I Know...I Know

The last one was in March, I know. Let's face it, writing is just not on top of my priority list at the moment. It's very sad, since I do enjoy it so, but life is happening at breakneck speed at the Steinhauer household and I really want to be very present for it. When Chase was little, I found myself leaving her to play by herself a smidgen longer than I really wanted to just so I could finish a blog post or reading just one more thing on the internet, which had become my lifeline to the world outside of Mommahood. I'm SO aware of how quickly Wrennie's baby hours and Chase's last year at home before big-girl school are flying by. This time around I'm very very HERE. Committing to memory their soft baby scents, laughing at the same knock-knock jokes, disciplining bad manners, praising the good ones, witnessing sisterly bond being formed, teaching, learning, stain-treating, and generally being grateful for every last second of every day I get to marvel at these two little people. And after we tuck them in for the night, I get to hang out with my BFF. You see, no time to blog. But because I do love being able to look back on our journey through the years, I shall up the ante a tiny bit. Expect writing on the fly and not so much complete sentences. Think of it as Facebook status update of more than 420 characters if you will. Be there or be square!

Tis the Month of March Update

I have about 4 unfinished entries that will never see the light of the internet day. We've finally found our groove with Wil being gone during the week, but it certainly doesn't make me any less tired by the end of the day. It's been a sleepless month here in our house. The baby has learned to roll over from her tummy to back over a month ago and almost mastered the back to tummy routine. She's been inchworming all over the crib and I have to get up a couple of times a night to rescue her when she finds herself stuck at a different corner of the crib. She's normally wide awake and babbling complaining words when I go in to get her. I can almost hear the Baby's Whisperer yelling at me while I nurse Wren down yet again "this is how accidental parenting starts!" If anyone has any idea of how to tame a night-traveling baby, please do share. Other than giving up her 12-hour beauty sleep, Wren is marvelously thriving. At her 4-month check-up, she didn't gain as much weight as I thought she would but grew nearly 2.5 inches since the last time. The pediatrician confirmed that she was, in fact, teething, and it wasn't just the figment of my imagination. He was also very impressed that she was such a talker and a mover. Still the happiest, calmest baby I've ever met and is a pleasure to be around even at 4 a.m. I love how she has the biggest and gummiest smile for us every time our eyes meet.

I can truly appreciate when people say "don't blink" now more than ever, especially when I'm around Chase. She makes me so aware that everyday she wakes up almost a teenager. I realized the other day that she was properly pronouncing my sister's name (my sister's name is Kwan and Chase always had the cutest pronounciation of the hard-K or Q words), and panic set in as I searched through the video library hoping that I had captured the toddler talk. Chase's been talking in full sentences since she was about 22 months, and sometimes I forget that she's only two (almost 3!). I was getting so frustrated with her on a few occasions lately and had to remind myself that she was just acting her age. We're reclaiming our school routine and she's doing so splendidly well with alphabets and numbers. It boggles my mind to see my Little Sponge learn and makes me ever more committed to our structured schedule of school during baby's morning nap and pop quizzes through out the day to reinforce the day's new material even though all I want to do sometimes is to sit on the couch with her and watch Meerkat Manor. Speaking of meerkats, do you know how a male meerkat protectively hovers over, and sometimes just plunks himself on, his fertile mate to show that no other dudes should even think about wooing his lady? That's just about how guarded Chase is with it comes to Wren. When we go out and about, she tries to shoo well-wishers away, which only makes her even more darling to the cooing strangers, which only aggravates her protective instinct even more. She would yell "my baby!" and throw herself to cover the carseat if Wren is in it or grab one of her legs if I'm wearing her (you know, because if she has her hand on one of the baby's legs, then all is taken care of). We had been talking to her about going to a birds of prey show at Georgia Southern University for weeks, and she seemed super excited about it for a long time. When the weekend that permitted the outing came, she flatly refused to go. I was baffled and tried to coax her into it to no avail. Eventually I pried it out of her. "The big birds will come and take Wrennie away because she's so little!" Is that not the cutest, most considerate thing you've ever heard? Every once in a while I catch her staring at Wren and then giving a heaving sigh before proclaiming "the baby is so adorable." I just about die. Cute overload happens just as often as the 2-going-on-16 attitude around here, which is her only saving grace when she tells me "whatever" and rolls her eyes (where DID the child learn this??!?). Life with a toddler, particularly MY toddler, is never dull!

