shortstack

9 Months, Other Musings

caylin turned 9 months today. more specifically, 2 hours ago.

brett and i just watched silver linings playbook, and one of the songs they played was frank sinatra singing, “have yourself a merry little christmas”. they had the big christmas lights in the background. the big ones, not the crappy wal-mart ones we buy today. the big fuzzy bulbs. it just hits me like a rock. i’m still not sure if he noticed me crying. i swear to god, i was born in the wrong decade. either that, or i was reincarnated in this one. because if that’s the case, i was already born in the 50′s. had they played the judy garland version, i’d be a basket case. those 2 voices kill me. tears? flowing. heartbeat? racing. i’m with you, mom!

it may or may not help that brett just served me shot #8 in one of our last nights in this townhouse (by the way, 8 is nothing in this house. we got this.). caylin is upstairs sound asleep. loki and thor begging for food, the usual.

boxes everywhere–not so usual.

this is so bittersweet. it’s killing me.

i didn’t have this much of an issue moving from my very first “big girl” apartment at colonial grand, or me and brett’s first “official” apartment together at bolton’s landing. i don’t know why. maybe it’s because we only lived in that one for 6 months. maybe it’s because they’re still like… a mile away or less than that.

this move is different. it’s where we brought caylin home. her nursery was completely torn apart today. by us, obviously, but i remember carefully picking out every decoration. every highlight of that room. every piece of art. showing my grandma pictures of what i wanted it to look like. my grandma was and is such a huge part of caylin’s childhood–she MADE that nursery what it is. blankets, mobiles, bibs, toys–everything. handmade by her. it kills me packing that room up. it will definitely be transferred to her new nursery, but that room will always be her first home. the nest i made for her.

anyway, before i cry again (also, this is bullshit. i’m supposed to be all into metal and shit. THERE’S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL! james, back me up!), at 9 months:

• WE HAVE A CRAWLER. finally. caylin was insistent on standing up first, but now she’s crawling. not just backwards, but all over the place. she doesn’t enjoy her freedom yet, but she will if she must
• standing up with wobbly butt–she will stand up anywhere as long as she can get a grip. it’s ridiculous. she loves it, though. she’s like a jack-in-the-box in her crib./li>
• speaking of jack-in-the-box, she is staying up later these days. 8:45-9:00 instead of 8:00. a blessing and a curse for me and brett! hooray for more time with caylin; however, it might contain more whining…. which is okay by me
• girlfriend climbs all over us, dammit. caylin is obsessed with climbing all over us. whenever we’re playing with her on the floor, that’s all she wants to do. that, and play with pacifiers. she loves them. she swaps them out like she’s recharging or something.
• she’s eating all my food. yeah. for the last, like, 2 weeks… i’ve been eating standing up. she HAS to eat when we’re eating (that’s been going on for about a month), so i feed her standing up next to her highchair. she eats “her dinner”, which is the gerber ravioli or chicken (i swear she’s gonna turn into a chicken) or whatever pasta i made for her, PLUS half my food. she eats… so much. it’s ridiculous how much something so tiny can fit sooooo much food. but she kills it. she’s not even chunky. her thighs are getting there (she has me to thank for that), but the rest of her is ridiculously tall, blonde, and beautiful. THIS CHILD IS BLESSED.
• she loves goofy faces. her laugh is infectious. it’s amazing and i love it. if i had the energy to sit there and make faces at her all day, i would.
• babbling constantly–it’s amazing. there is nothing more soothing than hearing your baby attempt to talk to you. i don’t know what she’s saying, but it’s incredible. i swear she’s trying to make sentences. either way, it’s fantastic.
• we’re still wearing 18-month clothes. the 12-month clothes are pretty much spent–squishing toes and what-not. i’ve packed them up. we can only wear the dresses now, but that’s ok. short dresses are ok until you’re like, 11, right? plus, it’s hot as crap in charleston.

anyway, semi-short update. i had 1 meal today. brett and i spent the morning packing, and then we packed up the truck to drop a bunch of stuff off at goodwill and take a load to the house. we took off wed-fri from work to move into the new place.

christine and i spent half of today putting together the bed frame and the mattress pad from IKEA, only to find out the bed frame was a queen (supposed to be a king), so we’ll have to wait another 2 weeks to get the king size. i know, first world problems, right? i have no issue sleeping on the mattress on the floor. the silver lining is that we have 2 guest bedrooms in the new house, instead of 1–awesome. the rest of our furniture should be delivered saturday.

in the meantime, i’m excited that loki and caylin are getting their first backyard tomorrow. i never thought loki would make it to today. her tumor is still there–it shrinks and grows everyday. i hate it. today, it was especially large, which made my stomach hurt just thinking about it. if she can enjoy a few months of the new house, i will feel somewhat better. i owe so much more than that to her, but at least she’s here to enjoy it now.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

we closed on the house yesterday. we. closed. on. our new house. we’re moving into our new house next week.

no matter how many times i say it, it still won’t sink in. we haven’t done diddly as far as packing goes–my mom has done 95% of what HAS been done. and i feel like we’re only accumulating more crap by the day. more specifically, caylin is accumulating more crap. i bought her this at target tonight. DAMN YOU, TARGET. i went in to buy a hair dryer. i came out with that plus a new bikini and a kiddie pool.

i was so jittery yesterday afternoon when we were signing all of the paperwork that i couldn’t even focus enough to sign my name correctly. half the time it came out looking like caylin signed it for me. and i kept forgetting to use my middle initial. and then i looked down, and my elbow was bleeding. i don’t know.

