Progress.

We are making it... just enough to keep me from blowing up but not quite enough to have me feeling settled and confident in this upcoming move.  I know we'll get everything done, we don't have a choice, but it feels like there is not enough time to accomplish it all.  I'm choosing tonight though, to focus on the fact that we have, in fact, made some progress.  You wouldn't know it by looking in our house (hence my uneasy nerves) but we had to spend time going through all of the half-packed boxes in the garage that were spewing their random contents all over the space first.  ALL over it. Since we just moved across town last October, we didn't think we needed to pack carefully but that decision seems to have come to take a big ole' bite of our butts.  The plus side... and there is one... is that we've been able to purge a lot while sifting through each box and that makes me incredibly happy.  I am growing to hate the clutter.  A trait from my Mother that I never saw in myself growing up.  High school Victoria thrived in knee-deep clutter, but with each passing day I hate it more and more.  I keep telling Eric over and over (and am probably driving him insane by doing so) that if we don't absolutely and truly love something and know for fact that we will need to use it, then just get rid of it before we look at it long enough to want it.  Since we only half way unpacked when we moved into this house, there is so much stuff out there that is just that: stuff.  Things that have absolutely no meaning to us or purpose in our day to day life.  If I ponder over each thing long enough I can think of plenty of reasons why maybe we should keep it a while longer, but I know that since it hasn't been touched in over half a year and we had forgotten all about it, we no longer need it. So out it goes. When we move to the new house in Iowa we will be without a lot of things that we'd like to have.  But we can get by simply and it feels good to know that from here on out the things we acquire will be things that we love.  We are really ready to make this next place one that feels like home and reflects us. Waiting to complete that process will be frustrating, but I'm looking forward to it.

Packing is being put on hold now for a few days, as we are half way through our week with Eric in the middle of nowhere living alongside the grizzlies. He's working outside a small village, while we hold down the fort here.  Henry has been battling his molars, so keeping him content is my focus.  And, packing is much easier with two people, so I'm anxious for E to get back so we can keep going together!  Actually, even packing + entertaining baby-tot with two of us has proven to be difficult, and has resulted in more Baby Einstein than I'd like to admit.  Oh well.  So it goes sometimes.  At least we are all getting very good at our animal sounds as a result, since Henry is nuts for the Old McDonald episode only. As far as these molars go, we hate them.  Henry's usual signs of teething include a shockingly large and constant flow of drool, finger chewing, and sometimes a little irritability depending on the tooth.  His first molar came in fairly easily, but this one.  This one has made the poor boy miserable.  Yesterday afternoon he seemed to have turned a corner thank goodness, but I saw the corner of his third one today so it should start all over again soon.  A lot of mamas tell me that their babies feel the pain while the tooth makes its way up slowly, and then when it gets to the surface it pops up quickly and the pain is gone.  Henry seems to be the opposite.  I won't even know a tooth is coming until one day it's just right there slicing through the gums, but it takes forever to come all the way through.  No wonder he hurts, it's been almost a week and there is still 1/4 of the tooth under the skin.  Thank goodness we forget that feeling, right?

Sad baby feels better while he eats yogurt that I froze.