On the road again (again)

So I guess we live in Syracuse again. Two weeks ago, we loaded up everything we owned (again) into our intrepid Golf, and Jeremy left St. Paul for a brisk 1100-mile drive east. The next morning, the kids and I took three (3) flights to get from Minneapolis to Syracuse. Over the eight or so hours of our traveling we went from Minneapolis to Milwaukee to Detroit to Syracuse. That's a lot of hop, skipping, and jumping, if I do say so.



Before I move on, though, I need to pay a little more homage to the Golf, because between Jeremy and that car, miracles happen. I don't know if these pictures do it justice, but in this car are:

• two crib-size mattresses


• one queen size mattress (from Ikea, rolled up as tight as possible, which is not really that tight)


• a dismantled kitchen table and four chairs


• a kids' table and two chairs


• an Ikea armchair


• an ottoman


• a television


• an end table


• two laptop computers


• three desk lamps


• one floor lamp


• all of our clothes, toiletries, and linens


• a large bag of nonperishable food


• an obscene amount of toys and books.

I have no clue how Jeremy got it all into that car, and I watched him do it. If you are not amazed enough, please note that it was less than 10 degrees on the evening of packing. It really was a miserable experience, all said, but we all survived, and now we're resettled. Again. For a little while.

The kids' favorite part about the move was probably the 24 hours of frozen dinners we ate. Delightful! They also seemed pretty keen on sitting on these ridiculous thrones masquerading as car seats whilst watching endless episodes of Barney and Thomas. Ah, to be young...

Once we'd arrived in Syracuse and more or less unpacked everything, we realized that it's not ideal to live in a ground-floor apartment when the neighbors in the 2nd floor apartment--all of which are inexplicably floored with hardwood--have little kids running around all day. So we did what any community-minded people would do: we took our little kids and moved to a 2nd floor apartment. There's nothing like moving just a few days after moving, I've always said, but at least it was a fairly close jaunt. Luckily, our downstairs neighbor is a kind, long-suffering, single young man who works all day until about 6:30. This makes the weekdays just fine, though the kids are understandably tired of having to do their (quite loud) version of "tiptoeing" on the weekends. Apartment living. I am not too keen. Again.

And there you have it. It's good to be back in the 'Cuse, and the kids seem no worse off for being dragged around the country so much this year. Jonathan and Clara are even falling asleep in the same room with absolutely no problem. It's a borderline miracle after our time in St. Paul! Clara is almost always the first to fall asleep. We know Jonathan is not quite ready to rest when this very stealthily appears under his door:

At least they're cute little tootsies!