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altarflameLet's just say our last day of travel, and first day or two in Boston, were WAY more stressful than the first few days of travel were...It started with the traffic being backed up to nearly stopped for a whole hour north and south of Manhatten, on I-95. Then there is the fact that we didn't anticipate the tolls in that area being $6 each (yes, a few). Or gas at $3 a gallon.
Then there is Boston. It's IMPOSSIBLE to navigate this city!!! The streets all have names (no numbers), pretty much all of them are curving and twisting - generally a given intersection has in between 3 and 6 different possible turns. It's INSANE. And the hills, and the fact that for some reason the street you're ON isn't listed (only the cross street, no double stacked street signs showing both) and the street you're on is liable to turn into another street with no notice whatsoever. Finding our way around everywhere else we've been has been fine - this is insane. We're lost all. the. time. Grant has GPS and google maps on his phone, and we can't even follow the directions it gives us; they all involve alternate street names that the signs don't even say, or "left" but not whether that means the slight or sharp left, and all sorts of other things like that. For anyone who doesn't know how the other half lives, in Florida we have a flat grid system of sequential numbers, 4 possible directions per intersection, and both street numbers displayed on each corner. Sheesh. We seriously get lost going to the grocery store we've visited 3 times already, and can pick a place to go that's two miles away and spend TWO HOURS trying to find our way back. Nancy told me yesterday that she still gets lost regularly, and she's lived here for 10 years. ARGH.
The apartment -
Good: It's bigger than I expected, in a nice enough neighborhood. Very clean. The bed is comfortable. There are features I didn't expect, like a great massaging showerhead, On Demand cable system, and a very effective dishwasher and garbage disposal.
Neutral: We're adjusting to things we knew to expect, but still have to get used to, like going downstairs and across a parking lot to take out the trash, paying to do laundry on a different floor than we are on in tiny washing machines that hold less than half what ours at home does, and parking 2 blocks from the doors of the building (in 39 degree rain. With all the kids. And everytime you need to go get something else out of the van...).
Bad: NOT KID FRIENDLY. Oh, my gosh, it's EASIER to go be lost all day than it is to be here with them. Way easier. I don't even know where to start...the main thing, I guess, is that I just didn't remember how noise is in apartment living. Or else I'm used to concrete buildings with thick walls, built to withstand hurricanes? Because I lived in apartments a lot, in South Florida, and none of us ever had to tiptoe around or talk softly to be considerate. It was more like, "Don't BLARE your music full on unless it's Saturday afternoon, and no hammering in nails after midnight". Either way, every step every one of us takes ECHOES and booms. The walls are so thin that I can hear them halfway down this floor in the main hallway when I'm walking towards our front door - just talking, asking for things, playing, not even counting Isaac's screaming fits, that come several times a day and into the night. I've already been talked to by TWO different neighbors, both of which had really annoying things to say to me about parenting that were irrelevant to the noise (you can't take them out in this weather, you need to be careful with them on these stairs, they should be in bed by now, etc). We're on the corner, at least, thank God. Still. I was informed tonight that the building has a 10 pm noise limit? By someone else who wants to know who we are or when we moved in, because they "haven't ever seen us here before". Geez. I don't know how to keep an 18 month old from running around making noise on the floor. I can barely sort of almost keep a 3 year old from doing any running, hurrying or stomping. Aaron's going nuts trying not to jump, stomp or bang. I really don't know how any of you deal with this apartment stuff, with little kids. Unless this really is a flimsy building (without carpeting, even).
And, call me crazy, but I assumed several small children moving in for a month would mean the landlords would NOT do things like leave shoe boxes of their bills, glass ash trays and framed pictures, and toxic chemicals at floor level? I also didn't expect so many freestanding top heavy floor lamps or hinged glass doors with expensive items inside. I didn't expect "furnished" to mean someone else's contact lenses would be in the medicine cabinet and their tampons and underwear filling the dresser drawers and the window sills full of their stuffed animals. There is this huge walk in closet in our room...with her entire wardrobe and shoe collection stuffing it O_o Maybe I'm weird or paranoid, but I would feel so VULNERABLE leaving all my stuff in an apartment a family of strangers was going to be staying in for a month. There's a piggy bank full of change and what looks like a Master's Degree's worth of college textbooks and a full collection of fridge magnets...and some expired eggs and frozen meat and so on.
