The day of the 8th we spent telling the movers where to put boxes and then we did as much as we could before we just wore out. We had hoped to spend the night in the house but it was too much of a struggle to try to rearrange so that the house would be Evie-safe AND assemble the crib AND find sheets to wash and dry for our bed and hers, so we spent the night with mom and dad one last time. At that point, Evie had been there since Saturday, June 28th so that's 12 days and 11 nights in beautiful, beautiful Granna and Grannadaddy's house. We had been there off and on since the 28th too, with one night away on the 29th when we went back to Nashville for the closing, so we feel that we really tested the limits of my parents' hospitality. Fortunately we found that they seem to have no limits. Dad and I had coffee together most every morning, Mom gave Evie baths whenever she (Evie) requested them, Seth and Dad watched MST3K, and Mom and I (though mostly Mom) kept everyone fed, and Evie enjoyed being the center of attention through it all. It was a crash landing into being in the same city as your grandparents/parents and I think it worked out great. We are extremely grateful to have my parents so close now, and for their willingness to pitch in and help when we need it.
So, on the 9th, Granna and Evie spent the day together at Granna's house while Seth and I attempted to make the house as Evie-friendly/proof as possible. We made decent headway and while we didn't get as much done as we had wanted to due to interruptions from people giving us quotes on the fence and windows, we still managed to make a path through the house for Evie, block her off from the kitchen where the boxes are stacked too high to be safe, and make up her bed. We brought her over that evening, along with Granna and Grannadaddy to see the place. Evie had seen it on Monday when we went through to make sure everything was good before we took possession. At that time, she ran around the living room/dining room/kitchen circle, screaming at the top of her lungs in that excited way that toddlers do, and then went down the hall and slammed a door shut. When I went after her (she's too quick sometimes!), I found her in what we were intending to use as her room. She was playing and looking up at the fan which has a baseball as the globe light and a mitt as the base and baseball bats as the fan blades. It doesn't exactly go with the theme we are thinking of doing for her room, so I doubt she'll keep it, but she does like it. When I walked in there she declared, "It's Evie's room!" I was glad she caught on so quickly.
Speaking of catching on quickly (and here I'll derail for a minute from the story of our first night in our house), we bought an iPad for the family as an Evie/my birthday/Father's Day/our anniversary gift. There is an app called Endless Alphabet that shows a word then scrambles up the letters leaving an outline of where the letters used to be, but the colored-in letters are spread all over the screen. It's the user's job to drag the colored letters back into the outline so that the word is fully spelled out again. Evie is so, so good at this game! She usually starts with finding the right-most letter, but will also do groupings of letters. For example, last night she did the word odor and started by dragging the R into place, then she did both of the Os, first the one between D and R and then the first O, and then she finished with the D. What's amazing to me is how much patience and determination she has and she will finish words like contraption. Now she even knows how to get from the home screen to her game folder and to open up the one she wants. Unbelievable!
Okay, back to the house. So, my parents and Evie came over and after a little while, my parents left and of course, after 12 days with them, Evie got into quite a state of panic that they had left. But we played a little bit and showed her around the new house some more. I kept asking her if she was ready to go night night but she kept refusing. Finally at 9:30 I took her into her room so she could get used to it and I moved some things around so we could access the glider which I always use to rock her to sleep, and I found the box with her elephant lamp which is the only light we have on when I put her to bed. We had her sound machine going and she saw that her woof-woofs (two stuffed dogs that were mine as a child) and her "turtle" (her glowworm) were in her bed waiting for her. I asked her if she wanted to get into pjs but she said, "Dada night night tiss" meaning she wanted to kiss her daddy good night. So out she went into the living room and gave Seth and kiss and came right back and laid down in front of me to get her pjs on. Then we read and I sang and I tucked her in bed and you'd think she'd been sleeping in that room forever. I left immediately after to go to the grocery store, and Seth said she did whimper once, as usual after about 5 minutes of being down, and then not a peep from her until morning. I was so relieved! I thought we might be in for a long night, but she seems to do well with her crib, no attempts at escaping or crying in the middle of the night.
We did some more work yesterday though of course the going is much slower when one of us has to always keep an eye on Evie. But we are getting there, little by little. It's slowly sinking in for us that this is our new home. You know, it always takes a little while to feel settled.
Again, being a little displaced and without my desktop computer, I will have to postpone pictures until next week.
Edit to add: pictures!
Declaring, "It's Evie's room!" during the walk through
I love that her closet has a little shelf she can sit on.
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