after 20 minutes of signing papers, they gave us the keys. 4, actually. and then, i was so excited that i took a picture of the keys and posted them online captioned, “we bought a house!”, only to find out that those little numbers engraved on the key are like… the key TO the key. and can be duplicated. thank you, internet, for that little nugget of information. never knew that. and now i’ll never forget.

anyway, apparently when you build a house, they reward you with little “gifts”. they gave us this awesome pop-up cooler, some beer bottle openers, koozies, hand sanitizer, pens, mouse pads (i guess they think we’re alcoholic nerds? NAILED IT!), lotion (which actually happens to be THE best hand lotion i’ve ever used in my life), and some nice little tote bags. it doesn’t really amount to much (monetarily) when you just forked over your life savings, but it’s still a nice touch. plus, the cooler is pretty damn awesome.

the other exciting news–i’ve been temporarily transitioned to an android team at work. for like a month and a half-ish. which is really exciting on one hand, and weird on the other. i’ve been so nervous this week getting ramped up, because 99% of the coding i’ve done has been alone. i don’t want to let anyone down. i am absolutely flattered that i was asked to be on this project, and i am also absolutely terrified of screwing up. the upside is i’m only coding with a couple other guys. the rest of the team is doing the iOS portion, which makes it a little less daunting.

either way, i’m sitting on the other side of the building with a new team, new work, new desk, and it’s weird. it’s like that awkward period after a break-up when you don’t know what to do with yourself. i don’t have to go to my regular stand-up meeting in the morning, which has me all thrown off. i turn left when i walk into work instead of to the right. my backpack now has 2 laptops in it every day instead of 1 (oh, my gosh. so heavy!). not to mention, i don’t know all of my new teammates that well. a few of them i only knew online until this week, and we’ve worked in the same building for months.

i don’t think some people realize how shy i am, because when i’m in prod ops (my normal team), i’m relaxed. i’m used to being around these people. it’s my home. they know i’m retarded. i love them all to pieces. i can be myself. being incredibly introverted, it helps when you’re comfortable. so it’s gonna take me a little bit to warm up, i think. hopefully it won’t take long. they’re an awesome group of guys. and unbelievably smart.

i feel like i made a lot of progress today, which was just what i needed. i churned out a good bit of code. i’ve never worked with a lot of the stuff involved in this project–it’s a lot of information to take in at once. so contributing what i did today helped a lot to get my mind right, and start settling in. i haven’t done any android since i went into labor. going from being a server monkey to staring at java all day is not something i anticipated happening… ever.

i see this as an extremely valuable learning opportunity. it was unexpected, but i am appreciative that i get to continue to grow this skill set since i don’t get the time to do it at home lately. chances like this don’t come often. not much tops getting paid to learn and get better at what you love doing.

Little by Little

weekend before last, brett and i purchased our living room set and our dining room set.

yesterday, we did a pre-walkthrough of the house (pictures below).

today, we purchased our washer/dryer (sold my “old” washer/dryer to my mom when she moved into her townhouse) and our new fridge, and did a bit of packing.

i got my closet cleaned out (except for my clothes), and finally emptied out the downstairs closet (which was an absolute nightmare, this is a good example). brett and i are getting rid of both of our computer desks and buying a new L-shaped one for the downstairs, so we cleaned out our desks tonight before we get rid of them.

cleaning out my desk meant finally getting rid of my “mean green machine”. the very first computer i ever built back in high school. my first gaming computer, and also my night light for a few years. it had glowing green cathode tubes and fans mounted in it before i maxed out the power supply. it was this site’s first web server for a while before i converted to godaddy. my buddy grainger and i built it together, and i remember being so excited to finally have an awesome (well, back then it was awesome) computer to bring to all our LAN parties.

yes, it still has a floppy drive. i haven’t used this thing in… many years. but up until now i couldn’t bear to part with it. i was really sad to see it go this evening. caylin and i waved byebye to it when brett took it down to the garbage.

brett also sold his very first self-built computer last week. he claims he didn’t use it enough. i helped him build it after he ordered all the parts about a year ago. i MADE him take a picture of it for nostalgic purposes. i want him to remember building it with his preggo wife, a billion pieces strewn about on our living room floor, sweating while trying to get his ungodly large graphics card seated correctly. it’s all about the memories.

it’s sick how much i attach myself to things like this. i still have the wrapper from a saralee cheesecake i ate at my very first boy/girl party in the 7th grade at my first boyfriend’s house. it’s in a shoebox with about 900 other little memories. i’ve since filled up 3 more shoeboxes, and will continue to do so until the day i die. and then caylin, if she’s like her daddy, will be going through my crap like, “why on earth did she save this? this is garbage.” and if she’s anything like me, she will totally get it. and she’ll probably have a shoebox or 3 of her own in her closet.

as promised, pictures of the house. since the last time we went, we have a painted accent wall downstairs, and some landscaping done. carpeting, lights, mirrors, etc. it’s so close!

side note: i suck at taking pictures of our new house. jesus, these are terrible.

anyway, tomorrow we have our walkthrough with the builder. we made a list of things to fix when we went saturday, so hopefully we will get this wrapped up soon! one of the things on that list is to paint the upstairs balcony door black to match the downstairs. i don’t know how or why that got left out to begin with, but i’ve been bugging them for weeks to get it fixed. if i’ve learned anything, it’s that building a house is frustrating. i’m ready for this process to be over.