Oh goodness it's been a while since I've posted. We've been so busy moving and getting ready for Christmas that time has flown by. The quickest recap of December that I can manage: We started off the month moving apartments - what an adventure! As soon as we got moved in we started decorating for Christmas - my favorite time of year! I'm becoming the size of a small car - one that is increasingly difficult to maneuver! First trimester nausea is long gone, but just as I was learning to enjoy second trimester return of energy and appetite, a whole host of new "symptoms" has surfaced - one of them sending me to the E.R. (don't worry, Isabella and I were completely fine)! Because there was so much going on, I'll be spliting up this update into a few different posts.
Moving to a bigger place was in the plans from the moment we found out we were pregnant, but it was supposed to happen in January when our lease was up. After looking on Craigslist out of curiosity, we found a newly renovated, two bedroom apartment in a secured building more or less in our price range - and after looking at it we knew that even though it was early, we had to apply. A week after contacting the property manager to take a look, we had a new lease! Life in general is moving so quickly for us. Luckily, our landlord at the old place was ultra supportive and happy for us, and since we found him a tenant to take over the unit, Alex didn't lose any of his deposit for terminating early. Moving is stressful to begin with - add to it that one person in the equation is fairly useless when it comes to reaching the top shelves to pack, lifting boxes and furniture, and getting into tight spaces to deep clean, and the stress multiplies. Alex was wonderful - I would come home from work and find several new boxes packed each day. This in itself caused a bit of an emotional struggle for me - I was happy that he was being so considerate and trying to leave nothing for me to do (i.e. worry about), but I already felt like I was contributing so little, so packing the little things was all I had left to bolster my sense of usefulness. That, and I'd go to use something of ours (spatula, book, oh maybe the T.V.) and find it packed. The last several nights in our old apartment were certainly boring. Alex was a saint, dealing with my crabbiness.
The move itself was pretty quick. Poor Orange was completely freaked out. The first several nights, he would walk around the new apartment in the dark, meowing to the walls. "Where am I?" he seemed to be lamenting, "When are we going home?" It didn't help that the weather was a little stormy and a lot cold, and his little paws weren't used to cold tile. We also didn't have a rug for the living room yet, and his old hiding places (closet, under the bed) were also cold and tiled. Like a mommy worries about her babies, I worried about my little kitten and thought, "Oh I've made him so unhappy - AGAIN!" (This is his third move in two years.) But once we got the rug for the living room, he seemed to find pleasure in looking out our giant sliding doors onto the lanai, or curling up on the back of the much-fluffier new (used) couch we bought. He has returned to the habit he developed at my old apartment of hiding or sleeping in our bed under the covers when we're not home. Weirdo. But he's happy now, so that's good.
It was surprisingly hard for Alex and I to say goodbye to the old place. I cried - I had the excuse of hormones. But I think a part of Alex wanted to cry too as we drove away for the last time - Orange's crazy sad meows from his hated carrying cage vocalized I think part of what we were both feeling. That apartment was the first that Alex had all by himself; prior to that he'd always had roommates. We found that apartment for him right at the beginning of our relationship, as we were learning about each other, the way each other lived in the most private moments of daily life. We had our first huge, relationship-changing argument there. It was the first place we lived together (and learned even more about intimate details of daily life). That was where we began our journey, basically, of learning how to work not only as a couple but as a true team. A lot of firsts in that apartment.
Of course, we're totally excited about the future and the direction we're going, and all that the new place represents for us. We almost doubled our living space, and this apartment isn't so big for us that it's absurd, but it's big enough that we can stay here for years as Isabella grows - we won't be moving again in another year saying, "God, we are bursting at the seams here!" Everyone who came to our old place and also came here (well, just my Mom, Nick, and three of my closest friends) say this place feels much more like a home. Alex and I agree. It already looks like a family lives here. (I told him, if it was that hard to leave the first apartment, it's going to be even more difficult to leave this one - imagine all the "firsts" that we'll have here! I said, I don't want to move again until we are buying our "forever house." Dream big...)
We're proud of our new place and we both know that as a family, we'll be really happy here.
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