As I mentioned, Wil's away at school during the week. It's only about 3 hours away, so he drives home after class on Friday night and heads back Sunday around noon to do homework and get ready for the week. It's a sucky schedule, but we're grateful for the time that we have together. Chase cries for him pretty much everyday as is, which only makes the thought of a deployment even more heartbreaking (no, don't be alarmed Friends and Fam, he's not going anywhere, yet..). I kind of feel bad because he comes home to cardboard boxes and a drained wife every weekend, but this is just as good as it's going get for a while. Thankfully, I have one very understanding and caring husband, who doesn't mind spending his free time at home unpacking and straightening up the house (when Chase allows him out of her grip, that is).

Ok, time to get going. I'm going to try my best to not let another month pass before updating you on our crazy lives. Until then, be well!

The House

**I started writing this a few days ago and just now finished it. I'm leaving it the way it is, so you can see how mad crazy things have been in our lives.

I'm mad as a PMSing hornet right now and have already consumed 3/4 bag of scrumptious truffles, 2 bowls of pasta, 2 mugs of coffee, and am about to pop open some seriously cheap and lethal booze to knock me out so I would not make a belligerent phone calls to find out where my unaccompanied baggage is. That is another story for another time in the saga of "The Move from Hell--Endless Nightmares." There were a couple of days during this whole moving process where I just lay on the floor and cried. Seriously, I just had enough. All I wanted was for us to be in a house with all of our stuff. I never thought I would be the kind of person who felt attachment to things, but after these past couple of months, I've come to realize that it was those things that made me feel "home." The only constant thing in a military life is that there will always be a change whether or not I'm prepared for it. So if sitting on the same dirty old sofa and drinking from my favorite tea mug lessen the jarring effect of constantly being uprooted, then I am happy to be called shallow.

I really thought we were off to a good start after finding a house less than 24 hours after arriving in Statesboro. I was drunk tired by the time we met up with our soon-to-be new landlords for a house showing, because it was already 1 a.m. Germany time. Wil and I just assumed that we were looking at a house, which current tenants were in the process of moving out. We met 3 teenage and early 20's daughters of the renter, who wasn't there, plus her grandson, all of whom lived in the house. They were just lounging around the living room watching tv and Chase was playing with the little boy while I was trying to make polite small talk to keep awake. The house was big--4 bedrooms, 3 full baths, and a sun room--far bigger than any of the houses/apartments Wil and I had shared since we'd been married. It was in a new safe subdivision, there were plenty of room for everyone, but we would need to put up fencing for the dogs ourselves. We were deliriously tired, wanted to go to bed, and honestly didn't pay much attention to the details of the house when we told them that we would take it. I mean, the house was only 3 years old, how bad could it be, right? Anyway, buying was not an option since there was a possibility of moving again in just 2 short years. It wasn't until after we spoke with the landlord the following day that we found out that moving in would not be so easy. Apparently, the current tenant had bought the house off of the landlord, who was a contractor/property developer. Recently she had lost her job and could no longer afford the house, and it defaulted back to our landlord. Essentially, our expressed leasing commitment solidified the eviction process for her and her family, even though they knew they had to go sooner than later. I was teetering between being MORTIFIED at the thought that our family was causing their family to become homeless and selfishly feeling relieved that we finally found somewhere to land and stay a while. We stayed in a small local hotel while waiting for them to move out. While hotel living does sound fabulous, I can assure you that this particular one didn't make me feel remotely like Eloise at the Plaza. The only good things about the place were 1) free breakfast (complete with grits, biscuits and gravy! Hooray for southern heart-clogging foods!), 2) kind staff, 3) 42" TV that kept my kid occupied, and 4) the price that we could afford. We ended up staying nearly 3 weeks in a place that made me wish for my dad's sinus problem that would have prevented me from smelling the cigarette smell deeply embedded in the carpet. The dorm-room-sized mini fridge, which had faux wood paneling and was louder, especially in the middle of the night, than my brother's old college car that had a busted exhaust, held exactly 3 frozen dinners if and only they were taken out of the cartons. There were no stove, and we ate more than our fair share of microwavable anything when eating out twice a day was getting really old and expensive. We had two queen beds and a baby crib in the room. The rest of the available floor space was covered by luggage and toys. The bathroom was grimy and tiny. Wil was at work most days, leaving me and Chase to battle it out while Wren napped. If you are not getting how truly horrible our living situation was, let me try again. One-room living. Add a toddler. And a 7-week old baby. No car. Bad weather. Good thing I worked so hard growing Chase's brain cells during her first year, because I was certain she killed at least a thousand everyday watching TV at least 4-5 hours+/day. It was survival, yes, but it sure didn't make me feel any better about my parenting skill.

