Settling in, new adventures, and the beginning of nesting

 It’s been a wild few months since the last update. Aunt Rachael helped us move, Uncle Craig went to Sierra Leone and back, Matt got a new job, and I made two trips to Nevada. Now it’s time for a deep breath or two before Baby Girl arrives. (Okay, hopefully a month or two of deep breaths.)

  First for the move! It was exhausting, but we got it all done. Rachael even made sure the furniture was in place and most of the boxes unpacked before she left! Toby enjoyed helping to pack and unpack, got really excited about the moving van, and became dreadfully fond of Aunt Rachael swinging him around and around (a trick Mama and Daddy find too tiring to replicate.)

There are still a few boxes left, and some furniture still to chase down (our couch will arrive in a few weeks), but we’re feeling more at home in the new place than we ever did in Eugene. Our second weekend there, we even made a foray to Ikea in Portland to get a big-boy-bed for our big boy. Toby was pretty excited about it. He knows the best way to test out a bed is to jump on it, but that you can’t jump on a bed with your shoes on. And once your shoes are off, why should you keep your pants on? So it was an exciting trip. After we got his clothes back on, we took a lunch break. At the end, he even got to pick out his own bedding. We’re all pleased with how it turned out.

I’ve even made peace with the lack of bathtub – I got a cover for the drain, and we can accumulate a few inches of water in our super-nice shower. Combine that with the flexible hand-sprayer, and Toby finds the new bathroom even more fun than the old one. There’s virtually no limit to the splashing that goes one now.

Matt’s super-duper new job is with the Institute for Applied Ecology in Corvallis (~45 minutes away). He spends some time at the office, some at his various field sites, and occasionally a day working from home (hopefully this will happen more often as he gets a handle on the job). He’s focusing on habitat restoration for endangered and threatened species, and living up to his fancy new title of Restoration Ecologist/Botanist. Toby, Noni and I even got to meet some of his wonderful coworkers at the welcome gathering last week. He interviewed for the job the Friday before we moved and heard he got it the Monday after, so this made an already exciting time even more so.

An unpleasant side effect of finding employment was the sudden need for child care. Toby wasn’t in love with his Eugene daycare, so I felt lukewarm about shopping in Salem – his spot in the local Montessori school won’t open until September. But IAE wanted Matt to start soon, so we plunged in. I’ll be honest, this caused a full-on maternal freak-out for me. Luckily, the YMCA a few blocks from my work had an opening, and I’d heard good things about it from a colleague, so we signed Toby up and started him a few days later. He LOVES it! For the first few weeks, one of his favorite sentences was “I had fun at the YMCA!” He’s never been so happy to head off in the morning or so reluctant to come home (he’d rather drag me around and show me everything in the room – caterpillars, bottles of sparkly glitter, the firefighter hats, teacher “Wifbef” [Elizabeth]…). This was a delightful surprise, and such fun to see how every week he’s relating more to his classmates and telling us more stories about his day. Montessori had better be fabulous, or we’re heading straight back to the Y.

 The Toblerone had barely gotten settled when I had to drive a van of students down to Nevada for the Joshua tree field season. My advisor’s herniated disk precluded him from doing it himself, so I spent two days driving down and a third flying home from Vegas. It was good prep for the longer trip when I would be staying to actually do field work – Toby, Matt, and I all weathered it just fine. My big trip was April 1-11^th, and we had the advantage of MommaSue flying in for most of that time. She made sure that Easter and Matt’s birthday were celebrated properly in my absence (including a pink-frosted tea cake straight out of Toby’s favorite Amelia Bedelia book!).

 And here he is making his very own birthday cake for Daddy…

 In the meantime…

 I had a wonderful time in the Nevada desert. The Joshua trees and moths were amazing – I spent so much time with my face in them, I could still smell the mushroomy flowers every night as I fell asleep. The culture was also intriguing; our field site is just east of Area 51, and between the locals thriving on alien kitsch, the conspiracy-theory tourists, and the wacky camo guys who prowl our field site as contract Area 51 border guards, we were never bored. All the hiking made me extra exhausted, but also seemed to strengthen my pregnant body in healthy ways (it helped that my colleagues were so accommodating, and barely laughed at my waddle and frequent watering of the desert.) I was too busy during the day to miss Matt and Toby too much, but still managed to have a much harder time than Toby did. Of course, if I’d had MommaSue with ME, I’d probably have been perfectly happy too.