Also the floor is some kind of cool looking and feeling criss cross pattern of wood pieces...that Jake can dissassemble. Seriously, everytime we turn around there's a bare patch of concrete showing and he's running with double handfulls of what look like Jenga pieces. *sigh*
We're making the best of it. We went and bought some plastic, portable stacking drawers for the kids' room (which was big enough, and had nothing but a futon and night stand in it) - and an air mattress. And we picked out some fabrics at Jo-Ann's that we're going to use painter's tape to cover all the hinged glass doors up with (there are 8 in our room, 4 in the living room), and also cover all the look of "you're living in someone else's personal space" that are under them, in the process. It will just be big 5 foot panels of color and pattern. We're finally easing back into eating right, as well - 5 days on the highway got pretty gross, aside from our visit to Dama's house. I made us whole wheat blueberry muffins and scrambled eggs for breakfast, beef stew over brown rice for dinner, and warm cinnamon apple sauce for dessert. All very well received. We still ended up having crappy croissanwhiches from Dunkin Donuts for lunch, though :x I'm also putting the book collection to use - we decided to put Rowan of Rin and Harry Potter on hold for the month and read The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling's real chapter book) and A Children's Garden of Verses, while we're here and they're available.
What kills me is I haven't heard sound one from any other tenant in this place. I mean, nothing. In my room or the bathroom with the door closed, I hear EVERY LITTLE THING from the rest of the apartment. From down the hall, I hear our apartment. The one neighbor said we sounded like "a herd of elephants". But it's like we're tiptoeing through a mausoleum or something - I wonder if everyone else here keeps 3 pairs of socks on and a thick layer of wall to wall carpet, and whispers at all times. I definitely haven't seen any other kids.
And come to think of it, I've very rarely seen other kids out and about around town, either. In the grocery store or BJ's, even, which is where you would generally see kids. When I do, I see one kid with 1-2 adults. What the heck, man? I'm used to always seeing at least one other mom with 3 kids and a few with 2, whenever I make a big food run. People here aren't even asking when I'm due and acting congratulatory, it's just this pursed lip thing like they have to look away before they sneer. #$*@&#!!
Anyway. It's harder than I expected in many ways, especially after the highway and hotels and a friends' house were all such a breeze that G and I were both like, "We should travel all the time!"
Highlights -
-Driving through a parking lot I saw what I assumed was a big pile of some kind of foam insulation or something, filthy by the look of it. "That's snow" said Grant. No it isn't, I replied, but he insisted, so we stopped and he got out and kicked it and ice went everywhere. Cue crazy Floridians all playing and fighting in week old dirty snow that has yet to melt. The kids had a BLAST.
-A wonderful, amazing, anonymous woman from Canada emailed me several times and sent us a couple of things, before we left. RIGHT before we left, we got a package from her loaded with individually wrapped presents for each of us - several apiece. All for the trip. Activity books, art supplies, warm socks, cash for coffee, little car toys - so thoughtful and amazing. Anne, the children are constantly begging to open something else and I'm amazed at the care you put into everything. I keep meaning to email you, but things have been really hectic getting settled in. It will happen, though.
-We meet with Nancy tomorrow. She's thrilled that we're here.
-And I briefly talked to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
julierocket on the phone today.
-Grant is working so hard. He's been hauling and doing all the laundry, all the packing and unpacking of heavy things, all the running things up to the apartment and down to the van/trash. And still doing half of Jake/Isaac duty. He took A and A out on a hike in the nature reserve early this evening and the two of them came back thrilled and full of stories. It kind of blows my mind that we can somehow still love each other in the midst of everything else going on.
I feel alright, physically. My braxton hicks are still just 6-10 a day, but they're definitely stronger now than they have been before. I also suddenly have to get up to pee at least TWICE every night. I'm a bit dissapointed with myself for starting to get impatient already, when I'm not even "due", which should be my starting point for thinking of labor, until Sunday. But now that we're here and I'm so uncomfortable all the time and my circulation and hips are making me nuts and I can't keep my belly all the way covered in the cold...Blah. I compose myself by looking around at the still-disheveledness and thinking how much better it would be if nothing happened until I can get everything in order and we can be back in some kind of routine. I felt very sad and almost hopeless yesterday, just so depressed, because it was just all we could do to spread ourselves so thin to really be there individually for the kids we already have, and we were stretched sooooo far, that I just felt like the last thing I need right now is another baby :/ I know it's the circumstances - I did NOT feel like that at home, and today is better than yesterday. Still and all, 39+ weeks pregnant is not the tme for that to be what's going through your head. It would be a good thing to get things to a manageable enough point that we could actually fully appreciate this new soul before she's on the outside. I guess it's just being pregnant I'm tired of, really, since I'm at this very late stage and have been pregnant so much in the past few years. I'm ready to sleep on my stomach, be able to fit in a towel and not wonder if everything bothering me is just hormones, again. It would be nice to roll over in the night without the pain waking me.