Our moving day came and went twice before we actually got to live there. The problem was the house was FILTHY. I don't have any other word for it. Think black carpet that was supposed to be beige, lime scale built-up toilet rings, burned-on caked on food on the stove top, dirt embedded in the wood grain of ALL doors,...etc. And this was after the landlords "cleaned" the place. They allowed us to move in a week early rent free, and at first I was so taken aback and grateful by their generosity since money was getting super tight (the power that be at the Army took their sweet time to reimburse us for our traveling expenses and hotel cost). Should have known that there were no such thing as a free lunch. The first move-in date came and Wil excitedly headed to the house to take a look around while I waited at the hotel with two sleeping beauties. He called me and sounded livid. I didn't realize the extent of the filthy grime until I got there. My cheap landlord (OH, WHY, GOD, WHY DO YOU KEEP STICKING ME WITH THIS TYPE?!?) attempted to clean the carpet by renting a rug doctor or something of that sort. The carpet was now a shade of dark brown instead of black. Can you imagine putting your kids to play on that??? You know, even if I didn't appreciate how grimy the rest of the house still was, I was not above rolling up my sleeve and giving it a go if it saved us another week of hotel stay. But the carpet was a deal breaker. We called the landlord, he met us at the house, and we did a walk through to sort out things that HAD to be done before we move in. He asked for three more days. Doesn't sound like a lot but to me 3 days were 259,200 seconds more of living in that hotel. Oh, there were sobbing.

The second moving day, a.k.a. the second worst day/night of my life, had to happen because we were officially poor. We had been living in hotels for over a month by that point (in Germany and Stateside in several states)--and still no reimbursement from the Army. Wil was at work for half a day, while I packed up our suitcases AGAIN. You would think that after all the money we spent on the damn hotel, they would be generous with their offer of a late check-out, right? No, we were about 5 minutes late out of our room, and the phone rang to remind us of the time. Bastards. Anyway, we loaded up the car with sinking feelings in our stomachs and prayed. The good news was the carpet was finally professionally cleaned and deodorized. The bad news was EVERYTHING ELSE was still exactly how we saw them the last time we were at the house. We didn't have time to mope because Miss Chase had her first dance class that afternoon. So we unloaded our stuff in a big empty house and went to Miss Helen's studio (more story on that later). One thing led to another, and we didn't get out of the whole dancing/ice cream treat with a new friend after class thing until after 6. Still had to eat dinner, which carried us to way pass 7. Then it was the dreaded Walmart stop to buy everything we needed to start living in a big empty house. Our unaccompanied baggage, which contained everything one needed to start out in a new house (pillows, blankets, kitchen things,...etc) was conveniently dropped off at a storage IN FLORIDA and marked on the system as "delivered," without us ever being notified. BASTARDS. We spent the next several hours fumbling over blankets, pillows, and pots in Walmart isles. I was beyond fried. Chase was asleep in a double stroller, and Wren, who was way pass tired, was fighting sleep in the Ergo. In hindsight, we probably should have known better than to believe that our stuff would arrive on the date they were promised and just gone ahead and bought all these things before the move-in date. But there were no room to store anything. Our car, which actually arrived BEFORE schedule--our total saving grace, was packed full of boxes we had mailed ourselves from Germany, and please don't let me start on the condition of the hotel room again. So now you can go back and read my Walmart breastfeeding story from the last post. Then after all that mess, we still somehow managed to forget something that Wil had to go back in to get get while I waited in the car in the parking lot with the girls. Statesboro Walmart parking lot is not where you want to be at 10:30 p.m. Anyway, went to the house, set up our air mattress, set up Chase's tent, set up Wren's Pea Pod, and finally passed out around midnight. This is when things got a little fuzzy for me. I have no idea where Wil was, but Chase was in bed with me. I was shivering because sleeping on an air mattress in a big cold empty house was frigid regardless of how many layers of blankets I had on me. The bed was wet, and I was super confused about where I was and where the hell the water was coming from. As it turned out, Chase wet the bed, and because she was so exhausted, she never even woke up--something that never happened. My kid will cry and complain if she has one drop of water on her shirt, ok? She'd only wet the bed maybe 3 times since we tossed the diapers, and every time that happened the neighbors down the street knew Chase was having a bad night. The child was so OUT she didn't even stir when we had to clean her up and change her clothes. That should tell you how rough that day was for all of us. Chase went back to sleeping in her clean dry Toy Story tent after she got changed, and Wil and I landed on the floor. I was thankful for the soft carpet, which had been freshly steamed, but not so much for the citrus-scented deodorizer that made everything smell like we all had been in a fist-fight with Florida's finest trees for the next week.

