Brenden and Ian doing their homework

Not to worry, Brenden is just pretending in that picture. He is NOT one of those poor babies forced to watch those Your Baby Can Read videos all day. Those commercials are creepy, if you ask me. Driving your kids too hard starts really early these days.

Things are going well. I have been at my new job for 2 1/2 weeks. I'm still figuring things out but so far I like it. I have my own nice office and the commute is so short I can come home for lunch. One thing that's a bit rough is working at the jobsite. I stay in the construction trailer doing paperwork, but I was shocked to discover there's no bathroom! We have to use a porta potty used by mostly men. Yes, it's just as disgusting as you might imagine. After my first day at the site I learned that my morning cup of coffee is not worth it. I only have to go to the jobsite one or two mornings a week, so it's not too bad. It's over an hour away, and at first I was bummed about the drive, but now I like it. A whole hour to myself!

Adam's schedule at his new job is a bit difficult. He works a lot of evenings and weekends, and I have a hard time managing dinner and dishes and bathtime on my own. Brenden is usually really fussy in the evenings. He wants to be held the whole time, which is impossible of course. He's had several major meltdowns complete with ear-splitting screams and theatrical beating of his head against the floor.

But weekends are great. It's still hard but Brenden is in a much better mood when we spend the whole day together. Last weekend he napped an hour in his crib and an hour on the couch with me. It was so nice to just lie down and watch a movie and fall asleep!

Overall I feel more settled than I have in a year. It was about this time last year that I started feeling like Seattle wasn't working for us, and since then we've been through a lot of upheaval. I cannot believe how much work this move has been. Planning, packing, moving, job hunting, buying a house, buying a car, finding a daycare, and a mountain of other things to be taken care of. Now that Brenden has been sleeping well for about a month, I have FINALLY caught up and don't feel like I'm drowning. Now we get to think about fun stuff like decorating the house. We have a huge finished basement that we hardly use, so in the next couple of weeks we're going to set up a den/play area for Brenden during the winter months.

We have some other minor things to update. Thank goodness this house is in awesome shape because we're hopeless when it comes to home maintenance. Our ice maker just stopped working and I have no idea how to fix it. I guess I'll start by googling it...