Changes... Keeping Up

It feels like changes are happening by the second here. Mostly with Moira who is in the final countdown to turning 1! I can't believe it was almost a year ago that I was handed this tiny little baby and Bill and I fell totally in love. Now, it's all I can do to not hug her tight to me every chance I get. This past year has gone by way too fast and before I know it my baby will be a bright little girl.

Mo having dinner with Katie, JJ, Aunt Joanie and Adri last week while we were at the wedding

JJ has figured out if he gives Mo his food, she'll eat it!

Mo is now standing on her own and has taken a few steps (baby steps, haha). We are also on day 3/night 3 of the oh so fun re-sleep training. We had Mo going down easy and sleeping through the night all up until she started to stand. Then, when she'd wake herself up at night, instead of rolling over and falling back asleep she'd stand up, see us in bed and start crying. We then got into the bad habit of feeding her at 4am again, just to get her quiet and back to sleep (in our bed). But then she started not going back. And then that became a habit. With a lot of cajoling on my part (it turns out that Bill is the big softie, and also the main victim of these middle of the night wake ups), we researched and agreed that we had to re-train her to sleep. There was no way she was waking up because she was hungry, it was just habit. We were faced with either doing this in increments (dream feeds, gradually giving her less and less milk, etc) or we could just rip off the band aid. We chose the latter, and now are sleeping on the couch. Ever since having a baby and getting through the first few months I've become a deep sleeper, so besides sleeping on a couch, it's not that bad in my opinion. I think Bill is also sucking it up in hopes that this means a payoff in uninterrupted sleep in the near future so he's doing ok too. It's tough, but having dealt with sleeping issues my entire life, I want to do everything I can to help Moira avoid these by training her as best as possible. Crying it out SUCKS for a parent, especially when it's all you can do to not go comfort and hold your baby, but I think it's worth it in the long run.

Mo's first 1st birthday present, from Tata and NanaTricia

And that leads us to the next change. The big one. When this sleeping issue first started it got us both thinking separately that we were outgrowing our apartment a lot faster than we'd expected. It took going to a working Mom's lunch and broaching the subject there for it to all come to light though, since the most realistic consensus there was "move" (the others were less realistic: make the living room our bedroom, make the living room her bedroom and have us retire to the bedroom after she goes to sleep (which at 8pm means we'd be eating, watching tv, hanging out there... no), watch tv with closed captioning, and, my favorite, install a murphy bed). I told Bill half joking and that's when we both started talking out loud about moving sooner than later. This also coincided nicely with me working on the Trulia.com account so hello, research!

We need to give our bathroom a much needed face-lift, and are expecting that to take a couple of weeks. And we live in a co-op building so it's not as easy as just waiting for the offers to flow in, it would require those people to meet with the board, etc. And we live in a primarily orthodox Jewish run building, so that means we'll need to be cognizant of all the Jewish holiday's coming up in terms of timing. And then we'd need to find the perfect new home and get to a good place with an offer there. In short, we aren't moving in a month, or even 2 or 3. But the wheels are in motion, and it's both exciting and scary. We're looking in the Westchester area, where Bill is from. I'm becoming more familiar with the towns, the rail lines, what we can afford and I wasn't kidding when I mentioned earlier that we want a house with a pool.

And that leads me to the next change... the work one. This one I'm not really in a good place to talk about yet but it's HUGE in terms of potential and would fit in so nicely with where we'd be living. The HR director actually approached me about it and I've spoken about it with my bosses boss. Provided all the details work out, it could be very positive.

More pics of Mo in the pool at school. Coming up, pics of Mo drinking from her sippy at school and July's theme: Luau Day

After all that, everything else is small potatoes. I'm trying to get to a workout class once, if not twice a week (my work is now offering yoga on Monday evenings for free, plus my core class and/or spin with Amena) and make our building gym a once a week affair. Exercise has always been so great for me in terms of keeping my stress and anxiety down so especially now I need to make that a priority. Mo starts at her new bilingual school in the 12-18 room on Sept 2nd and we go in for a parent-teacher meeting with her on Aug 29th. I'm really excited, it's not only a great place for Moira, but it'll make our commute light-years better and easier. It's still sad to leave her current place where we've just loved her teachers, the structure, the director, everything, but with life, comes change.

And since I've added all these after work activities, I'm trying to get Bill more involved in the kitchen. I've had him already sign on to do a healthy dinner one night a week, but I'm going to give him some mini lessons too to get him more comfortable and take some pressure off me every night. I'm also in full planning mode for the birthday party. I've gone totally overboard but, as one of my friends told me when she celebrated her daughter's 1st birthday, it's more a party for us so make it fun. This could also be our last hurrah in our apartment, in Manhattan, in New York City, so I do want to make it count. And it's going to be a total blast!

Our wedding selfie

Upcoming:

• Tomorrow is Dan and Joy's twin's 2nd birthday, at their ridiculously amazing house. If we don't have a house with a pool our next step would be to move as close to them as possible, (not totally kidding).
• Sunday playdate with Aviva and Amaya at their playground.
• Monday we're both off so we're heading to Governor's Island for the day.
• We head to the cape for our mini-getaway sans Mango this Friday!
• After that... birthday!!!! A Southern Belle Shindig (or BBQ- I can't make up my mind)