Needless to say, we barely slept that night. Wil woke up and went to work. I woke up, started "The Wonder Pets" for Chase on the computer, and started scrubbing. I hope to never be able to say again that I spent the first day in my house with my hands in the toilets scrubbing out the lime scale rings with a pumice stone. Now two weeks after we moved in, I'm still scrubbing on a daily basis. I got all the burned-on food off the stove top about 3 days in. All of the ceiling fans, except the two I can't reach because they are mounted on a 13-foot high ceiling, were rid of their thick layers of dust. Dirty doors were no match against Mr. Clean's Magic Erasers, and all the bathrooms were scrubbed multiple times to get the grime out of the tubs, shower stall, sinks, tiles, and the list goes on and on. I will never understand how anyone could live in such filth. The previous tenant had three grown daughters living with her. When my kids grow up and have houses of their own, I would call it a failure in parenting on my part if they looked anything remotely close to this house before the great Steinhauer clean up. Honestly, I shouldn't be surprised since the mother's room was the filthiest one of them all. All this mess didn't happen overnight. It looked like none of them bothered to clean anything since the day they moved in. Nasty people.

And the last words on a landlord who's also a contractor. You would have though he would use this house as a showcase for his work. No, not really. What we didn't see during a quick walk through was that there were no toilet paper holders, towel holders, or backsplashes in any of the bathrooms. No backsplash in the kitchen either. There's barely any caulking around anything that is near the water. The tile work is jacked up, door frames are crooked, and light switches are placed wherever and none have the same operating order (i.e. in one bedroom, the first switch turns on the fan, the second the light, but it's the opposite for the other bedrooms. In a guest bathroom, there's a switch that does nothing at all in between the two that controls the light and exhaust fan, etc.). I'm sure we're only discovering the tip of the craziest iceberg yet. Wil and I always look at each other, shake our heads, and mumble something to the effect of "it's just our luck."

Overdue

I've sat down and written about 5 different versions of this entry in the past month or so. So much has happened and most of the time I'm just so incredibly frazzled, everything I write just seems like verbal diarrhea. But I'm realizing that I'm going to continue to be frazzled for a very long time and if I don't write it down now, it'll never happen. So how about a quick list before everybody wakes up from their afternoon nap?

1. Just as we've been told by friends who have recently pcs-ed back from Germany, life in America now, ironically enough, has become very foreign. Europeans lead a much more simple, slow-paced life, at least in our neck of the woods, and we've grown accustomed to that. The first word that comes to mind when I think about being back is "excess." More is more in this country. Cars, houses, meals, people--everything got bigger and fancier, whether or not it's necessary, since we left. We went in to get cellphones and ended up looking at machines that seemed to do everything but make a phone call. Seriously, the phone that I was comfortable operating was the kind they marketed to seniors. Four years away just might as well have been 20 in this speed-of-light environment. There are so many people, things, and cars that my sensor just gets so overloaded every time we go out I want to come home and lock myself in a bathroom for a while. Don't even let me get started on going to Walmart. It feels like a punishment having to go buy a gallon of milk there, because it takes me 15 minutes just to scan the endless refrigerated section for it.

