Moving Day

Today was moving day. After a week of packing and sorting and chaos, the movers came at 8:30 this morning. Man, the professionals work fast. They had the house empty by 12:30 and drove all of our stuff off down the street. In the end we got all of it packed up, but I'm pretty sure that we're going to have a few surprises when we unpack.... like the colander in Erin's dresser drawer.

It's been bittersweet to pack up and move out. We're excited about all of the new stuff coming for us in Seattle and it is really nice to have moving day over, but it's hard to leave the house we've been living in for almost 10 years. It's also hard to leave and know that Erin will have few memories of living there and Nora will have no memories of being there.

It's also been an exhausting week. We've been lucky to have had lots of help from Gramma Beth, Grandma Jan and Grandpa Dean. We could not have done this without them. They've allowed me to sit on the couch nursing and snuggling with Nora and directing the activity. Matt caught me and Nora expressing our feeling about moving the other day...

We celebrated our last morning living in the house by giving both girls baths. Erin enjoyed hers a lot more than Nora did, but Nora now smells a lot sweeter and her hair is even a few shades lighter than we'd thought now that it's clean. Who knew.


We also have a few pictures of the house that we'll be renting in Seattle. We signed all the paperwork on Wednesday and are thrilled to actually have things settled for our housing out there.

The long awaited post

Baby Nora Elizabeth is here! She was born May 16 at 11:45pm. She weighed 8lbs and was 20 inches long. Labor and delivery went very smoothly (although it was NOT easy as Matt likes to tell people).


Erin met her new sister early the next morning and has been thrilled with her sister ever since. All of our activities are now interrupted by Erin asking "can I give the baby a hug?" Erin is doing a little bit more testing limits, but is otherwise handling all of this wonderfully and we are very proud of her.


Nora is a great baby so far. The first few nights were a little tiring with Nora up from 11pm until 3am, but she has now settled into a great routine (ok, for the last 3 nights) where she is only up once or twice overnight and otherwise sleeping great at night. She seems to be a pretty mellow baby so far who is content most of the time if she's held or nursed. Matt also likes to say that she is a champion pooper. We'd forgotten just how much one little girl can poop. Despite the chaos in the house, we've found a few spare moments to marvel at how beautiful she is and how much we adore her already.


Grandma Beth took the train to Minneapolis and arrived here last Thursday to help out. Thank goodness she did, because in addition to Nora's arrival, we are also moving this Friday! We finally found renters who will move in June 1 and so our stuff is all leaving the house on May 27. It shouldn't surprise me, but it is taking a lot of work to move out of a house that we've been in for almost 10 years. We'll be living with Grandma Jan and Grandpa Dean for a few weeks before we make the big trek across country to settle in Seattle.


The move has required endless phone calls and arranging and Matt has taken care of almost everything. This has saved me from making the ever dreaded phone calls, but has also freed me up to focus on Nora and trying to get some rest. Today has been a special day because we think that we FINALLY have secured a place to live in Seattle. It's been a long time coming and has not been without many ups and downs, but we're really excited about our new house. It's a charming 3 bedroom bungalow in a quiet neighborhood just west of Green Lake. The timing of Nora's arrival has prevented us from flying out to look for ourselves, but we were lucky enough to have some friends in Seattle who did video tours of several houses for us to help us check out some properties. Thank you Michelle and Scott!


We'll try to post more stuff as the days go by. I'm sure that after June 1, things will be settling down a lot and we can actually spend a lot more time doting on our beautiful new baby.