Tiny Dancer

Preparing for the move

We only have a couple weeks until we move into our new apartment so our days have been filled with packing boxes, throwing stuff away and lots of cleaning. As much as I hate moving, it's kind of ironic that this will be our 6th move in the 7 years we have been married! One day I look forward to "settling" down and buying nice things to furnish a house where we can live for more than a year... but that won't happen anytime soon. So for now, we are once again packing our boxes and getting ready to embark on a new adventure of living in the city.

My little helper

After he gets bored of cleaning, Jack likes to
climb on chairs/stools and jump on to the bed

Somersaults are fun too

Most recent bad habit

Enjoying the nice weather at the beach

Jack and Anik playing in the lake

Coming this September!

Here is a peek at what's been brewing:

Time to pick up the pace!

We found a renter for our apartment, but they want it May 4th! This is a month and a half sooner than we were prepared for. I would rather move early just to get out of here and into our new place, so we agreed. Now we have about a month to pack, clean and fix everything that is broken.

Going to be a busy month!

Let the traveling commence!

We have a busy 3 months ahead of us. Not only are we moving to another apartment, but we have several trips planned.

First, we are going to Paris for Easter. Luke gets Good Friday and Easter Monday off, so we will head out for a nice, long 4 day weekend

Then, a month later we are going on a 2 week vacation to Greece

And finally, at the end of June we are heading to Portugal with our Portuguese friends.

I am beyond excited to start planning these vacations. After all, it's what we came all the way to Switzerland to do, wasn't it?!

If that isn't enough excitement for the next few months... stay tuned. There's more. But that's for another post.

Countdown begins

Less than 100 days until we stay goodbye to our country apartment and hello to our new city dwellings!

Anyone who has been following my blog from the beginning knows that I never wanted to live in the country. It is much too isolated for me and has made my life very lonely. As soon as we moved in I was counting down the days to move out, and now it's here. We have found another apartment, signed the contract, created an account for them with 2 months rent and set a date. Now we just have to start packing (once again) and get this place cleaned!

Here are some pictures of our new apartment. This is a view from the kitchen looking out at the family room

Family room looking back towards the kitchen

 Main bedroom

Jack's room

That's pretty much it! It is much smaller than anything we've had in a while, but I am so sick of cleaning big places that I can't wait for a small space to take care of.

Here are more things I like:
1. It is all one floor. We have to walk up stairs to get to our apartment, but once we are inside I don't have to worry about stairs!
2. We are the first to live in it since it has been completely refurbished. Everything is new. Even all the appliances. With the apartment we have now it seems everything we touch falls apart. Almost like this place is held together with glue. I can't wait to finally have new things that won't break when we use them.
3. We will live by people again! Our apartment will be in an area with several other apartment buildings so I will have plenty of people around to make friends with (and Jack will have lots of kids to play with). There are at least 5 parks within 5 minutes walk from our place.

And the thing I am looking most forward to:
4. I can walk everywhere! As soon as I can, I am selling my car. Not only is it ridiculously expensive to own a car here (think over $400/month just for auto insurance/car tax/misc. fees) but Jack hates the car and I hate dealing with him in the car. So now we can walk. The grocery store, train station and lake are all within a 5 minute walk. The main part of town is a 10 minute walk. Finally we will be able to be outside more, enjoy the beach more, meet people and hopefully be able to practice my french more.

Blood and pox

Last Thursday night as we were trying to wind Jack down for bed he was doing sommersaults on the bed (as usual). At one point he ended falling off the bed backwards on to the floor. He's done this several times before so Luke and I didn't think much of it. Until we heard him scream. At that point Luke jumped off the bed and grabbed Jack and said "theres blood"

I hate those words. I jumped up in time to see the back of Jack's head gushing blood. We ran to the bathroom and grabbed a towel to put pressure on his head. The blood soaked through the towel. At one point I was able to sneak a peak at the cut which thankfully wasn't big. It was only about half an inch but it kept bleeding and bleeding. We shaved part of his head and attempted to butterfly the cut. Finally the bleeding slowed and Jack returned to his active self. By that time it was past 9:00pm so I got him to sleep and spent the next hour holding pressure against his cut to help stop the bleeding completely.

The next day everything was back to normal. Except for the ugly bald spot/cut on the back of his head.

The day after that, Jack got the chicken pox. As it was Saturday we had to make and ER run since I recently found out I am not immune (even though I had them as a child). On Sunday, Luke made his ER run since he is not immune either.

Meanwhile Jack dealt with his chicken pox like a champ!

Then the 2nd day was much worse. Lots of bumps popped up and everything began to itch. We gave him oatmeal baths and lotion to soothe the itching but that night he couldn't sleep. He woke up every 20 minutes crying that something was itching. I spent all night awake with him trying to gently rub all the itchy spots.

The 3rd day I went back to the pharmacy to get medication to help Jack. They gave him some anti-itch medication as well as some stronger anti-itch cream.

The 4th day was worse pox wise, but Jack seemed to have less itching.

Finally, by Thursday Jack was back to his normal self (attitude wise). He was happy and full of energy again. Even though he still looks terrible! I feel so bad for the little guy, I can't wait until all these darn pox are gone!
(if you look close enough, you can see he even got pox on his tongue...what a terrible disease!)