2. I've said this before, Statesboro reminds me a lot of Auburn when I went to school there a decade ago. Same size, same restaurants, same southern drawl. I want to call up my boys every time we drive pass Mellow Mushroom. It feels a little like I'd stepped back in time--I'm still the sloppily-dressed one amongst all the done-up pretty sorority girls in a fast food line. People are usually incredibly friendly, as they are in the south, and especially with us because of the two beautiful kids everyone dotes on. However, public breastfeeding can turn a fairly hospitable crowd against you in a big hurry, as we found out the night we moved into our new house. Imagine the scene: it's 10 p.m. after a very long exhausting day. We were buying pillows, blankets, towels, everything that we needed for the night in our empty (and very dirty) new rental house. We had a cart full of stuff, Chase was asleep in a double stroller that Wil was also pushing, and I had Wren strapped to my chest asleep in the Ergo. She started to stir and began to let us know that no amount of jiggling or rocking could possibly prolong the unavoidable meltdown from that long painful day. I decided to breastfeed the baby in hope to calm her down while Wil stayed in line to pay. Mind you, I was wearing one of those giant wrap, open-front maternity sweater things (ignore the fact that I'm still wearing maternity clothes here for a minute) that, thankfully, could go around me twice and also made the perfect blanket/nursing cover for Wren. I was sitting on a bench far enough from the line that I didn't hear the conversation, but my dear husband, who was now paying for our stuff, relayed the following to me:

A Walmart cashier who was about to start her shift as soon as Wil was done paying for our stuff: "That woman just popped out her titties!"
A man who was standing in line behind Wil: "Yeah, somebody go tell her that we don't need to see THAT around here."
My Husband, a.k.a. the Defender of Nursing Mothers Everywhere: "THAT would be my wife, who's trying her best to comfort our baby, who's beyond exhausted and needed to nurse. It's perfectly natural AND legal."
The offending parties, mumbling: "Umm...sorry..um..."

It would be one thing if I were taking out my boobs and waving them around like I were trying to win a free jello shot on a Red Neck Riviera spring break. Seriously, the only thing that you could see was the top of my kid's head. That was not the only time people gave me a dirty look for feeding my kid, even though it was the only time somebody had the gall to say something about it. The surprising thing is public feeding seems to offend people of my parents' generation the most. Older and younger crowd don't seem to care. Why is that?

