A Guy, Two Girls and a Pup

You can tell when I’m REALLY busy at work, because I don’t have enough time to write a blog post! This has definitely been one of those weeks. We’re on the eve of a website update (release), so work is GO GO GO to finish up. I hit the ground running right after the weekend and haven’t stopped! Fortunately, I got quite a lot done today: should be able to breathe easier tomorrow.

So our weekend was really good! As you’ll see from my Flickr pictures, we did a lot of stuff. We went to Pike Place Market and browsed around. Then we had some lunch down on the waterfront and strolled down past all the piers and up to Pioneer Square, one of the older areas of Seattle, full of interesting architecture. It was a beautiful day!

Memorial Day wasn’t so beautiful — grey and overcast — PLUS Kevin needed to go to the airport at 6:15am. So much for sleeping in on my day off! He’s in Wisconsin until Friday evening reminding everyone at K-C why they can’t live without him. (We can’t either!) While he’s been gone, we’ve discovered that he has an alter-ego — there have been two or three calls for someone with his name that apparently is a dead-beat dad who doesn’t talk to his son. Boooo! Hopefully our Kevin’s good name will be an influence on that loser…

Our request for $6000 off closing costs to cover the various fixes that need to be made on the house was ACCEPTED, no counter offer. So it’s all over except for the paperwork now! Here we come again, home ownership!

Wow, the world is so much better when little babies sleep for 5 1/2 hours at a stretch. Go Meredith! She fell asleep at 8:15pm, woke up at 12:30am to eat and then was still sleeping when I woke up! Yay! Of course, she had a big day (evening) STANDING UP IN HER CRIB FOR THE FIRST TIME. She was fussing and generally not wanting to fall asleep and somehow managed to get her legs under herself and hoist herself up. I was so shocked I forgot to take a picture! She is amazing.

Little by little, we’re getting our ducks in a row here. I think all Thunderbirds! Are! GO! for our final negotiations on the house. We have estimates from 87 different people, and it looks like we’re going to try to ask for $6000 off closing to fix everything that might be an issue. (Relax — fully half of that is replacing the back door!) Hopefully we can get that ironed out quickly and get this house thing going! I’m already mentally buying furniture for this place…

Meredith now has a 9 month appointment with a new pediatrician that came recommended by a few different people. It sounds like he’s an older man that’s totally like a grandfather. I hope he’s good! AND I’m working on setting up a meeting with a mom in the Ballard area (in the neighborhood over from the house) who wants to take on another child as a nanny (in addition to her own 13-month-old girl.) Sounds like it might be a really good solution if we can work it out. And Meredith would have another little girl to play with!

We’re looking forward to Kevin’s mom coming in for the week on Saturday…but, of course, that means that Kevin’s gone next week. Booo. All his girls will miss him.
Meredith has sat up several times now, and was practicing in her crib last night. And crying from all the effort. It was a long night…

Wow, it’s been a busy few days. Work for both of us is really hectic — lots of projects and things to follow up on. And we’re both trying to juggle making appointments, finding doctors, inspections; makes for crabby times. I was hoping to take some video of the house on Monday night while Kevin was finishing inspection. Unfortunately, I haven’t been carrying my keys with me (since I’ve been taking the bus) and I was locked out of the apartment when Kevin left before me. So I spent 2 hours sitting outside the door reading my magazine. *sigh*.

In BIG HUGE NEWS, Meredith sat up by herself for the first time yesterday. From the side, not doing crunches like we all thought she might. AND she crawled around a little on her knees — no more pulling herself around like a Marine on Hamburger Hill! Will get some video of that for sure, since I don’t have any of the house taking up all my disks…

Seattle continued to defy expectations by being sunny and beautiful yesterday, and so Kevin, Meredith and I ran down to the Seattle Cheese Festival at Pike Place Market, which is just such a cool place. It runs on and on and on FOREVER it seems, full of vegetables, flowers, fish, cool little shops, weird little restaurants. And it’s always PACKED. We were there at 4pm on Sunday, and it was still super-full; I’m sure that Saturday mornings it’s impossible. At any rate, we saw lots of stuff, bought some really good (unpasteurized) cheddar and wandered around. Then we walked up to my building so Kevin could be jealous of my amazing view from my desk.

Starting my 3rd week here, and now I’m chock full of meetings due to all these projects! Welcome to the big time, I guess. In the meantime, inspection tonight — wish us luck (again).

We’ve officially arrived in Seattle. Our name is now taped to the inside of our mailbox. Just in time to move out.

If only! Our redux inspection is in the scheduling phase, but it looks like Monday night. Wish us luck. Again!

What should we do this weekend? It’s supposed to be beautiful! There’s the Seattle Cheese Festival. Yum! We could drive out to the coast and see the ocean. We could do one of the eleventy billion tourist things we haven’t done yet (like the aquarium! Or the zoo!) Or we could continue to make appointments and do research. On the current list: pediatrician for Meredith, vet for Devi, nanny/daycare for Meredith. *sigh*

I can’t wait ’til weekends can be ALL FUN.
I jumped right into my first work project yesterday, which is working on some HTML email templates. Fun! But frustrating — Outlook doesn’t plan nicely with HTML. Microsoft is not a friend to developers, that’s for sure.
Kevin got his first sunburn of the season walking around Green Lake this afternoon (in our prospective ‘hood.) Note to self: add “buy Meredith a hat” to the to-do list this weekend…

So our inspection went less-than-smoothly yesterday. The inspector was unable to finish because of the construction going on in the basement to fix the Water Issue™. Progress on that = good. Lack of progress on us MOVING IN = bad. In addition, there were some things with the fireplace chimney that the inspector wanted a masonry expert to look at. So there’s ANOTHER thing to be scheduled… le sigh.

At work, I’ve managed to fool them into thinking that I know what I’m doing and have assigned me to a few actual projects. Little do they know…

Meredith is insisting on standing more and more, although she’s still doing her rock-back-and-forth-on-hands-and-knees thing. She’s going to pick SOME way of getting around. In the meantime, she’s having a ball playing in Devi’s water dish. I think Lora’s right when she says that she’ll be a swimmer…she already loves the water!

Speaking of water — it was drizzling this morning as I was walking to work. I never thought that I would find something more awful than dodging huge worms on the sidewalk. But here there are slugs, apparently. EWWWWWWWW.

So this weekend, we did a lot, but it didn’t feel like very much. Friday night, as Kevin mentioned, we went on the art walk around Phinney. I really like the neighborhood. Love it! All the more reason to hope that our inspection goes well. Maybe tomorrow? Cross your fingers!

Kevin spent most of the day at the storage unit on Saturday organizing boxes and tracking down ones that didn’t make it to the apartment. I think he’s pleased now with how it is…until we have to move everything again… While he was gone, I tried to make sense of the empty boxes and things that are still left in the apartment: unpacking more, cleaning things up, etc. It feels a little better, anyway. (Until we have to pickup and move again. Which will be a good thing!)

Sunday was, of course, Mother’s Day — Kevin made me a nice breakfast: blueberry pancakes and bacon, yum! Nothing says love like bacon. There were also flowers. And CHOCOLATE. The day couldn’t have gotten better. Until it did! Kevin picked up the desk we had been looking at at IKEA and put it together for me. So now my beloved Mac is up and running again (hence, the presence of new pictures on Flickr.)

And now it’s Monday again. Where did the weekend go?

Betty Keller, 27 March 1918 - 9 May 2008. Rest in Peace.