An innocent trip to the Library

Who knew that going to the library could be such and ordeal? First of all it took Zack and I 2 trips into the heart of the city to figure out how to get to the library in the first place, but then once we had entered, all heck broke loose!! I'm sure the expression "like a kid in a candy store" would be a perfect fitting here. Oliver was going crrazzzzyyy!! It was like and endless sea of shelves with things on them that he could pull off, rip, or destroy. I could hardly contain him! He was just freaking out, running from shelf to shelf ripping book, videos, cds off the shelves. Meanwhile I am chasing him, trying to place all the said thrown items back in their spots. It was ugly. I could feel the "tisk, tisk, tisking" of all those people that thought I should be able to control my child. But he got me on a sneak attack! The boy went nuts! All I wanted to do was get a book to read and maybe a DVD to watch. Was that so much to ask? Apparently it was/is. And he is getting so wiggly that it's nearly impossible to hold him when he REALLY wants to get down. And then there is the high pitch screaming when I pick him up and tell him he can't touch something. Heads are turning, jaws may be dropping, little old ladies hearing aids are seering. Needless to say, from now on I will be choosing the book I want to read before entering the library doors, so I can go right to it quickly (no more browsing for me) and then getting out while I have Oliver neatly strapped in his stroller for the duration of the trip. Think it will work? Probably not, but it's worth a try, a mom can dream. I will think twice about ever judging a Mother of a screaming wild child again. I think I walked a mile in her shoes the other day!

Our baby loves his Coke!! Bottles at Least

This video is also from our moving trip. We are in the hotel room at night and Oliver was way past his bedtime and so he kind of got hyper. He started playing with these pop bottles on the bed and way going nuts! Of course we caught him at the tail end, but you get the idea. I guess he takes after his dad, baby loves his Coca-Cola

Moving to Massachusetts: The Journey

Okay, so we moved about a month ago, but I am finally getting things together here. It's been a rough month to say the least!! When we moved, we went through 12 states in 7 days. It was crazy!! We just kept going and going. Little Oliver was a trooper!! He hit a few rough patches especially at night when he had just had enough and wanted to go to bed, but otherwise, he did pretty darn good for a 1 year old. And Bisous(our cat)did an awesome job. Sure she had drugs and a crusty look the whole time, but she did great! Much better than we had anticipated. The picture of here is when we stopped for lunch one day at Red Robin and she had to sit outside of the gates of the restaurant. And the one of Scranton, PA is for all of you The Office fans out there!!

Edward Scissorhands

So I thought I should do a lighter entry since the last one was a little dark. Just a little! ha/ha. This is actually an older picture of Oliver, but it came up on our computer on the random shuffle and I was thinking that his facial expression and hair looks like Edward Scissorhands! Heck, Oliver's hair was almost as crazy as his was in the movie in the first 6 months or so. Anyway, it's our little baby Scissorhands. I love that movie, it's a great one if you haven't seen it in awhile.

FRUSTRATION!!!!

Why? Why? Why??????? (silently screaming!!!) So we moved to MA and our apartment upon arrival was less than stellar for reasons too many to mention. Okay, I'll mention a few: It is on this steep hill in a ghetto neighborhood, the kitchen floors are nasty, nasty, nasty even after washing them, the closets are scary and gross, half the kitchen cupboards don't shut and/or have mice droppings in them, half the doors don't have door knobs, pipes are exposed, no facet in the tub so either Oliver has to take a shower as a 1 year old or he bathes in the kitchen sink, etc...I could go on and on (seriously) but you get the picture. We also recently discovered that we have a family of mice living with us. SUPER!!!(They are already a man down since Zack did manage to get one of them.) They are quite small and kind of cute, but not really the house guests we enjoy when met in the kitchen at 2am. So the point is that we are wanting to get out of here and we had looked around at the beginning of the month basically since the day we moved in because we decided when we moved in to go ahead and give our 30 day notice to the landlord.
So we hunted and found this great place. Perfect place. We were the 1st to see it and we wanted it and the Realtor said, "it's a done deal." But the owners were out of town at the time, so we were waiting until they came back in order to sign the lease. We were so relieved and excited because the place was nice and perfect for us and it had only taken a few days of hunting to find it. Then Monday of this week, shock horror, we are told that it is not ours and long story short the owner had decided to rent it to a friend that was in a bind. UGH....nice notice. So here we are AUG. 23rd and we are suppose to move out on the 31st and we have nowhere to go, and on top of it all Zack is starting school next week. Sure there are a few crumby back ups that if all else failed we could probably get into, but the problem is that we would have to sign a year lease.
So it's back to the drawing board. For the last 3 days we have been scouring the Internet for apts to rent and setting up appointments to see them. Let me tell you how depressing this is. It's almost obscene how ridiculous some of these places are. They are charging $1,000+ a month for JUNK and that is putting it kindly. Things are duck taped together, closets are non-existent, square footage is small, things are broken and 50 years old, and the neighborhoods are ugly. So here we are dragging a baby around in the car all day looking at disgusting places to live that we can barely afford anyway. It makes the place we are in look better and better which is scary.
Can you believe we looked at a place that was charging $1200 a month + utilities and it had old furniture all over inside it. It had an OLD stove/microwave unit with so many buttons it looked like a space shuttle, it must have been a left over from when they first invented microwaves. Half the counter top was missing in the kitchen and you could barely turn sideways in the bathroom to get into the tub. I don't think they had updated anything since it was build which was probably 50 or 60 years ago. And they guy said they normally asked for $1400 but they wanted to get it rented quickly so they had come down. What???? When I saw it I couldn't even believe they would show a place in that condition, never mind actually renting it for $1200 a month!!!
Wrong, wrong, wrong.....with every place we see we get more and more depressed.
I guess I have ranted enough. I will end with what is the silver lining in it all, And that is: Because we have been looking at maps and driving around 24/7 we have learned the areas and where things are which is always difficult when moving to a new place. I'm not sure the trade of is worth it. So I guess wish us luck in our pursuits.....and hope we don't have a mental breakdown in the process!

