One more cup of coffee

First step

Nathan took his first step yesterday.

When I got home work work, he was standing up in the living room holding onto the couch. I walked over to him and stopped a couple of feet short. He turned around – and stepped over to grab my leg.

:)

Of course, he hasn’t taken a step on his own since, but he’s sure close to walking.

Change of plans

We were supposed to be in Connecticut by now, but when I got home last night, Nathan had suddenly developed a 104°F fever out of nowhere. Rather than hope that he would OK for a six hour flight from here to JFK, we’ve postponed our trip by a couple of days.

Then tonight, both Meredith and I started to feel a bit sick.

Oh, and there’s a blizzard or something headed towards NY, I hear.

I’m sure it will all work out.

Whirlwind of moving activity

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity trying to get ready for our move. The next few weeks should be more of the same.

We went up to the Seattle area last weekend (Friday through Monday) for a four-day house hunting trip, interrupted only by the Super Bowl that absolutely everyone in Seattle stopped to watch (well, maybe not quite everyone – but for sure our realtor). I lost track of how many houses we looked at – somewhere between 20 and 30, I think.

The good news is that we found a house (see the pictures to the right). We’re in escrow right now, and home inspections are scheduled for Monday. So, if all goes well, we’ll close in a month.

So in between talking to the realtor and other people up north, we’ve picked a realtor down here to sell our house, and are starting to fill out the disclosures and get things ready to put this house on the market.

And in just three more weeks, we’ll be in Washington state.

Weekend update

We did make it east, although never to Connecticut. We flew out on Sunday to JFK, since Nathan’s fever broke Saturday morning. Of course, Sunday was the end of the giant blizzard that dumped almost 27 inches of snow on NY. Because of that, our flight was about 2 1/2 hours late leaving, then we had to circle JFK for a while before landing, then we had to wait on the runway for a while because snowplows were in our way… In the end, we got to Melissa’s place at about 2 AM Eastern time, or about 12 1/2 hours after we had left our house that morning.

The visit with Melissa was great. Although Nathan was not the least bit interested in the snow. He didn’t wan to touch it, and he sure didn’t want to be put down in it. He needs a few more years, I guess. Melissa and Casey babysat for Nathan on Tuesday night, while Meredith and I got to go enjoy our Christmas present from Melissa: tickets to Avenue Q. We even survived our maniac bus driver who drove us into NY. (Best parts: the guy shoveling snow who dove out of the way of the bus speeding towards him, and our driver’s angry astonishment and finding buses in the street in front of him in his way. At the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Imagine.)

The flight back was also late because of weather: the jetstream was so strong, we had to stop in Denver to tank up on gas.

The good news is that Nathan is starting to get back to a normal schedule. The bad news is that I woke up sick yesterday morning, and it looks like Nathan may be coming down with something again. Ugh.

In the mean time, we’re trying to finish getting everything set for the house we’re buying in Kirkland (next: get the financing commitment), and trying to keep up with the stuff we need to do to get this house ready to sell (next: fill out the seemingly hundreds of pages of mandatory California disclosures).

And in less than two weeks, we’ll be in WA.

Things Nathan has learned

Nathan now keeps pretending to blow his nose. He'll grab a kleenex, wipe, napkin, whatever, hold it up to his face, and blow into it. It's cute, and a little sad, all at the same time.

Impressionable little kid.

As Meredith points out, imagine what he'd be imitating if we smoked...

Goodbye, G'Kar

I just saw that Andreas Katsulas, who played G’Kar on Babylon 5, died on February 13. G’Kar wasn’t supposed to be one of the primary characters of B5, but he and Londo Mollari, played by Peter Jurasik, made that show. Katsulas was an amazing actor in that role.

Five days to go

The movers show up Monday morning to start packing. By now, I’ve got the computers disconnected, all the TV/stereo equipment disconnected, and someone showed up this morning to take the old computer desk off our hands.

Left to do, in no particular order:

• Go to BevMo and get boxes to ship my wine up north, which the movers won’t take. Nor will they take the liquor (e.g., JD, Scotch) that I have. This is a pain.
• Find all the old property inspections and such that we had done when we bought this house to give to our realtor here, so they can become part of our disclosure package.
• Finish filling out the disclosure forms, which ask everything. (My favorite so far: “Has an electrical fuse or circuit breaker ever blown while you’ve owned the house.” Who, in six years, has NEVER tripped a circuit breaker? Please.)
• Set aside all the stuff we want the movers to delivery to temporary housing. Mostly we think this will be some more clothes and some of Nathan’s toys. And his diaper pail, because our experience in the hotel room in Redmond when we were on our house hunting trip reminded us just how much diapers stink if you have to just throw them in the trash. Eww.
• Set aside all the stuff we don’t want them to pack at all.
• Take everything out of our cars that we aren’t going to take with us on the plane so that it gets packed. The car shippers want the cars completely empty of everything that didn’t come with it.
• Call PacBell SBC AT&T to cancel our phone and DSL service.
• Find Meredith’s cell phone so that she has a phone at all for a while.
• Call DirecTV to cancel our satellite TV service.
• Go fill out a change of address form with the post office.

In other developments:

• Alaska Airlines says that sure, we can take our cats in the cabin with us. All we have to do is find a pet carrier no taller than seven inches that the cats can fully stand up and turn around in. 7 inches? OK, if I were traveling with, say, a pet snake, this would work. Or maybe a six-week old kitten. Maybe. But they don’t make cat carriers that are less than seven inches tall. We looked online and even found pet carriers that say “designed for in-cabin flight use” – but then read a bunch of comments about how they work great, but don’t actually fit under the seat, so you have to hide them under your legs and a blanket. Good grief. So we bought another rigid carrier, and Jake and Pippin will ride underneath the plane. Sorry, cats.
• The financing contingency for our Kirkland house was cleared in time. Whew. The sellers also agreed to fix all the stuff we asked them to from the property inspection, so it seems like we’re in good shape. Closing is March 10.
• We’ve got all of our travel arrangements made. We’re picking up a rental car here on Tuesday, because the car shippers show up Wednesday to load our cars for the trip. We fly up Thursday.