New place

I thought I might provide a few thoughts on the move, the near-toddlers, whatnot.

The move was fine, mostly. K's mom, dad and brother Mike helped us empty out the old place and load up the 24' truck. Got help unloading from Dan and Josh on this end. Appreciate your help, everyone. Next time we'll have movers--your moving responsibilities are concluded. Particularly, Mike helped load, drove with K and the girls (with abundant patience, it sounded like), taught them their tongues and to slap their bellies (very nice), as well as helped unload. Above and beyond the call of duty to family.

An aside: at my brother's wedding this past weekend they had a last-minute need for a ring-bearer and my uncle had to play the 'duty to family' card with substantial vigor to get his 6 year old to agree to do it (since he had declined the first time he was asked). Getting a look at the tux he would get to wear helped too.

The girls have been a bit unsettled with the house so disorganized. Unfortunately, their resulting clinginess slows the pace at which we can get the place in order. Not a great situation. They are doing better, though. At least they appreciate how low our big living room window (on the left in the first two pictures) is. They can point out each car ('doot'), person (also 'doot') and dog (again, 'doot') that goes by.



And empty box lids are fun.



I've been getting more frustrated recently when the girls won't go to sleep. Kara in particular struggles against the drowsiness of fatigue. K and I were talking during a recent exasperating stretch and it occurred to me that I see a lot of the value that I bring to this whole parenting enterprise in my ability to successfully get them to sleep. When they won't, when I can't get the results we are both hoping for, I feel like a failure. I know they're just going to be difficult sometimes, but that's not much solace given their need for sleep and our need for them to sleep. I guess I just think that since they're getting older and understanding more of what's going on around them, they should be willing to go to sleep when we want them to. This is foolish, I know. In fact, I always had a tough time falling asleep when I was younger, just had too much energy left to expend at the end of the day, I guess. For me, that persisted through middle school even. So this is not going away. I'm working on handling it better.

The girls are pretty funny these days. I'll let K go into their exploits accompanied with pictures. It's fun to watch them turning into little people.