 Now the pregnancy is in week 34. My belly button is disappearing, the linea negra has been visible for over a month, and Baby Girl is keeping me up at night kicking. She gets hiccups every day, which are charming and something I never felt with Toby. Matt and Toby have both felt her moving. I’m definitely slowing down, and thankful that we’re settled in a home with no more big trips planned. Nesting time!

Toby continues to process the idea of getting a little sister. He enjoys reading his new books about the baby (The New Baby and Snuggle the Baby); his favorite activities in the latter are feeding and changing the diaper. He also likes to hug and kiss my belly. And says that it’s stinky, for unknown reasons. I convinced him that “smelly belly” is more fun to say. Maybe I’ll regret this?

 Obviously we’ve been preoccupied with big events over the last couple of months, but Toby is also doing the usual amazing new things. He’s now a pro at playing Memory, and occasionally requests we all play Old Maid together (he still keeps an open hand.) Matt’s been testing his understanding of numbers, and it seems like he can add physical objects and subtract small abstract numbers (like 4-2). This blows my mind. [Retraction: Matt says he's no longer convinced Toby can subtract yet. I haven't detected a significant decrease in the blowing of my mind, though.] His interests in music and all things wheeled have really blossomed in the last months. He goes through phases of wanting to dance endlessly, and has more recently started singing Alouette, Twinkle, and the ABCs spontaneously. He even composed his first originally ditty, which we call “The Pizza Song.”

 And everywhere we drive, he discusses the vehicles he can see from his carseat. He tells us that the wheels are moving, or they’re going to. He wants to know what everything is called. He wants to examine all the hubcaps in the world, up close. He wants to take the shiny red car out of the pages of the book and ride in it. Here he is inspecting wheels with our friends Ramona and Tyler, who watched him while we took a hospital tour (and loaned him the wings later, too!). You’ll notice he doesn’t restrict himself to things with four wheels.

 Moving into a house has taken some planning. And purchasing. We got a washing machine, which Toby loves just as much as he did in Michigan. He can happily sit and watch the thing spin for 15 minutes.

 And a bike trailer, so that we can commute by cycle TOGETHER (later… I really can’t bike anymore, even without a toddler behind me). Right now we use it as a stroller to get to the nearby parks, and Toby LOVES it. (Can you tell that it has wheels?)

 We even bought a reel mower for our tiny lawn! It’s amazingly easy to use, and we feel like hipsters. Except that we don’t live in Portland, drink coffee, or have tight enough pants. (Well, not Matt at least – my pants get tighter every day.) It also inspires Toby to run his noisy wood “mower” toy all around the house. This is genuinely charming (although in my pre-baby days I might have found it chaotic).

 Which reminds me, we have a yard! This is probably my favorite thing about the new house. We can turn Toby loose and let him explore. He likes digging in the planters, tossing dandelion fluff in the air, pulling leaves, blowing bubbles, throwing balls, pouring water… there is something about being outside without close supervision that is totally magical. He NEVER wants to come in. I am so, so glad we were able to get this rental.

 Our next small adventure was getting a piano. We made sure we chose a rental that could fit one in the living room, but it took a while for Matt to find the right instrument. Last Thursday we moved it into the house, with the help of some friends. Another thing that is great about moving to Salem is that we have a community here! We’re making friends! A few of the students from the lab I work in and a few of my work buddies came over to eat pizza, drink beer, and move the piano. Noni even helped (in spite of my promises that she didn’t have to). Hopefully this was just the first of many fun gatherings in our new space.

 Everybody has been enjoying the new instrument – Toby plays it every day, and asks for us to play songs for him too. It feels much more like home now that we have a piano again. And the piano isn’t the only new instrument – Aunt Becky sent a classic jack-in-the-box! (When this video was made, Toby didn’t like the “pop,” but he’s since become enthusiastic about “stuffing Peter back in.”)

 Another fun thing about Salem is the weekly swim lessons at the Y. I’m too ponderous to consider taking part, so Matt spearheads the outings. As you can see from the videos, Toby is learning a lot, and enjoying himself.

 This is probably the last blog post before Little Sister arrives, since my ever-lessening extra energy is going toward sorting baby stuff. And probably, soon, compulsively washing windows. In the meantime, send good thoughts for a reasonable due date – Toby is lobbying for sooner than reasonable, since he heard we’ll have desirable visitors. “Noni will come visit when my little sister is born, in 14 minutes.”