Apartment Pics

Here are some pics of the main floor of our new place. We posted some pictures of the outside (front and yard) when we first got the place. Those areas haven't changed - except that the backyard is full of snow!

Entryway

Living Room
Living Room (reverse view)
Kitchen

Systems Down

Our brand new internet/tv/phone service is letting us down. It has gone out for a few hours a couple of times since we moved, but it now appears to be down for the count. We have a technician coming out on Saturday, and hope to have service restored then, but we may be a little hard to reach via home phone or email until then. Use our cell phones if you need to reach us until then.

I am actually headed to Seattle for business until late Friday night, so I'll only be reachable by cell anyway. I'll try to download some new pics on my thumb drive and blog them from the road so you don't have to do without!

Carter's Room Evolves Part III

First the floor, then the walls, now - paint on the walls! Err, paint on one wall. The more artistic painting will have to wait until Joo can come over and lend her skills!

Safety?

As Carter gets more and more mobile, we are trying to get our apartment baby-proofed. But Carter is too smart for our tactics. Here, he has pulled one of the safety corners off of our entertainment center and is trying to eat it.

Hot-Headed

Carter already knew that food can be used for hair-styling, but yesterday, we learned that sweat works just as well.

Carter's Room Evolves Part II

First the floor, now the walls. Carter's room is coming together. We just need to get some fun paint on the new walls. And some baby gates. We definitely are starting to need baby gates.

Kid-Friendly 'Hood

We knew that we were moving to a pretty kid-friendly neighborhood (picture a t-shirt with an image of a stroller and the caption "Park Slope: This is how we roll."), but we actually got to experience some of the kid-friendliness this weekend. On Sunday, we went for brunch at a pizza place that also has a location in the Village (near our old apartment). That location has about four chairs and hardly any room to stand. The location in our new neighborhood has lots of tables, including child-sized booths and a window where kids can stand and watch the cooks make the pizzas - they even give the kids pizza dough to play with. The place was packed with families (we didn't spy a table without a child), so we had to sit in a child sized booth. I'm very sorry that we don't have a picture of that!

On Monday, we took a stroll to Prospect Park (just down the block from our house) where we watched kids sled on the rapidly melting hills. Carter also got to try out the fancy baby swings they have there. It was a lovely day. I can't wait to take Carter sledding next year!

New Hat

The old hat had a very good run, but Carter's head got too big for it.

So he's sporting a new hat these days.

The Missing Sound

As most of you know, Carter loves his doorway bouncy seat from his Cart Cart and Nonna. The nice thing is that he can bounce away in relative safety as he can't go anywhere but up and down, so you are able to walk to the other room, or go the bathroom, or other short term activities that are within earshot. You can always hear the repetitive sounds of the spring squeaking away with each bounce:

~Squeak, squeak, squeak~

~Squeak, squeak, squeak~

The sound you are listening for and the sound that strikes fear into every parent's heart goes something like this:

~Squeak, squeak, squeak~

~Squeak, squeak, THUD!~ (Likely followed by some form of screaming from both the child and parent)

Luckily, that sound has never happened at our house. What did happen that caught us by surprise was the following sequence as we had stepped into the living room just out of sight for a moment:

~Squeak, squeak, squeak~

~Squeak, squeak, ...


Yup, silence. No squeak, no thud, no noise at all. We stuck our heads around the corner to find the following situation that produced this, now understood, sequence of sounds.

Fast asleep. He had bounced himself right to sleep in lieu of fussing and taking a regular nap. In retrospect we may have missed a few signs of just how tired he was, but he slept peacefully in his bouncy seat, even occasionally "waking up" and reflexively bouncing himself back to sleep with three or four gentle pushes.

At least he is learning to sleep when he's tired, whenever and wherever.

Say Cheese!

We introduced Carter to cheese this week. It doesn't stick to his hands like the avocado did, so the first few days it was so sad to see him struggling to get it into his mouth. He would pick up a piece, get it almost to his mouth and then open his hand to look at it as it tumbled back to the tray.

Today was day 4 of cheese week, and he is getting much better at transferring food to mouth. The cheese seems to be a good motivator for him!

Happy V-day from the Flower Princess

We aren't sure where this bib came from - probably a mix up at the cleaners where we used to have our laundry done, but, since we had it, we figured, "it's valentine's day, why not?" So here's sweet Carter in his Flower Princess bib. And if you look closely (click the picture to enlarge it) you can see his two teeth!

A Few of Carter's Favorite Things

Bathtime

Practicing crawling
His new bookshelf
Practicing standing up
His activity table

Pulling Up

Carter is pulling up to a standing position often these days. We find him standing in his crib - but we aren't sure whether or not he knows how to sit back down. When you play with him on the floor, all he wants to do is stand up!

The Commute

We are over halfway through the first week of our new commuting routine. For me, the commute is 35-45 minutes – slightly longer than my previous commute was if I didn’t take Carter to daycare, and quite a bit shorter than my previous commute was when I did take him to daycare (which I did most days). About 10 minutes of my commute is walking (downhill on the way to work, uphill in the afternoons), which has been brutal this week in the cold weather.

Thomas’ commute is running about an hour and five minutes, including taking Carter to daycare. That’s quite a bit longer than the sweet twenty-minute walk he had from our old apartment. Unfortunately, the train they take is quite packed, so there is no room for the stroller, and unbelievably, people don’t seem to be willing to give up their seat for a man carrying a 20+ pound baby. He is experimenting with different carriers for taking Carter on the train so as to make both Carter and himself most comfortable.

Since Thomas is taking Carter to school, the responsibility for getting Carter ready to go in the mornings falls to me (while Thomas gets himself dressed). Needless to say, Carter has been particularly stylish this week. Below, he is sporting the amazing baby leg warmers that I found for him.

Snot Nose

I just had to share this picture of our snot-nosed boy. Hope it comes through on your computer. You can always click the picture to enlarge it!

Carter's Room Evolves

Just a few pics of the fun new floor we installed for Carter's basement paradise of color. It's all coming together, slowly but surely...

Still Ruthless...

... but no longer toothless!

Carter got not one, but TWO, teeth over the weekend! And one of them is enormous. The teeth aren't up nearly enough for photos, so you'll just have to trust me: They are there. There are two of them. And one is huge.

Moving Pictures

We probably won't be ready to post pictures of the new place for a couple of weeks, and we didn't take many pictures during the move, but here are a few shots that I took.

Moving requires lots of energy. You need plenty of food, coffee and beer...

Moved

For the record, all of our stuff does not fit in a 20 foot truck. Our stuff fits in one twenty foot truck and three trips in a very full pickup truck. Nevertheless, we are in our new apartment with all of our stuff - and we even have the internet hooked up. We are quite tired, so pictures will follow another day.