Moving Update

It's been a long week and we're exhausted.

Most importantly, we passed our housing inspection! We were really worried about not passing the inspection because Olivia has been toilet training for several months. For those of you who have toilet trained children and escaped accidents on the carpet, I'm here to tell you that your child is special and/or talented. Does that sound mean? I hope not. In our experience, disposable Pull-Ups only set Olivia back and I don't know any child who has gone from disposable Pull-Ups to panties without any carpet accidents along the way. While Olivia is now nearly 100% potty trained as she has only been having accidents a couple times a week, we did spend months cleaning up an accident here and there. The housing department on post will charge families to replace the carpet if they find much more than a speck of urine (whoever decided to put carpet throughout the whole house of soldiers raising young children, must not have had children - and to charge families for normal accidents that happen with children, is, in my opinion, nearly criminal).

So, after black-lighting our carpet the other night, we were concerned that we could get smacked with a $1,000-$3,000 bill. Matt spent hours on hands and knees rubbing solution to hide the urine on the carpet. I think it reappeared after it dried. Fortunately, our inspector was extremely lenient (he even told us so) and we escaped any charges!

My father and baby sister have been here visiting and while I didn't really want my family to see our "true colors," which always present themselves during a move, they've been a great help and I don't know what we would have done without them.

We are now staying in a suite at the Army Lodging hotel until Monday morning when we fly to Newark, spend a couple days recovering from that flight and then head on to Portugal on Wednesday. Fortunately, the dog flew home with my father and sister today and we'll be reunited with him on Monday night.

Staying in hotels with small children is such a challenge. I'm fiercely protective my children's sleep (because they don't function well without 10-12 hours of sleep at night and a two hour nap in the afternoon). But, each time, it's the same old thing. Fighting sleep. Our children have been sleeping in the same room. That includes naps. Yesterday, the afternoon nap went well. Today, not so well. I as write this, Olivia is threatening to poop in her Pack & Play and Lila is flip flopping from crying to playing. They both are coming down with colds (perfect timing-I'll be next) and Lila has a zillion teeth coming in. They NEED sleep. Lila's at the point where she's crying constantly because she's gotten half of her normal amount of sleep in the past few days. I don't know how many days it's going to take before they give in. This isn't a very temporary situation. They'll be out of their element for, possibly, up to a month a more.

I'm handling it all by clenching my teeth and eating chocolate. I wonder how much more fat I can get before we get settled into our new home. I just found out I have an ACL tear - so taking up running right now wouldn't be a good idea. Though, I have promised myself I will get back into weight-training and some type of knee-safe cardio when I get to Lisbon.

Yesterday, we shipped the 4-Runner overseas and today we're selling my Honda. So, we'll be without a car tomorrow. I wanted to go to the fair and do some last minute trivial women-things like get my lip waxed and my eyebrows done. I haven't showered or shaved in two days and I think the bad smell lingering in the room is me. So, I'll sign off now and do my best to keep you updated throughout our move. I don't know when I'll be able to post pictures next because I forgot my USB cord to my camera in a drawer that got packed up by the movers.