3. Moving sucks in general, but this move really really blows. The movers came to get our stuff when Wren was exactly 3 weeks old. We slept on the floor that night because there was some "miscommunication" about when the loaner furniture was supposed to be dropped off. We kept Wren's bassinet for her to sleep on, so I had to get up and down day and night to feed and comfort the child. This would not have been that big of a problem if I didn't have stitches in the most delicate lady area (WHOA! Boobies AND lady part in the same post!) and my husband didn't have 2 back surgeries under his belt. That night, coupled with having to camp in our house for the next 3 weeks before moving into a hotel for 10 more days before finally flying out, really really tested the strength of our marriage. Then came the day to fly. It took 2 trips in a big cargo van just to get all of us and our stuff to the airport. Got in and found out that the flight was already delayed for 3 hours because of bad weather. Ok, there was nothing we could do about that. Then came the weighing of the dogs. You might have already heard this part through Facebook, but Fatty Paddy had to lose at least 3 lbs because AMC flights could only take pets if they and their kennels weighed less than 150 lbs. Paddy weighed 103 and his kennel was 50 about 10 days before the flight. We had to cut his food intake down by half and never felt more guilty about it, especially after he wolfed down a cup of food and looked up at us with those sad big brown eyes. So, who wants to guess how much he weighed? 150 lbs on the dot. The kennel was so big, Wil had to escort Paddy (shaking in his boots in the kennel) back to the cargo scale outside of the terminal. I was about to pass out from holding my breath when Wil walked back into the building with his thumbs up. Then the flight kept getting delayed. We finally boarded the plane nearly 10 hours after we arrived at the airport. More craptastic weather made loading luggage and cargo hazardous, and we ended up just sitting and waiting on the airplane for another 2 hours. Try strapping a two-year-old to a seat and telling her to sit quietly if you do not value your sanity. Once we were airborne, things were fairly uneventful considering we had 2 kids, who were so beyond exhausted and out of sort, with us. Chase cried a few times, Wren was permanently strapped down in the Ergo and walked all over the airplane, and I was determined to smother her, or anyone else that cried for that matter, with breast milk until she passed out. It felt like we had reached the holy land when we got to BWI. Then I remembered that we still had to retrieve everything AND the dogs to go through custom. The memory of flying them to Germany via BWI was permanently branded in my brain, and I knew this was going to be much worse simply because we all were fried. 2 Giant kennels plus dogs, 4 pieces of luggage weighing 55-70 lbs each, 4 carry-on's, 2 carseats, and no flat bed cart anywhere. I can assure you it was pure hell on earth. Wil tried unsuccessfully to use regular luggage carts to transport everything against my advice, the kennels tipped over and fell (with the dogs inside because we weren't allowed to bring them out), we bickered and the kids screamed. When all else failed, we pushed the kennels. One by one, foot by foot. Then, somebody called somebody who called somebody else who knew someone with a flat bed and brought it to us. You'd better believe there were tears in my eyes. At one point there were at least 2 custom officers, 2 BWI personnel, 3-4 USO volunteers helping us pushed the carts and stroller and giving us the much appreciated snack and water. I'll forever be grateful for their kindness and helping hands. So 2.5 hours after we landed, we finally located and sent the boys off with a driver, who would take them to North Carolina to board until we found a house in Statesboro. At this point we all had been up well over 24 hours already and were quickly coming undone (missing a hotel shuttle twice in a row???). Finally we found ourselves on a shuttle to our hotel, and it was just about when the shuttle driver finished loading up all of our crap when my husband, with panic in his voice, asked me "Honey, have you seen my black folder?" At some point early in this mad move, I resided myself to the fact that things weren't going to get done my way, and we were surely going to get a divorce if I kept micromanaging the process. Wil kept everything concerning this move and his clearing process in this black folder. I didn't like that and asked for at least one copy of everything, all of which I didn't get, to keep in a separate folder I carried. So back to the shuttle. We held up the shuttle while Wil quickly searched through the luggage and ran back inside the airport to look in places he thought he might have left it. Nothing. After what seemed like an eternity, he told me that he needed to stay behind to look for the thing and I should take the girls ahead to the hotel. WITH ALL OF OUR STUFF. BY MYSELF. WHEN I HAD ALREADY BEEN AWAKE FOR ABOUT 30 HOURS. I pretty much lost it on the freaking short bus. The kind people on the shuttle, all of whom miraculously had some kind of military affiliation, took pity on me and helped me get all the luggage and car seats off the shuttle. The problem came when I had to carry all of that mess up to the third floor room all by myself without a luggage carrier. Poor Chase, who could barely keep her eyes open at this point, was tugging at my sweater and whimpering because I couldn't pick her up since I was also wearing Wren in the Ergo while dragging 2 pieces of luggage at a time up the elevator and to our room. It took me over an hour, with the kids in tow, to get them all in the room, and guess who showed up to the hotel right after I finally put both girls down for the night? I was so beyond mad I couldn't even look at him and have a sudden urge to throw a shoe at him right now as I type and relive that damn night. And we had to get up just 4 hours later to get back on the shuttle to catch the flight to Jacksonville. That was the worst night of my life.

So it's taken hours long after their afternoon nap to wrap up that #3, so I'll carry this over to the next installment of "The Move from Hell." Hope you'll never have this kind of night.

