jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

I regret that there is no photo here for you.

But you can always come over to our apartment, which has a sliding glass door out onto the porch. Alden has never seen one of those. He likes to booty scoot up to it and smack his palms into the glass. Tonight I walked up and slid the door open. He kept sticking his arms out with his hands flat like a little traffic copy, waving them around, looking for the glass. Then he’d leeeeeeean forward looking for the contact point. And wind up with his nose on the carpet between his knees.

House stuff continues apace. Our inspector says “termites.” Theirs says, “no termites.” Another guy is coming out tomorrow to get a handle on that. A different guy is coming out to give us a quote on putting flashing on the roof, which has never been done. A dead tree must come down and some other errant branches need to be trimmed back. Everything else is minor and we’ll handle it after we move in.

Kitchen:

Okay owners and knowers of babies…

Alden has started to cruise. He’s doing great. But he’s leaving behind a few crucial developmental milestones. It’s weird. He’s not stalling there. He just seems to be skipping them. I don’t mean crawling. He’s clearly not going to crawl. He scoots on his behind. Which I think is the source of one of his problems. Instead of approaching vertical surfaces on his hands and knees, he scoots right up to them. So when he arrives, instead of being in prime pulling up position, he’s sitting with his legs flat on the floor, knees bent, bottoms of his feet pressed together. Can you picture? So when he tries to pull up he’s using only his arm strength because his feet are not flat on the floor. When he gets enough oomph going he pushes up on the sides of his feet and then straightens them out once he’s fully standing. It’s not easy and I’m amazed that he hits it about one third of the time. How do babies normally pull up from the sitting position? I’m trying to help him, but I don’t know SOP.

Same thing for my other question. He can’t sit up from a prone position. At all. He just lays there straining and trying to do a straight sit up. Considering that his head is roughly 90% of his body weight, that is not going to work even once. I try to roll him on his side and get him to push up with one hand, but usually as soon as I get within arms’ length he grabs at me like he’s drowning and hauls himself upright that way. It works, but I’m afraid he’s going to be in college and I’m going to have to go to his dorm every morning to let him grab my arms so he can get up out of bed. How do babies normally get from lying down to sitting? Do they start on their bellies and then push up to knees? This seems most promising to me and he’s adept at flipping from sitting on his knees to getting onto his bottom. But that is quite a few steps, from lying on his back to getting upright on his knees.

In continuing real estate excitement, our house inspection is tomorrow.

This is the living room:

They’re really good decorators.

This morning we checked out the farmers’ market downtown. Once you factor in a trip through the consignment store and three individual visits to the interactive fountain, I would say that we made great time in just about three hours. The end-of-summer tomatoes reassured me that even if I a) can grow some and then b) lose them all to raccoons that c) I can still get my fix. Local, organic, and $3/pound. Victory.

Other than that, we’re having an uneventful Saturday. Or, rather, I am. Damon and Alden are playing a game that I think would be called Cheese of Life! Apple of Death! It involves a lot of Alden eating cheese while Damon discretely eats an apple. Alden generally is of the position that he would like to eat whatever it is that you’re eating. He would, to be more specific, like to eat all of whatever you’re eating. If he can eat it with his fingers, that’s even better. Strangely, the only thing he’ll generally take a pass on is sweets. Your saag paneer, olives, pickles and cheese are not safe. But cake? Nah.

I think we’ll see a lot of Cheese of Life! games for the next few weeks. We’re hanging out in temporary housing, and have been for about two weeks. Most of our stuff is packed up in storage. I can’t cook. All my spices, my knives, my good pots and pans have been replaced with cheapo renter minimal cookware. I can’t tear through books. I don’t have enough to keep me occupied at a high rate. And I can’t go out very much. I don’t have any friends yet.

But you know what’s fun? We signed the contract on our house and now, barring a blow up during the inspection, we’ll live here soon:

I’m getting good-faith estimates from a few lenders. I cannot figure out apples to apples to save my life!

The past week is blurring into history, and I’m sure I’ve already lost a few good stories. But the upshot is that we live in Knoxville now. We’re in a perfectly serviceable temporary apartment and are hard on the hunt for the best restaurants.

I’m having my perfect kind of cozy evening. Alden is sleeping in a play yard a few feet away from me. Damon’s on one couch reading The Watchmen. My mom is on the other reading a novel. I’m at the dining room table with the laptop. No one is more than 15 feet away from me and we each have a bowl of rocky road with marshmallow topping by our sides. Damon wanted Magic Shell but he mistakenly put it in the refrigerator last night. I’ll let you guess what happens then.

I am tired, but not exhausted. I am disoriented, but not lost.

Tonight we told our realtor we want to make an offer on one of the houses that’s been on our short list for a while now. As soon as we are in contract I’ll post photos. We’re doing another walk through tomorrow after I finish work and we’ll write up the official offer then. Yay!

I’m excited to be back in the South. And that’s most relevant to some folks reading here in that we will be in Atlanta the weekend of Nov. 7. Shall we?