Ok, since everyone else is asleep, I'm going to go and start editing and saving pictures. I'll get them up as soon as I can, but I can't promise any specific time. Maybe I'll do them in several posts because, really, there are just too many of them.
Then there is Boston. It's IMPOSSIBLE to navigate this city!!! The streets all have names (no numbers), pretty much all of them are curving and twisting - generally a given intersection has in between 3 and 6 different possible turns. It's INSANE. And the hills, and the fact that for some reason the street you're ON isn't listed (only the cross street, no double stacked street signs showing both) and the street you're on is liable to turn into another street with no notice whatsoever. Finding our way around everywhere else we've been has been fine - this is insane. We're lost all. the. time. Grant has GPS and google maps on his phone, and we can't even follow the directions it gives us; they all involve alternate street names that the signs don't even say, or "left" but not whether that means the slight or sharp left, and all sorts of other things like that. For anyone who doesn't know how the other half lives, in Florida we have a flat grid system of sequential numbers, 4 possible directions per intersection, and both street numbers displayed on each corner. Sheesh. We seriously get lost going to the grocery store we've visited 3 times already, and can pick a place to go that's two miles away and spend TWO HOURS trying to find our way back. Nancy told me yesterday that she still gets lost regularly, and she's lived here for 10 years. ARGH.
The apartment -
Good: It's bigger than I expected, in a nice enough neighborhood. Very clean. The bed is comfortable. There are features I didn't expect, like a great massaging showerhead, On Demand cable system, and a very effective dishwasher and garbage disposal.
Neutral: We're adjusting to things we knew to expect, but still have to get used to, like going downstairs and across a parking lot to take out the trash, paying to do laundry on a different floor than we are on in tiny washing machines that hold less than half what ours at home does, and parking 2 blocks from the doors of the building (in 39 degree rain. With all the kids. And everytime you need to go get something else out of the van...).
Bad: NOT KID FRIENDLY. Oh, my gosh, it's EASIER to go be lost all day than it is to be here with them. Way easier. I don't even know where to start...the main thing, I guess, is that I just didn't remember how noise is in apartment living. Or else I'm used to concrete buildings with thick walls, built to withstand hurricanes? Because I lived in apartments a lot, in South Florida, and none of us ever had to tiptoe around or talk softly to be considerate. It was more like, "Don't BLARE your music full on unless it's Saturday afternoon, and no hammering in nails after midnight". Either way, every step every one of us takes ECHOES and booms. The walls are so thin that I can hear them halfway down this floor in the main hallway when I'm walking towards our front door - just talking, asking for things, playing, not even counting Isaac's screaming fits, that come several times a day and into the night. I've already been talked to by TWO different neighbors, both of which had really annoying things to say to me about parenting that were irrelevant to the noise (you can't take them out in this weather, you need to be careful with them on these stairs, they should be in bed by now, etc). We're on the corner, at least, thank God. Still. I was informed tonight that the building has a 10 pm noise limit? By someone else who wants to know who we are or when we moved in, because they "haven't ever seen us here before". Geez. I don't know how to keep an 18 month old from running around making noise on the floor. I can barely sort of almost keep a 3 year old from doing any running, hurrying or stomping. Aaron's going nuts trying not to jump, stomp or bang. I really don't know how any of you deal with this apartment stuff, with little kids. Unless this really is a flimsy building (without carpeting, even).
And, call me crazy, but I assumed several small children moving in for a month would mean the landlords would NOT do things like leave shoe boxes of their bills, glass ash trays and framed pictures, and toxic chemicals at floor level? I also didn't expect so many freestanding top heavy floor lamps or hinged glass doors with expensive items inside. I didn't expect "furnished" to mean someone else's contact lenses would be in the medicine cabinet and their tampons and underwear filling the dresser drawers and the window sills full of their stuffed animals. There is this huge walk in closet in our room...with her entire wardrobe and shoe collection stuffing it O_o Maybe I'm weird or paranoid, but I would feel so VULNERABLE leaving all my stuff in an apartment a family of strangers was going to be staying in for a month. There's a piggy bank full of change and what looks like a Master's Degree's worth of college textbooks and a full collection of fridge magnets...and some expired eggs and frozen meat and so on.
