Stacking Blocks

You know you're a parent of a solitary child when you post five photos to represent something as simple as a stack of blocks. Anyway, we discovered this morning when we unpacked John's blocks that he now knows how to stack. It is surprising how long it takes to learn such a seemingly simple motor skill. Here is a photo of John with a normal expression:
And here is John purposefully making a goofy expression:
Digging:
Dumping:
Stacking:

Chris' mom is visiting us this week and helping me tremendously with unpacking. As a military wife who moved many times when her five boys were small, she knows all about unpacking!

Wagon Ride

We have a yellow utility wagon--given to us by friends downsizing and moving away--which Chris uses to haul heavy things. This week John discovered how much fun it is to ride in it, so we pulled him in the wagon on our evening walk. In the photo John is sitting there blandly, but he really does adore the wagon and, when Chris tries to stop pulling, John signs MORE.

It's a very heavy wagon, though, so we're thinking of getting a Red Flyer, like this one. Can't you just imagine how cute two Lauer kiddos would be in that wagon? But part of me hesitates to buy a plastic Red Flyer because it just seems wrong and goes against Americana. How fondly I remember growing up with my classic metal Red Flyer wagon, despite how it would burn my thighs after it had been sitting in the sun!

Goggles

At the La Leche League conference I attended a few months ago, John received a goodie bag for kids containing, among other things, a pair of goggles. At the time, they felt too constricting and scared him, but he recently re-discovered the goggles in his toy bin and has been asking us to put them on him. We think he looks smashing . . .
. . . especially when he is driving his race car!

Today the movers are here again to help us switch furniture around between two rooms. We decided to switch Chris' office into an upstairs bedroom and make the giant bonus room Mama's office, the kid TV room, the kid craft area, and the exercise room (our treadmill). Unfortunately for the movers, the bonus room is upstairs above the garage and the little office is upstairs, but the two upstairs areas are not connected, so the guys are hauling all this heavy furniture up and down two flights of stairs. But, I guess that's what they do for a living and why we are paying them! With my being 23 weeks pregnant, Chris having a bad back, and our having no family in town, that makes us basically dead in the water when it comes to moving heavy furniture ourselves.

Morning Scene

We are really enjoying drinking our morning coffee in the sun room. Today, this was our view in the backyard:
John playing in a box fort with a window:

Our Back Yard

The previous owners of our new home put in a professionally designed landscape five years ago, so it is now reaching maturity and looking so beautiful. We feel incredibly blessed to get to enjoy it! Below are some photos of the backyard, which contains a grassy lawn behind which is a landscaped area reminiscent of a lovely forest with walking paths in it. Behind that is a split rail fence, then a community-owned strip of forest blocking our view of the tennis courts. This view is looking off our back deck:
The forested area would be perfect for a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mother, a Marian garden, and a rosary walk--projects for the years to come! One of the circular paths with a bench:
One edge of the grass:

Another path (which leads out the back and eventually to a little community playground):

John: "I hear something!"

A bench on which to sit and ponder:

Looking at the house from that bench:

Looking straight up at the trees from that bench:

I noticed John making his first attempt to climb a tree, no one having ever shown him that:

Owning a landscape like this will be a great responsibility (lots of time on our part and professional help), but I think will bring us great enjoyment!

Moving In

What a whirlwind of several days! I have taken few photos because life has just been too zany for me to keep track of the camera's location and memorialize the cute moments.

Moving day was long and hard, even with the aid of five professional movers and my mother's helper. Despite the moving company coming to our apartment to view our belongings and being told of our storage unit packed to the brim, it underestimated the staff and truck we would need. The morning began with three men and one truck and ended with a total of five men and three trucks! My mother's helper was invaluable while she was here most of the day and the juggling got a lot more difficult when she went home several hours before the movers were done.