A Hard Week

This week has been difficult to say the least. Wil and I spent every waking moment cleaning up our house to get ready to move out. Poor Wil and one of his friends actually spent a lot of time outside in the dark and snow staining fencing panels they had to repair. Our landlord, who has been largely annoying on the phone (he would call to tell us about his colonoscopy appointment and other bodily ailments) but mostly absent through out our two-year stay, suddenly decided that we were turning his house into a pigsty (no, we didn't) and started to get very critical of every nick and scratch on this 40-year-old house. First we were more than happy to work with him and let him keep certain amount of the security deposit to fix little stuff here and there, but it quickly became apparent that he had very little intention to return any, if at all, of our deposit. Wil and I are excellent renters. We always take care of our rental houses like they are our own, so it pissed us off to no end when George, the landlord, started making us sound like we had been subleasing his house to a couple of drunk frat boys. And he was blaming us for some of the things he should have been fixing himself, like the door that was always sticking (he told me to just slam it when we first moved in and yesterday said that we should have hired a carpenter to fix it) or the gigantic pile of brush that he left that he claimed Wil promised to remove once the weather was warmer--two summers ago. The accusation just got more and more pitiful and ridiculous (cobwebs in the basement, doggy nose prints on the glass door--all of which would required a service of professional cleaning, a.k.a. George's poor wife, and a couple of hundred Euros--according to George. We had enough and reported our complaints to the Housing people here after George refused, for the third time, to come out to inspect the house, because he firmly believed that there was no possible way that it could be "habitable" and he was just going to waste more time and gas coming to inspect it. All I can say is that thank God for my husband, who kept calm under the most infuriating circumstances. I would have punched the man and called the lost 1250 Euro a good investment. Between the Housing lady and my husband's finesse, he magically changed his mind and wrote us a check for the full deposit amount. The inspection was awkward and full of "you said you were going to do this," but at the end we all said our peace and wish each other well. Let's hope our path will never crossed again.

Thankful

Wil and I were hanging out in bed together a few days ago after he put Chase down for the night. Wren was with us, dozing off. He said "I love my life right now. It's everything I ever wanted." Couldn't have said it better myself. There are so much to be grateful and thankful for this year. Exactly a year and 5 days ago, my husband was wheeled into a surgery that would last 10 hours. It was the longest day following an even longer month of home care and pain management waiting for the OR schedule to open up. That WAS hell on earth. The uncertainty of his recovery and our future weighed heavily on our minds, which led us to a few important decisions, like trying for our second baby earlier than we had planned, that brought us here this year. And what difference a year make! Wil is healthy and fully recovered. His back will never be perfect and because of that his career path will change, but it's the kind of change we're happy about. Our family is blessed with yet another healthy, happy, and beautiful girl, whom we're all madly in love with. Chase was made to be the most adoring big sister and I can't be more proud of how she has handled this huge shift in her life. My mother being here to lavish my big girl with all the attention certainly makes the transition that much easier. Chase has Yai to go to whenever she likes and they are just the best of friends. I honestly dread the day we have to drop her off at the airport and already feel a heartbreak coming on for the both of them.

Having a baby and moving within weeks of each other is not exactly ideal, but such is a military life. Wren has made this whole process as easy as possible on us by being the sweetest and calmest baby. She worried me at first because she would rather sleep 4-5 hours at a stretch at night instead of waking up to eat constantly (or in Chase's case, about 23 hours/day). Her pediatrician assured me that she was doing well and putting on weight quite nicely, and that we should thank our lucky star before we went to bed for this perfect little angel. I'm just not accustomed to having a baby who wants to nurse a lot on schedule, sleep soundly on her own in her bassinet, and is generally the most relaxed little creature on earth. We're getting more sleep now than we ever did with Chase when she was 4-5 months old. Both of their personalities in utero have held true since we welcomed our girls into the world. I fought for the name Chase because she felt like a hunter, a go-getter the whole pregnancy, and Wren always felt like a delicate little bird from the beginning. I'm honored and proud to have these two babies call me momma and watch them grow up into wonderfully tough and smart broads with kind and humble hearts, who always strive to better their world.

Have I mentioned that I LOVE being a mother of two?!? It's such an incredible ride. Chase loves her sister so very dearly and is so caring. She constantly wants to hold and kiss Wren and will check on her just about every other minute if her baby is down for a nap in her bassinet. Wil and I put both kids down for a nap today and looked at each other like "now what do we do?" This just seems a little too easy, and therefore a little like some kind of a trick. I'm sure the hard part is coming in a few short weeks, so we should just be more thankful for our free time right now.