Also the floor is some kind of cool looking and feeling criss cross pattern of wood pieces...that Jake can dissassemble. Seriously, everytime we turn around there's a bare patch of concrete showing and he's running with double handfulls of what look like Jenga pieces. *sigh*
We're making the best of it. We went and bought some plastic, portable stacking drawers for the kids' room (which was big enough, and had nothing but a futon and night stand in it) - and an air mattress. And we picked out some fabrics at Jo-Ann's that we're going to use painter's tape to cover all the hinged glass doors up with (there are 8 in our room, 4 in the living room), and also cover all the look of "you're living in someone else's personal space" that are under them, in the process. It will just be big 5 foot panels of color and pattern. We're finally easing back into eating right, as well - 5 days on the highway got pretty gross, aside from our visit to Dama's house. I made us whole wheat blueberry muffins and scrambled eggs for breakfast, beef stew over brown rice for dinner, and warm cinnamon apple sauce for dessert. All very well received. We still ended up having crappy croissanwhiches from Dunkin Donuts for lunch, though :x I'm also putting the book collection to use - we decided to put Rowan of Rin and Harry Potter on hold for the month and read The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling's real chapter book) and A Children's Garden of Verses, while we're here and they're available.
What kills me is I haven't heard sound one from any other tenant in this place. I mean, nothing. In my room or the bathroom with the door closed, I hear EVERY LITTLE THING from the rest of the apartment. From down the hall, I hear our apartment. The one neighbor said we sounded like "a herd of elephants". But it's like we're tiptoeing through a mausoleum or something - I wonder if everyone else here keeps 3 pairs of socks on and a thick layer of wall to wall carpet, and whispers at all times. I definitely haven't seen any other kids.
And come to think of it, I've very rarely seen other kids out and about around town, either. In the grocery store or BJ's, even, which is where you would generally see kids. When I do, I see one kid with 1-2 adults. What the heck, man? I'm used to always seeing at least one other mom with 3 kids and a few with 2, whenever I make a big food run. People here aren't even asking when I'm due and acting congratulatory, it's just this pursed lip thing like they have to look away before they sneer. #$*@&#!!
Anyway. It's harder than I expected in many ways, especially after the highway and hotels and a friends' house were all such a breeze that G and I were both like, "We should travel all the time!"
Highlights -
-Driving through a parking lot I saw what I assumed was a big pile of some kind of foam insulation or something, filthy by the look of it. "That's snow" said Grant. No it isn't, I replied, but he insisted, so we stopped and he got out and kicked it and ice went everywhere. Cue crazy Floridians all playing and fighting in week old dirty snow that has yet to melt. The kids had a BLAST.
-A wonderful, amazing, anonymous woman from Canada emailed me several times and sent us a couple of things, before we left. RIGHT before we left, we got a package from her loaded with individually wrapped presents for each of us - several apiece. All for the trip. Activity books, art supplies, warm socks, cash for coffee, little car toys - so thoughtful and amazing. Anne, the children are constantly begging to open something else and I'm amazed at the care you put into everything. I keep meaning to email you, but things have been really hectic getting settled in. It will happen, though.
-We meet with Nancy tomorrow. She's thrilled that we're here.
-And I briefly talked to
julierocket on the phone today. -Grant is working so hard. He's been hauling and doing all the laundry, all the packing and unpacking of heavy things, all the running things up to the apartment and down to the van/trash. And still doing half of Jake/Isaac duty. He took A and A out on a hike in the nature reserve early this evening and the two of them came back thrilled and full of stories. It kind of blows my mind that we can somehow still love each other in the midst of everything else going on.
I feel alright, physically. My braxton hicks are still just 6-10 a day, but they're definitely stronger now than they have been before. I also suddenly have to get up to pee at least TWICE every night. I'm a bit dissapointed with myself for starting to get impatient already, when I'm not even "due", which should be my starting point for thinking of labor, until Sunday. But now that we're here and I'm so uncomfortable all the time and my circulation and hips are making me nuts and I can't keep my belly all the way covered in the cold...Blah. I compose myself by looking around at the still-disheveledness and thinking how much better it would be if nothing happened until I can get everything in order and we can be back in some kind of routine. I felt very sad and almost hopeless yesterday, just so depressed, because it was just all we could do to spread ourselves so thin to really be there individually for the kids we already have, and we were stretched sooooo far, that I just felt like the last thing I need right now is another baby :/ I know it's the circumstances - I did NOT feel like that at home, and today is better than yesterday. Still and all, 39+ weeks pregnant is not the tme for that to be what's going through your head. It would be a good thing to get things to a manageable enough point that we could actually fully appreciate this new soul before she's on the outside. I guess it's just being pregnant I'm tired of, really, since I'm at this very late stage and have been pregnant so much in the past few years. I'm ready to sleep on my stomach, be able to fit in a towel and not wonder if everything bothering me is just hormones, again. It would be nice to roll over in the night without the pain waking me.
Ok, since everyone else is asleep, I'm going to go and start editing and saving pictures. I'll get them up as soon as I can, but I can't promise any specific time. Maybe I'll do them in several posts because, really, there are just too many of them.
