Adjustments

So obviously I'm not posting as much lately. To improperly quote HBM this baby is kicking my ass. That & the whole move & time difference adjustment. I've been napping when Doodles naps just so I can catch up on my sleep & by the time she goes to bed at night I'm too exhausted to devote any time to writing. The little monkey won't stop moving & it seems she must be touching me at all times. If she gets brave & crawls away from me to get a toy she turns to make sure I'm still watching her & have not gone more than 5 feet. If I get up to get a glass of water & she notices that I'm gone she starts crying & crawling after me. If I'm standing up she must stand beside me & will pull herself up on my pant legs & sway there until I pick her up. My (sweat)pants are only held up by a flimsy drawstring so they are spending an innapropriate amount of time way below waist level. I'm looking like the dude I saw at the airport the other day whose basketball skater shorts had their elastic waistband halfway down his thighs. Of course I'm not wearing cool boxers under mine so I'm not really getting away with this new look. Thank goodness it's too much of an effort most days to actually get dressed & go out of the apartment so I don't have to worry about the state of my drawers.

We've been hanging around the apartment quite a bit. It seems to take so much effort & time just to get organized to go out now. Plus the baby hates putting on clothes. And diapers. Actually, the diapers have been easier to put on in the past few days for some reason. A Wonder Week perhaps? I've lost track of the developmental stages. I know she had a growth spurt a while ago & she's a total crawling, standing, walking with assistance machine. She stands up by herself now & balances for up to a minute or two. She got her fangs still coming through & now one of the middle ones is making it's way out of her tender gums. I thought the drool was bad before but all of a sudden we've got puddles of saliva all over the place & I can see a little rash under her chin where the spittle likes to pool in the cute folds of her neck. Yuck. The little monkey has also developed quite the temper & will scream at the top of her lungs & then make this weird yelling sound. There's different levels of both the scream & the yell. We were at DEFCON 2 on our ride from the airport to our apartment the night we arrived in Seattle. First the dog started whining & then barking because he was stuck in the crate in the back of the massive vehicle we rented. Then as soon as we put baby in the crappy rental car seat she started to lose it. She was super tired & I couldn't sit beside her to comfort her because of the crazy amount of luggage back there so Calvin & I were stuck in the front listening to the most horrible screaming & crying that would be interrupted by high pitched dog whines. Then the barks. Which would set off the screaming. It was fun.

Anyway, we made it minus our eardrums & our sanity to the furnished apartment that Microsoft puts us up in for a couple of months while we look for our own pad. It is situated in between the Belltown & Queen Anne neighbourhoods of downtown Seattle, really close to the Space Needle. We're not sure if we're going to look for another apartment or go back into a house. We've got enough crap for a house but we're all liking the compactness & simplicity of apartment living. The dog is more manageable, the mess is definitely more manageable & I & the baby are liking the carpeting. The furnishings are nice & comfortable, you can watch the security cameras on tv, the view from the communal rooftop terrace is great & there's a workout room downstairs. On the negative side the towels are linty, the noise from the traffic & the gulls are taking some getting used to & I really need some more hangers but all in all, it's a cool place. Lucky us.