Hope your Thanksgiving is bountiful and full of love from friends and family. Ours will undoubtedly be since we'll be introducing my mother to our family Thanksgiving tradition of joining the crowd at a DFAC (Dining Facility for those of you non-military). I'm sure she'll be mortified :).

P.S. One last, but never least, person that I'm most thankful for: an incredible Husband. I've said it numerous times before, there's no one else I would rather go on this crazy journey with. To see Wil hold our babies just melts me into a mushy puddle of love. Thank you, Honey, for letting me dupe you into marrying me! I yoveeee you!

Nuts!

In my head I feel a little like a hamster spinning a wheel, although my body is anything but in motion. I'm sure the only reason I haven't gone into a panic attack about this move yet is because the last trip to the bathroom/kitchen sucks all the energy out of me. We picked up two more luggage this weekend to pack up the clothes that we'll be using for the next two months and have lined them all up in the hallway. So far we'll be traveling with 5 30"+ luggage, 4 carry on's, 2 car seats, 1 double stroller, and 2 giant dog kennels, plus the six of us. I'm not sure how we're going to transport everything and everyone (we could barely fit everything in a German rental van when I first got here--two fewer children ago), but that's another worry for another time. The movers are coming next week and hopefully the baby will be coming this week. My mom is flying in to help out, and no one is more excited about it than Chase. I ask her what she has planned for Yai, and the list she gives me includes things I haven't been able to do with her much like playing tag and chasing pigeons. Makes me a little sad, but I know we'll get over this horribly challenging hump in some kind of fashion.

Not in the same kind of moving news, but I did attempt to induce my own labor by knowingly consuming Taco Bell. I was hoping that it would make me so violently ill, as it always does, that my body will be forced to expel EVERYTHING it's currently holding hostage. No dice. I only gave myself horrible stomachache for 8 hours to add on to the discomfort level. Nice work there, Umer. I have also decided that, since some people view a huge pregnant belly as a form of insensitive comment/cheap shot practice, I am under no obligation to put up a polite front and just "let it roll off my belly." This revelation came to me during this week's unfortunate trip to our BX to buy more stuff for the move.

Me, pushing a cart full of stuff and dragging another luggage behind me and getting stuck behind 3 shopping gal pals and their carts that had no intention of moving after 30 seconds: Excuse me.
Girlfriend #1, who was wider than she was tall and sporting a sassy headband that only made her fat head looked fatter, after looking me up and down a few times: Oh, yeah (barely made room for me to pass).

I didn't made it 5 steps ahead of them and was clearly within an earshot when I heard:

Girlfriend #1 to #2 and #3: Well, she's not THAT fat.

Back in the days before I packed on 40 lbs, I would have taken down the heifer in one fell swoop. I'm less than 2 months out of Germany and can't afford to get banned from the only place nearby that I can buy heaving piles of organizational plastic crap for cheap. Inhale and exhale. Walk on.

After finally tracking down my Husband and Child in a crowd that was as stupid as we were to brave KMCC on a 3-day weekend and feeling an imaginary baby head crowning, I told Wil that I needed to go sit down somewhere STAT. And wouldn't you know it, the only available table I could find was conveniently located in front of a Baskin-Robbins shop. I was too tired to breathe and left the chowing to the other two Stooges. Somehow, I was still an uncomfortable recipient of the glares, stares, and whispers from EVERYONE, and especially from a woman who was sitting a row over and a table behind us. She kept giving me these frightful looks then turned her face in horror to whisper something in very hush hush tone to her husband about every 15 seconds. After about 10 minutes of this I had enough:

Me: Please stop staring. I'm not a freak show.

Her husband thought I was hilarious. The wife? Not so much.

Then a random woman just started yelling at me as I was walking pass her to tell my Husband that he was going to walk home if I had to wait for him 5 more minutes.

Woman, who was about 5 yards away from me: BOY? BOY? BOY?
Me: No. None of your business, but no.

I'm limiting my outings for the next couple of weeks for public safety reasons.