may/june 2011
well, it's official. we are leaving australia and moving to albuquerque, new mexico at the end of july - as i write this, it is only 3 1/2 weeks away!!! time is definitely speeding up. payton accepted a research scientist position at sandia national laboratory and will be working on, among other things, nuclear waste reposition. nova asked payton today, as he was preparing to leave for work, what number (age) she would be when she could go to work with him. we decided on about 15 or 16, but opted to wait to explain "security clearance" and why there is no "take your child to work day" at sandia. but hey! she'll be able to go to work with me, right?! anyway, before winter's rain and cool temps set in, we enjoyed our last few weeks at 12 sheldon...
nova is teaching canon about hiding places and would shut the two of them in to her wardrobe. canon thought it was a great game until he realized he wasn't allowed to come and go at will - well, at his will.
helping me bring in the clean diapers... babies are so helpful!
nova and canon on the "train". it's so fun to watch the kids play together and see how nova includes canon in her games. i don't think you can see it, but nova actually has a fantastic shiner on her right eye - the result of a meeting between her head and her bed after she dived off the railing and cleared the entire mattress.
a walk around the neighborhood, at the "memories and mateship" fountain (i can't explain it, but that name just cracks me up, it seems so manly and chick-exclusive; i think many of the happy memories for guys in this country involve a pub, drunkeness, and other dudes).
aha, see the two threes there? happy 33rd birthday to me. payton made green chile stew, brian and jessica brought over a sparkling pinot noir and a chocolate torte, we drank fine wine... and somewhere along the way i got food poisoning! so i had to give it all back. to the toilet. so unfair!
canon the climber... what baby isn't happy in a large drawer?!
yummy food!
nova making sure canon has plenty of toys in his crib.
ok, i owe chris and bill an apology, who were here last winter, and to whom i was largely unsympathetic to their perpetual chill. like many other houses in australia, 12 sheldon is cold and uninsulated with 12 foot ceilings that have the very practical feature of vents to the outside. so while the top two feet of the house is probably nice and toasty, us bottom-dwelling humans would never know it. i tell myself it doesn't matter because all the heat is flowing out through the holes in the wall (i.e. vents) anyway. but none of this mattered to me because i was still pregnant. and the truth is, when you're pregnant, you are more akin to a planet - with your own climate, gravitational force and heat-producing capabilities. so bill, chris, i'm sorry! no longer pregnant, i am now sympathetic to the chill. which is why canon has a "turnout rug" (a horsey term) just for eating breakfast at 12 sheldon (what he's wearing in this photo is set of thick, lined, fleece pajamas with a fleece, hooded jumpsuit on top). if the house is cold, the kitchen is arctic and for the health of the children, jumpers and slippers are required attire for breakfast - which is usually oatmeal because its warm.
nova requested this 'do.
post-bath
well, an international move makes for a LOT of activity in a household, and once it was clear who was moving us where and when, we began the exodus of our beloved ikea furniture. nova was incredible during this weeks-long process, actually "helping" to push her wardrobe out of her room - with graham cracker bear snacks in hand and mouth motoring along about moving back to the united states - and load it onto some stranger's trailer. happily waving good-bye, she never looked back. in fact, at 9pm one night, way past her bedtime and facing a change of sleeping venue (i.e. the floor), nova watched her bed and many other household items whisk out the door. mostly she seemed excited to have someone to talk to other than her parents and kept the guys buying our furniture well supplied with three-year-old stream-of-consciousness chatter. nova is an amazing child. she is happy and bubbly and positive (remind me to re-read this part of the blog when she is in high school) and resilient. i think now is beginning the time as a parent when you begin to be in awe of your children, when you think "how awesome, what a cool person" (and then you wonder if you would have been cool enough to be their friend if you were the same age - probably not), and wonder of wonders, you love them MORE! again! it leaves you breathless.
so, with the warmth-retaining things thinned out of 12 sheldon and mornings consolidated to standing over the stove, glaring at the stove-top espresso until it started steaming, nova and i worked through her coloring book (a fantastic and cathartic exercise) during canon's morning nap and slowly collected into the extra bedroom the things we would be shipping back to the US.
neither of the things in this picture got shipped.
nova and i proudly sporting cowgirl boots - we are TOTALLY out of style in aus. but not in new mexico!
nova and canon's bedroom - still pretty comfy but pretty empty. the bear chair became the nursing chair for the last few days...
it's hard to see how bare the house is, but the living room was largely furnished with toys at this point - and the coffee table and rug...? we couldn't pay someone to take them. the poor rug was bought by a fellow down the street and returned 20 minutes later because his wife didn't like it (so he said). i mean, it's not THAT bad!
our lives consolidated to part of a room.
of all the days to wake up a knob, the one when the movers come to pack and ship all your belongings is NOT it. but guess what?! that was MY day to be a knob. so, despite careful planning and consideration on my part, weeks of collecting and separating what goes and what stays, and particular attention to details such as "those roller blades and that book go back to the neighbor" and "the vacuum is just in this room to keep the kids from playing with it", when the movers came, i walked them into what was the guest bedroom and said, "everything in this room." and he even repeated me - "everything?" "yep." in my head, it was obvious that what i meant was everything of ours. not the other things that needed to be returned or removed. and i had this notion that half way through, the guys would come to me and say, here's where we're at, how're we doing? and i would say, fine, fine - not the vacuum, obviously, and oh, those roller blades don't go, here let me return them right now... and it would somehow all be very smooth and i would have some sense of control. not so! something about their frantic pace and and my own frenetic but unfocused energy made for a quick morning where suddenly everything was done, was packed. and going over the list as they loaded the final, huge, bubble-wrapped package, it finally struck me what "everything" meant when the fellow said, "the vacuum is wrapped with the stroller." what?! we just shipped back a vacuum full of a dirty bag with an aussie plug and energy requirements that simply cannot function back home?! (i am so glad sandia is moving us!) and that's when i realized our neighbor's book and rollerblades (residing at our house since the garage sale in the ever misguided hope that someone would buy them - this is a universal hope, isn't it?) were on an international adventure too. so what can you do? store the vacuum with the wine so it has some aussie company? i mean, seriously, i had palpitations that night thinking about what would have happened if canon had accidently crawled into the room. he would have been bubble wrapped and packed in a huge truck. this is one of those thoughts, that, like you're child crossing a street unattended or nearing a cliff with you too far away, makes you grab them and hold them tighter, as if there, in the living room, with their eyes bugging out because you're squeezing too tight, you are saving them from this horrible fate. to think what could have almost happened! sigh. if any of you people know someone who is moving to australia, let me know - i have a vacuum cleaner for them.
for memories' sake... we moved out of empty and clean (thanks to our OTHER neighbor's shop vac) 12 sheldon and across the parade to 8/85 kensington rd, equidistant from everything we already frequented, just in the opposite direction. it's a furnished apartment, complete with dvd player and flat screen, digital tv. this is luxury we have not know for the past two years. and get this - it's warm!!