Yes, Oliver is now a walking man!

Oliver has been walking for awhile now as a little wobbly drunken sailor, but he's getting better everyday!! His favorite thing to do at night now after his bath is to run the length of the house, back and forth and back and forth. He get going pretty fast and then he gets too excited and he biffs it all over, but he picks himself up and marches on. He loves to be chased too! I'm working on getting him to chase me!(I'll try and get some video of that.) On a side note, ignore the fact that our garbage is overflowing, we normally aren't that bad! I will also point out that this luxurious space is our kitchen. Yes, our kitchen, it is narrow, small, half the cupboards don't close, and there is a reason the drawers are open in the video- you have to be The Incredible Hulk to get them back open if you ever manage to get them shut. Not to mention that the bottom cupboards are filthy and had mouse droppings in them and who knows what else. (Don't worry, we aren't using them at all.) When are we moving? I hope soon! The "charm" of an old place gets less charming by the minute.

who's there?

Excuse the fact that a large portion of the video is of my tush, but it's funny none the less. Oliver loves to hold on and walk with me everywhere. It really helps me to get things done during the day!! ha/ha

Georgia Aquarium

Before we left Georgia, we went with my parents to the Georgia Aquarium. That place is seriously AWESOME!!! We loved it, and Oliver really liked it too. It was fun to go with my parents. The aquarium is new there, I think they finished it 2 years ago and I think it is now the biggest aquarium in the world, or the one with the most fish or something to that effect. Either way it was really neat. They have this cool tunnel that you can walk through that is like being in the tank with the fish. Then they have this huge 20 foot wall in a darkened room to look at all these fish swimming by. They also have penguins, otters, fresh water fish etc...the place is really fun. If you are ever in Atlanta I recommend making the aquarium part of your trip!

Georgia Aquarium

John Tanner State Park cont....

Oops, I guess not all the photos got attached, here's the rest!

       

John Tanner State Park

When my parents came to Georgia to help us move, we had a few days to have some fun!! So one afternoon we went to a State park near our house and had a great time! We had no idea Oliver would love it as much as he did. He really loved to play in the sand and I didn't think he would like the water, but I had to practically keep him jumping in it! It was great relaxing and playing and eating with my parents!
       

Our Baby turned ONE!!!

Well it was little Oli's Birthday at the beginning of August! He turned 1! I can't believe he is that old already. Time flies when you're losing sleep. ha/ha. Since we had just arrived in Mass. on his birthday, we really didn't do much of anything by way of celebration, so I thought I should do a little "year in the life" tribute of Oliver. There is a picture for each month so far, plus a few extras! (The 1st bunch is Oliver 0-6 months old and the second group is 6-12 months.)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY!!!

That Bad?

Yesterday morning I looked out the window and what did I see? It wasn't popcorn popping on the apricot tree! It was someone in a reflector vest picking up trash for me! Shocking at first, but after I thought, "Alright!" You know how sometimes they have prisoners pick up trash along the highways and around town. We use to see them all the time in Georgia picking up trash and litter making things look better. Well apparently our neighborhood is that GROSS. It's pretty bad when the city has to bring people into residential areas to pick up trash. Luckily it was not actually prisoners, (don't worry Lee) it looked like a bunch of juvy teenagers probably working off community service hours, but still. I have to admit there was a lot of trash on the streets and the road sides by us and it does look a lot better (although sadly they probably only got half of it out there.) I had been thinking I could invest in one of those trash grabbers (stick thing with the claw on the end) so that while I was out letting Oliver walk around outside I could pick up some trash as we went, but hey I guess now I don't have to! It's the little things that count. So I guess I should say a big "Thank You" to those boys. Wow, Worcester is getting better already.

We made it!

Well its been awhile, because my parents came to Georgia to help us move to Massachusetts, and then we have been moving. So in the midst of moving/family fun there hasn't been much time for blogging. But we made it to Massachusetts only to find that we apparently live in the ghetto and we are paying a ridiculous amount of money in rent for a really old apt that has super creepy closets (pictures later.) So needless to say conditions aren't ideal and we are looking for a new place. So we are living out of boxes for the next month while we find somewhere else to live. So we spend everyday wandering around a huge city looking for places to live, that is when we aren't getting lost. I think we have already worn out our first map from all the navigating. I think Oliver may never like the car again after our 3 day trip to MA and then spending every day since basically looking for a new place to live. A baby's dream. And I think we also moved to the ugliest city in the world! Zack and I were joking that Worcester (town we are now in) is our idea of what spirit prison would be like- creepy, dirty, and just plain ugly. But we are here and I'm sure we will find the silver lining soon. But I will get more pictures and updates with about our trip soon.

Stay posted.