high chair from a friend of mine which Solly can grow into - he can't even reach the far edge of the tray it is so big! Rachel is enjoying the process of baking up a sweet potato or steaming spinach and pureeing into a little bowl of Solly gruel. She freezes the rest in ice cube trays and saves it for the next time. He is a real good eater too. He opens up and slurps in the gruel and raises his voice if you don't feed him fast enough. Very different from the struggle I imagined it would be to get a baby to open up for green or orange gruel. Unfortunately for Solly, his mouth is a little ahead of his digestive system. We need to get more fluids in him to counteract the fiber rich gruel - which ends up as little-man turds that are apparently a little too grown up for him. That's all I will say there.

We've also discovered that he, like other babies, is a fan of classical music. This has been a learning process for us as we observed him go from fussy baby in the car to a dozing angel after a few minutes of classical music was on the radio. We hoped that this may be a cure-all for any rough moment and filled up our iPhones with the ability to spout classical music whenever we needed - not just in the car. Over time however, we've discovered that to him, it is a relaxation agent not a tranquilizer. We often play it at bedtime now to calm him down, but playing it all night does not keep him in a state of suspended animation - darn.

One of the most special things over the past three months is the visits that we have had with his great grandparents.
Great Grandma Muriel on Rachel's mother's side and Great Grandpa Larry on my father's side.
There is something about watching our wise elders who are the wellsprings of our family hold a child 3 generations removed from them. I try to imagine being in their shoes holding Solly's children's children. It blows my mind away and I can only imagine it is as special for them as it is for me. Both great grandparents live far away and so again a visit with them is extra special.
I am pleased to say that both are also in great health and we look forward to many more visits.


Rachel and I are still holding up well too. Very used to the spotty sleep schedule, but always wishing for more. Rach is now able to get out and hike at nearly 100% ability again and we are looking forward to the early light of summer for weekend walks in the hills around us. We are also focusing all of our available energy on finding a house to move into before this magic opportunity to get into the market disappears. Our one bedroom apartment is beginning to feel very small as Solly and his toys, voice, and clothes takes up more and more space. I hope to have good news for you all on this front in the next entry - which I promise will be much sooner than this one.