I’ve been really bad about updating what’s been going on- I’m well aware.

So here’s a quick run down  of where I’ve been the last week and a half:

Right before Christmas, this lovely thing was posted in my front yard:

(insert “booooooo”s here).  But allow me to explain the sign real quick- our dream house is NOT for sale, just for rent.  Our realtor has been made clear that any calls she gets about sale she can immediately ignore because we aren’t willing to entertain any.  But since our realtor is only really posting our rental as a favor and it’s not something that she normally lists, she only has “For Sale” signs.  Thus, the sale-but-really-for-sale confusion in our lawn.

My parents ended up coming down to Phoenix for Christmas!  In the 10 years that I’ve lived here in Phoenix, I’ve never actually spent a Christmas here because I’ve always gone home.  This was going to be the first year that I wasn’t coming to Colorado and babies make a great excuse to both: 1) not travel if you don’t want to and 2) get everyone to travel to you.  So we bribed my parents with adorable baby photos such as these:

… and they practically beat down our front door like any proud grandparents would.

So we PACKED our adorable Christmas tree full of presents- mostly for Lucas- and didn’t get out of bed on Christmas Day until about 10am.  I’m guessing that this is going to be both our first and our last Christmas morning that we’re going to be able to sleep in.  We took full advantage.

Angel guessed before Christmas that my gift to him under the tree was a Keurig machine, so when Lucas woke us up at 10, Angel rolls over and says to me: “I was thinking that I should just go open the Keurig so that we can make coffee before we open gifts.”  By this point I was laughing because I was thinking the exact same thing.  This is why we’re perfect for each other.

Naturally, our adorable baby got carried away from the tree with the largest pile of gifts that he neither opened, nor was aware of.  In fact, our little munchkin looked like this most of Christmas:

And yes, he’s wearing Christmas jammies which he was also unaware of.  But I’ll be able to show him these photos and explain it when he’s older.

So overall, we had a lazy, sleepy, first Christmas with our adorable little man and extremely proud grandparents:

So that takes us through Christmas.  My parents had to head home on the 26th, and the Rivas family loaded up and shipped our first car to Michigan:

So while I’m standing in the driveway holding the baby, watching the car get loaded onto the truck, and waiting for the realtor to come show the house, it took just about everything not to start sobbing.  So the car leaves, and I spend the rest of the day packing suitcases because we left to move Angel to Michigan the next day.

Traveling with a newborn?  Easy.  Schlepping all of the crap through the airport?  Oh. My. God.  Tack on a cross country move for Angel and we’re left with 4 big suitcases, 1 carry on suit case, 1 diaper bag, 1 backpack, 1 stroller, 1 stroller bag, 1 car seat, 1 car seat base, 1 tote bag, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some but I think I’m making my point clear.  Crap.  Lots of it.

We were hoping to be able to arrive straight into our 2 bedroom furnished apartment that we’re calling home until March, but that got the red light until January 8th, so we were moving into a teeny tiny hotel room.  With all of our crap.  And a tiny baby.

Side bar: hotel rooms are HORRIBLE with a baby.  Oh Lord, I can’t explain it, you’re just going to have to think back to having your kids in a hotel room if you’re a mom, or imagine trying to throw a formal dinner party for a litter of puppies in your garage and that’s about half of it.  We got 2 nights of 7 hours sleep bliss from Lucas, followed by our first 8 hour night (which is considered “sleeping through the night”) and then we threw him on a plane, packed him into a freezing hotel room, and by the end of the week I brought him home with the schedule of screaming his head  off every 2-3 hours.  All day, all night, doesn’t matter.  SCREAMING.  In public, in the car, in the hotel room, in a crib, laying on mommy, cuddling with daddy, he did not like it here or there, he did not like it anywhere.  He does not like green eggs and ham, he does not like them Sam I Am.  So declaring victory and then being sent back to the starting line has been rough.

But I digress.

So we’re in a hotel.  We go to look at the only 6 houses in a 30 minute radius of Angel’s work that are available to rent and will allow dogs.  6.  I’m moving from a city the size of Phoenix to a 30 minute radius of 6 rental properties.  The first 3 I was trying to keep an open mind while thinking in my head how I was going to live in an apartment for a few years with a baby and stroller and dog because these houses clearly aren’t going to work unless I plan on cooking meth in the basement as a side job.  We drive to a different town, go to lunch, and then see house number 4:  Winner, winner, chicken dinner.  The house has 4 bedrooms, tile and hardwood, upgraded carpet, a fireplace, a kitchen that I could cook in without having to disinfect with bleach, and A FENCED YARD.  Sounds so mundane, but apparently nobody in the midwest fences their yards.  They like their neighbors, I like my privacy (and my dog not to run away when I let her out to the bathroom).  So we jumped immediately.  And then we learned why the house was so drastically different from everything else we saw: 1) because the town was where families lived in the area, and 2) the owners are moving to Singapore for 3 years with work and then plan on moving back into the house.  The realtor tells us this and our reaction is: “Oooooooohhh, okay now it makes sense.”  Anyway, we apply and get the house.  We’ll be moving in February 11th.  I would show you a picture of the adorable place, but I think I was in a state of shock at finding a house that I could live in that I totally forgot.  I’ll have Angel take one when he goes back to Michigan tomorrow.

So we have a house, we’re struggling with a  baby in a hotel, we’re freezing our Arizona butts off:

We peace out of Michigan, drive the 2 hours to Chicago, and spend New Years with the Gerstner Family who spit out their first kid and moved home to Chicago 9 months ago.  There are multiple babies, we swap war stories, we cook, we drink, and we’re all yawning on the couch by 11pm on New Years Eve.

Enter: the reason why we’re doing all of this.  Angel starts his new job.  It sounds like he’s really going to like it, but more importantly I now get all of the Kashi cereal that I refuse to buy because it’s too expensive.

It’s time for the baby and I to come home and Angel to come with so I can schlep all of this crap back:

Lucas earns his wings when the flight attendants are all just eating him up and he’s being his adorable self and looking around while trying to eat his teeny tiny hand.  So the flight attendant comes back when Lucas falls asleep and gives us his wings that I pinned on his seat belt for the photo:

We land at 6pm and Angel turns around to head back tomorrow at 3.  Sad face.

Lucas started his new routine of evening screaming (thank you, hotel).  So I give him a GIANT bottle, put him in a bath, put him in clean jammies, read him a new Dr. Seuss book, and put him in his crib to scream it out.

5 minutes later he’s half sleeping, half fighting it, 2 minutes after that I’m going to make sure he’s still breathing because he has passed out.  Let’s see how long this will last.

But noteworthy- this is his first night in his crib and his first night spent in his adorable nursery that will be dismantled and moved in about 2 weeks.  Another sad face.

So there you have it.  That’s what I’ve been doing the last week and a half and now that you know, I fully expect you to forgive me for not writing while all of this was going on.