Poor John has been so excited by all this commotion. It took him nearly the whole 11 days in California to switch to West Coast time. We had been home not quite two weeks before the move and he was almost switched back to East Coast time, but his napping routine was (is) still chaotic. Then with the move, he has been far too excited by the commotion, the people, the new home, the boxes, and the many places to run for sleeping or eating. When he's finally so exhausted he's about to drop, then he realizes that he's starving because he has rejected my 15 pleadings to eat something. That first night in the new home, we were oh-so tired, but John woke up at 3:30 a.m. asking for food and could no longer be convinced otherwise. I believe that he was really very hungry! By 4:00 a.m., I realized I could pick my poison: continue to stay awake with a crying toddler or stay awake in the kitchen getting him a snack. I chose the latter, but then John was so excited by seeing the cat in the middle of the night (see photo), that it took him an hour to eat one graham cracker square. Was Mama happy? You can guess . . .
For now, Chris' office is in an upstairs bonus room off of the kitchen. It has no door, unfortunately, so we put a baby gate there to keep John from bugging Daddy while he is working. This is a painful concept, so here John is trying to climb up the outside of the stairs to get to Daddy:
Forty-eight hours after we moved in, we welcomed six overnight guests! Some of Chris' family were passing through Charlotte on their way home from a wedding. They broke up the one-and-a-half-day drive by spending the night at our house, enjoying a couple of meals with us, and helping us move furniture around. John absolutely loved playing with his two girl cousins and one boy cousin. Playing early-morning ball in the backyard with cousin Ryan, John still in pajamas:

Ryan and Cameron helping John color:
This morning was our first trash day in the new home, which is big excitement for John. Vroom vroom! Long after the garbage truck came and went, John remained peering out the front door, calling him back:

We're surrounded by boxes and it is a zoo around here, but we sure do enjoy our new home and are having fun getting established here. We've already been honored to have one neighbor bring us chilled champagne and another neighbor bring us homemade brownies!

Packing Day

Today the professional packers packed the remainder of our apartment. It took the two men only two hours! Considering that it took four packers about eight hours to pack up our house a few months ago (and I had already packed about 20% of it), that shows how leanly we've been living in this apartment. (Or it shows just how much junk we had at the old house and that we've been paying to keep in a storage unit!)

After the packers finished, we took a load of items over to the new house. John had a gleeful time playing in the back yard. This is the (south?) view:
This is the (west?) view of John trying to open the gate to the front yard. Obviously, these short fences are not entirely child-proof so John won't be allowed to play in the back yard unsupervised.
This is the (north?) view:

This photo shows our rear deck and sun room, which adjoins the den and kitchen through separate doors.

While I went to the grocery store, Chris discovered that by walking along the little wooded path through the gate, out our back yard, and past the tennis courts and soccer field, there is a playground about three minutes' walk away! I look forward to exploring that with John myself.

Lastly--a garage rock band was founded today at our rear neighbors' home at the apartment complex. They played their music so loudly all day, it was as if we had a stereo playing inside our apartment. Chris and I just looked at each other and said, "Not our problem!" Looks like a good time to be moving out!

Our Empty House

Today after an overly long, ill-planned day of errands, we stopped by our empty new home to eat take-out Chinese by way of celebrating. John had so much fun having complete freedom to run through the empty rooms downstairs. Here is the dining room:
The sellers left behind their many wonderful potted plants, as here in the sun room:
John playing ball in the den:
Today we bought one of four area rugs we will be needing. Here John is "helping" Chris and me lay out the rug in the den:

The sellers have been an absolute delight throughout. They went above and beyond making repairs to the home before we moved in. They provided a binder with all the manuals for equipment in the home, extra equipment (such as specialty light bulbs, spare parts for the drip system, matching caulk), all their potted plants, notes on how things work, labels on all cables, and even a diagram of all the surrounding neighbors (who lives where). They even left us a gorgeous bouquet of roses! And today when we picked up the spare keys, we noticed that the key ring is from our parish, which makes us think the sellers are likely our same faith and members of our parish! What a small world.

Home Sweet Home

We closed escrow on our new home today!

In retrospect, we were so relieved that my mother's helper was available to come with us to the closing because it really would have been a nightmare to try to monitor John while signing all those papers. As it was, he had a great time playing with Megan in the lobby.

We are excited to be moving into our new home in a few days! Please pray for our health as I'm pretty sure John and I are coming down with a cold. Moving while achy, stuffed, and with sore throats and unable to take naps would be no fun indeed!

The Power of "No"

Well, the time has come: John is now officially saying "no." He has long said "no," meaning, "You are telling me no," or "I know this object is a no-no." But now he is saying "no" to mean, "No, I don't want to!"

The first time was in California when I handed him a piece of cheese and three times in a row, John said "no" and pushed away my hand. Since then he has said "no" when rejecting food, once when I was putting on his sneakers, and this morning when I said I needed to change his diaper. His "no" remains quiet and subdued, but I know it won't be for long.

A new era has begun. I hope I am mother enough to manage it well.

Friday 7/11 Coming Home

The flight home went great! This was probably a small-m miracle due to our prayers when the whole situation was set up to be a disaster.

