a gazillion boxes

well, it's done. we're officially moved in to the new place, we're officially moved out of the old place. everything went reasonably well, although we think the movers probably want to kill us. us and our gazillion bajillion boxes. so, all that's left now is the unpacking. i finished about 75% of the kitchen already, so that's going well. next up is abby's room, getting all the toys and books unpacked. we love love LOVE our new place...the layout, the light, the location, EVERYTHING. it's the awesome.

happy new year to all...tonight is the anniversary of brian and i meeting, eight long years ago. drink some champagne for me, since i can't have any. :)

see you next year!

well, saturday's the big day. however, our phone, internet, and tv are all being disconnected at some point tomorrow. phone will be hooked up at the new place on saturday, dish network installed saturday afternoon, and internet hooked up on monday. i'll tell ya, this moving during the holidays is for the birds. charter's been after us the past 2 days trying to get us to come back to them...not going to happen. stupid charter. next time they call, i might try to see what i could get them to agree to to get us to come back...free dvr? upgrade the tv package for free? increase modem speed for free? hard to tell.

so, christmas. we left here around 9:15 on monday night. why so late? well, church got done around 8:10, and despite my good intentions, i didn't get out of there till about 8:20, which got me home around 8:45. then ian needed to eat, and packing needed to be finalized, and then ian spit up everything he had eaten. so, we got on the road and it was a pretty good drive up. got there a bit after 11pm, and abby went straight to bed, of course. ian's christmas present to us was his longest stretch of sleep yet...6 whole consecutive hours! best christmas present ever. :) things we forgot to pack: the pack and play, and all of brian's clothes. christmas morning came. abby still had no voice, but was feeling significantly better. we opened presents with my parents, and around mid-morning, i started feeling very achy and had the chills. as anyone who knows me knows, i never get cold. so when i started complaining that it was freezing in the house, i realized i might actually have a fever. and sure enough, 99 degrees. which for me, whose body temp is usually in the low 97's, is a pretty good fever. so i took some tylenol, and felt much better. weird. even though it went away relatively quickly, it still put a damper on my christmas spirit. we had lunch (ham, cranberry sauce, salad, cheesy potatoes, escargots, cookies/treats), and then headed over to menasha. everyone got there around 4:30 and we ate supper (salisbury steak, mac and cheese, cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, rolls, corn) and then opened presents. abby and james and hayden ran around like crazy, so it was all pretty chaotic. after presents, we loaded up and headed back home around 7. so, it was a good christmas, despite the sickies that have invaded our family. brian went to the doctor yesterday and probably has bronchitis, so he's on antibiotics now, and abby just finished her course of antibiotics and will probably be done with the steroids tomorrow.

the packing has been proceeding relatively well, considering. wish us luck on our last day living here tomorrow, and with the big move on saturday. i'm so grateful we're not moving ourselves, but the packing is stressful enough. christmas pictures to come, once we're settled in.

the christmas from hell

so apparently we have angered the universe. karma has it in for us, big-time. having to move in the midst of the holidays and the dead of winter apparently wasn't enough.

we were supposed to go up to appleton yesterday for the christmas festivities, but the weather didn't cooperate. ice, snow, blowing snow...all conspired to make it almost impossible to travel. it ended up working out better that way, though. abby woke up yesterday morning losing her voice, but was acting fine so i didn't think much of it. we went to church and came home, and all of a sudden she started wheezing and crying and coughing like crazy. she didn't want any lunch, which is definitely not like her. so, we put her down for rest time and she FELL ASLEEP. first nap in like a year, i think. then she woke up and promptly threw up a bunch of phlegm, and was really struggling to breathe. so, i got her dressed and took her to urgent care while brian stayed home with ian. got to urgent care and the receptionist was so freaked out by her breathing that she called the nurse to come get her right away, which was awesome. so, they gave her a nebulizer treatment and some other medicine, and she wasn't getting better enough, so the doctor decided to call the AMBULANCE to take her to the ER. the good part was that she was better enough by that time to kind of enjoy the ambulance ride. :) so, we stayed in the ER for a couple of hours, they did a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia, and finally decided that she has croup. so, she's on a steroid now for that, and an antibiotic for a possible bronchial infection the doctor saw on the x-ray. she threw up again a couple of times last night, but it was pretty much just from gagging on the 10 pounds of phlegm she has. she's acting much better today, and her breathing sounds better too. still no voice, but definite improvement. and since she's better, i think we'll go up to appleton tonight after the christmas eve service at church and be up there tomorrow.

sigh, so that's what we've been up to. and packing. and more packing. we're going to try to take some stuff over to the new place today too, so that'll be productive, i hope.

happy holidays to all!

