Park in February?

Well we got to go to the park twice this week. A continues to love to swing. She is also learning to slide and really enjoys that as well. She is getting good at holding herself up enough to slide down the small slides and we go together down the big ones. The park we go to here is great! It has a TON of stuff for everyone, including a nice covered picnic area to eat lunch or hang out if it rains for a minute or two. Today it was threatening rain so there weren't a lot of people around, just the ones who wanted to ensure a park trip for the day.

She loves her glasses!

Today though we met a couple of other moms with kids. One of the ladies asked us to play group on Monday, so hopefully we can make it. The other lady has a little boy who is 2 weeks older than A, so they liked patting each others faces, pulling hair, etc. They are both active so it was nice to see a similar aged child just as active as A. It was also nice to meet other people here. It was really the first couple of people that have even come close to saying more than just a passing hello. Apparently there is also a large employer here that I didn't know about, Samaritan's Purse. That would probably be an interesting place to work, so it is another place to look for a job.

Wordless Wednesday

I don't think this picture needs much, but this happened today, so I'm lucky that I get to do a "Wordless Wednesday" on it. :)

Blue Ridge Parkway

Since A was being a pill today and wouldn't sleep, we went for a drive. We went to a nearby town, Blowing Rock to see and just outside was an on ramp to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I spent about half an hour or so going North on the parkway and it was quite pretty. We had overcast weather this morning that has turned into a sunny afternoon. Here are some of the pictures though. 

Teething 101

Well, life as we know it is changing again. We now have a tooth. Not completely, but it has pushed through the gum entirely. The bottom right one is working its way up. It looks like there are several more in the immediate horizon, so we may soon have four or five teeth.

This past weekend we made a trip to Winston-Salem, or simply Winston to the locals here. We went to the science museum (shocking, I know) and discovered why so many people think that the MSI in Chicago is such a big deal. Because it really is! When we'd go to MSI we would never be able to see the entire museum in one day, but here we didn't have any trouble. We also managed to make it to a Costco so we've got all our canned goods and such for a long while now.

Sunday we went to a park here. They have a recreation center with a rather large outdoor area, access to one of the main trails along a creek, and a pool. A got to swing and slide and such. She tried sliding by herself a few times, and was unsure at first, but always wanted to do it again. Until she lost her balance and bumped her head a little on the edge of it. We are regularly getting small bumps and bruises everywhere these days as she is crawling and getting into EVERYTHING. She has started pulling stuff (diapers, clothes, etc) out of the drawers, laundry baskets, etc. She started when we were unpacking, so I blame that for teaching her how to do it. Nevermind the fact that kids of all kinds do it all the time. She is still creeping and will walk if you hold her hands. The few times she balances on her own it isn't a problem until she realizes that she shouldn't be doing that.

Life is settling down here in a pattern. It is weird with Chris being close enough to eat lunch, or leave five minutes before he has to be at work and have him be early. It is different not having our lives ruled by the trains and not really have a lot of driving to do in the first place. We drove all over town for an entire week, most days we did it twice a day even, and only put 50 miles on the car. We like having Chris close and we are both getting a lot more sleep (though with the teething thing this past weekend we now have a lot more catching up to do) and enjoying the extra time he's around. This also has allowed me to get back into running. I've got a 2.5-3 mile loop that is hilly that I've done several times now. I will eventually make it up Stadium Drive and Poplar Hill. These are the two largest hills on the route and both can get a car going over 40 if you don't put the brakes on, and this is cresting the hill going under 10 mph. Needlesstosay this means doing it sans car is fun right now. I've enlisted to run the Route 66 Half Marathon in Tulsa on November and hopes this helps keep me motivated despite the soreness and out of shapeness that I'm encountering. My best friend Maggie is also going to run it, so maybe we'll do it together. We will see how this year shapes up though.

As always, here are a few pictures of A swinging at the park.

Yes she sticks her tongue out to the right these days to play with her new tooth.

Wordless Wednesday

We're In

Well, we made it to NC. We drove down from Chicago overnight Monday and got here early Tuesday morning. It went really well and A slept most of the time. We switched drivers every couple of hours, though neither of us was really able to sleep much when we weren't driving. We would try, but we ended up talking and had tons of nervous energy that goes with a big move. The hotel let us check in when we got here and after a quick nap we made rounds around town. We went to get keys from the rental place first, then to utilities. The rental place was interesting. They are excited to have our place rented out and were doing a bunch of work on it as we were about a day earlier than we had anticipated getting into town. They found out the basement flooded when the cleaning ladies tried turning on the washer, so that was interesting. Everyone that we talked to had something to say about what a drastic change this is going to be for us. We'll see how it goes.

On Wednesday we went by the university. I got to meet the department chair and she was quite nice. She walked us around campus picking up forms for Chris to fill out. He will do an orientation his first day (Wednesday) so it should be interesting. Towards the end of our walk she talked with me about what I was going to do here. She says that there are regularly non-tenure track chemistry faculty positions available, so I may try for one in the summer or fall. Hopefully that would come through as we are in a great location for the uni, and it would be a good way to get into college teaching.

Wednesday our moving people came as well and delivered stuff. It ended up being the same team of people that was in Chicago. So far we've unpacked a lot of our boxes and have only discovered one broken glass. They packed us up on Sunday (well, packed all of our stuff in the truck). Originally I was against the idea, but now I'm not so sure. Chris and I talked about the whole experience on our drive and helped to sort things out, at least in my mind. Apparently the movers didn't realize that part of the reason we wanted them was for their driving ability, since we didn't really want to go up into the mountains with a truck ourselves. That and Chris didn't think an extra day of just me and A in a car would have been a good idea. They came in an really overestimated what we had. On Wednesday after talking with them we also realized how little they were paid, which is another reason that they wanted us to pay them to move our stuff in a UHaul. Ah, the inner workings of companies.

One of our fun conversations we had around the Ohio River was exactly how many states A has been to. She is just over eight months old, yet she has been to or through: Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina. We opted not to go the route through Ohio just for saying that she's been there as well. We are close enough to Ohio that we could take a trip there for something if we really wanted to.

One other thing that we've realized is exactly how much kitchen stuff we own. We are down to the last dozen or so boxes left to unpack and most of them are kitchen. We aren't entirely sure how we fit all that kitchen stuff in our condo, it really is a seemingly exorbitant amount. However, when you spend as much time in the kitchen as we do, it makes sense that most of our stuff would be from there. Thankfully the basement has a kitchenette and we can put some of our unusable stuff there. For example, we have a small oven and anything over a 12x14 cookie sheet doesn't fit. This isn't such a big deal as I still have some cookie sheets from my grandmother and they all fit perfectly.

Well, it sounds like baby girl is up from her nap. Hopefully she is adjusting to sleep patterns here with a new time zone, new house, new lots of things. It has really helped all of us to have our own stuff around. Today it is super windy outside (30 mph) and raining (it should be snow!) so we will have a lazy day I imagine. We all need the sleep desperately as A hasn't been very good about sleeping this trip. She's been kind of stressed and has actually slept best with us. We aren't super happy about that, but it helps us all sleep and we will deal with the repercussions later I suppose.

NC Moving

Playing with a tube in our condo before we left

Well we now have a place to stay and stuff so we don't feel quite so homeless. We drove overnight Monday and were able to set up a lot yesterday so that when the movers came today we didn't have much else to do. So far we like the house, and the rental company was excited to see us. Apparently they have been referring to us as "the Chicago couple" and so we walked in well known. Chris has set some stuff up at the uni and hopefully I can get an adjunct position there. Overall things are good. Time for more unpacking.

In front of the new fireplace.

Helping to unpack boxes