The day before I had felt very ill all day (and I suspect, so had John). I wondered whether I could even fly home so explored my options for changing flights: all options involved a lot of money and limited return options (because one of our tickets was purchased with free points instead of money). I suspect that because of my anxiety about whether I would even be able to fly I didn't sleep all night. The alarm went off at 3:30 a.m. Friday and I was dreading my day.

Remember, John is a toddler who has to have all the heavens align in order for him to sleep. He does not sleep on travel days. On the airplane flights to California, he slept for maybe 15 minutes one time--that was it. So imagine my shock when we got settled in to our first leg of the flight, John crawled into my lap, and he fell fast asleep within seconds! He slept the entire first leg, which was about an hour.

The first hour-long layover went well and then we boarded our three-hour flight. Each seat had its own television screen, so I purchased John "Horton Hears a Who." He wouldn't keep his earphones on, so he couldn't hear the audio, but he was mostly transfixed anyway. A couple of hours later, I sensed he was getting manic, so I held him on my lap and rocked him. He did begin crying, but three minutes later he was fast asleep and remained so for the last 45 minutes of the flight.

Then we faced the monster: a four-hour layover! There was nowhere I could safely let John run off some steam because either I'd have to leave my luggage sitting somewhere unguarded or I'd have to carry it with me while I ran after John. We spent one hour walking up and down the small terminal with John in his stroller: he was quite entertained. We spent some more time eating dinner at a sit-down place. Then I put John in my Ergo and walked for another hour. He promptly fell asleep on me, so even though my back hurt from carrying a 25-pound toddler on my front and a heavy backpack on my back, and my feet hurt like the dickens from walking with sandals on cement, I persevered because one doesn't risk waking a sleeping toddler at times like those!

The last leg of the flight went well too, with John spending most of the time flirting with a toddler and baby seated behind us.

It was so great to see Chris again. He greeted us with roses at the airport, sunflowers at home, and homemade cookies. We went to bed late, but John even slept soundly when normally he falls victim to night terrors on travel days because he is over exhausted.

Praise be to God!

Thursday July 10 in California

On Thursday, Aunt Erica and I took John for a walk and visit to the playground in the morning. He was excited to see this friendly kitty on the sidewalk, but when Erica tried to facilitate John petting the kitty, he became shy.
Erica had discover through a couple of trials and errors that my John is not her Ethan (now a college student) in temperament. John is cautious and conservative when swinging and climbing and does not want to go fast or high!
This was probably the first playground visit at which John had great fun climbing on the toddler-sized equipment. He still wasn't wildly bold, but he had many laughs.
Here John is at the top of the small slide, which he would not descend, even with my help. He will only go down a slide if he's placed at the halfway mark (about three feet up) and Mama holds on to him the whole time.

In the afternoon, Aunt Stella arrived from Southern California, so we enjoyed going on another walk.

In the evening, we had the best time going to dinner with family friend (from high-school days with my Mom and Erica) Bill . . . who made it even more worth our while by sending us home with one of his amazing homemade blackberry pies!

Wednesday 7/9 in California

John wearing Grampa Neil's sandals:
As of this morning, John has begun covering his face sometimes when I try to take a photo:

Today I met my Dad, sister, and niece for a trip to my alma matter's beautiful arboretum. We walked along Putah Creek and looked at ducks and turtles, much to the one- and four-year-olds' amazement. Afterward we went to lunch together and said our goodbyes for the remainder of my visit. (Dad is making a goofy face here:)

John in the backyard:
John figured out after one observation that the way to get water out of the fun hose is to turn the faucet:
John remembered that fallen apples go in the garbage can:

Late in the evening, Aunt Erica arrived from Oregon. Tomorrow Aunt Stella will arrive from Southern California. Sadly, they each had work commitments which prohibited them from coming to visit us any sooner in my trip. I feel honored that they are coming despite how short a time we will be together!

John's language is exploding right now, perfectly normal for the 18- to 24-month-old, but amazing for first-time parents to witness. Very soon I won't be able to keep track of his newly acquired communication skills. Just on this trip to California, John has acquired the below new words and signs:



WORDS

Cane
Din-din [dinner]
Ding [sound of bell]
Go
Gotta go!
Knock knock
Night night
Owl
Pine cone
Toast
Up

(And at the grocery store, John was working very hard on saying "balloon," although I'm not ready to declare that he knows that word yet.)

SIGNS

Flying insect [accompanied by sound "vvvvv"]
Sleeping [i.e., the kitty is sleeping, accompanied by new word "night night"]
Spraying water / Hose