One month!

ian is one month old today! it's hard to believe...seems like it's been a lot longer. :) he can now: bear weight on his legs, hold his head up for quite a while, smile like crazy, and even laugh a little bit. the smiling thing? WAY early. normally babies don't have a social smile until 6 weeks old, and he's been doing it since 3 weeks. wonder baby!

in other news, the move is underway. well, i should say the packing is well underway. we get the keys for the new place this coming saturday, and the big move happens the 27th or 29th. so hooray for moving in the winter, between christmas and new year's, and with a month-old baby. yay fun!

this morning was my first day back at work from maternity leave...luckily the christmas pageant was today, so it was a low-pressure day for me to come back. everyone loved ian, of course, and he behaved himself for jenny in the nursery too. so, i'm feeling good about that. abby spent the weekend with grandma and grandpa schultz so that we could get some packing done, and had a great time, of course. she got to play in the snow and decorate christmas cookies.

now begins our last full week of living here.

our daughter the shark

so sharks? they have to keep moving at all times or they'll die. also? abby. she apparently has to keep moving and also making noise at all times, or she will also die. the only exception to this rule is when sesame street is on. then she's not a shark anymore. if it were just moving and talking, i could handle that. but it's not. it's jumping, flailing around, and spouting all sorts of gibberish. it's almost like she's gotten bored with all the english words and has started just making up her own. a typical exchange:

abby: "i have an idea!"
me or brian: "what's your idea?"
abby: "flhignaogmbodn jwodngd BWAH!"
me or brian: "oh."
(repeat a zillion times)

it's exhausting. :)

dane dah-dane dane DANE!

so, hooray! we found an apartment! with less than a month to spare, even. :) my incipient heart attacks and strokes can now back the you-know-what off. we'll be moving to dane, wisconsin. where is dane, you ask? well, i can tell you, but i suggest google maps or mapquest, as i am somewhat directionally challenged and have never actually seen it on a map. my understanding is that it's approximately 5 miles north of waunakee (the only waunakee in the world, btw). the apartment is great, and has basically everything that we wanted: a 2-car attached garage, eat-in kitchen (yay for no more staining the carpet with messy children eating!), washer/dryer in the unit, huge rooms, everything. it's the last house on a dead-end street, so we are literally going to be living almost in a cornfield. ah, dane. it's a pretty "nothing" little town, but it's close enough to madison/surrounding areas that it won't be a problem. we'll be moving between christmas and new year's, which is just about the most inconvenient time possible, but we have no choice. i'm just so excited we found a place and that it fulfills almost all the criteria we had that i can't even control myself. DANE!

in other happy news, ian had his first bottle today. for those of you new to the rogers family sagas or for those who have forgotten, abby was a notorious bottle-refuser. she took exactly one bottle, ever, and that was at 3 weeks old while my parents watched her. after that, nothing. we bought every kind of bottle and nipple known to mankind, and she would just scream and cry. the girl would not eat on thursday nights when i had choir rehearsal. but ian? just sucked those 2 ounces down like he'd been doing it all his life. and it was formula, even, because i'm not pumping this time. impressive, eh? brian's pretty happy that he won't have to go through the thursday night hell again.

DANE!

woo!

on the right side of the page, you'll see a new feature on the rogers family blog. it's a slideshow! i'm still tweaking a few things, but i think it's pretty cool. go google go!

big love

after abby was born and while brian was home on paternity leave, we spent a lot of our waking hours with her sleeping on one of us and watching dvd's. to this day, james bond movies and old dr. who episodes (primarily the theme music) never fail to take me back to those days. getting up at 3 in the morning and geeking out with my husband while snuggling with our ever-so-snuggly newborn. this time around is slightly different...we can't just get up in the middle of the night and sleep in the middle of the day like the baby does. but, we have managed to have some good newborn-snuggling and dvd-watching time regardless. our choice for this time is "big love", the HBO series about polygamists. we're about 5 or 6 episodes into the first season, and we're enjoying it quite a bit. it's interesting for me since i've read "under the banner of heaven", the jon krakauer book about the polygamist offshoots of mormonism, i feel that i have a pretty good understanding of the history and culture of these groups. in other words, it makes me feel smart. :) plus, there are some pretty good lines, such as, "so, i guess you heard...your mom shot my tires out. brand new radials."

brian goes back to work this coming friday. argh.

click here to visit the snapfish album of november pictures...lots of good ones.