mooove over, pennsylvania

We're here.

If I let my eyes drift to the left, there's a cheap, ugly, black and white printed picture of a tree on the wall with some kind of cardboard poking out from under it. To my right, there's a door to a porch that we can't get open. My feet rest on a scratchy carpet. Above my head, a popcorn ceiling. Staring straight into my computer screen makes me feel at home.

Thursday, movers came to pack up our house, and the best way I can describe seeing the home we'd created being torn apart and shoved quickly and nonchalantly into boxes was like ripping off a band-aid. You just look the other way and try to pretend it doesn't sting. The day was covered in band-aids, but the one that hurt the most was Carter's room.



I feel like I took away his home, and he doesn't even realize we're never going back yet. Swallowing back tears through sporadic goodbyes to our family was also tough. As the tiresome packing chaos wore on, the only thing that became stable was knowing that there was no going back.

Our new apartment is going to take a lot of adjustment. Carter's been crying nonstop. He has four molars coming in, and it's taking days to get his sleep schedule back. He wouldn't eat when we were home, and he eats even less now, it's making me so aggravated and worried. We were making great progress with walking and weaning from nursing (down to twice a day) before we left. He hasn't tried to walk in a couple days, and he relies more heavily than ever on nursing for comfort away from home. But, I've really enjoyed not having stairs here, I love that he has such a huge open space to crawl around.

We haven't explored our new area much because we've all been catching up on sleep and unpacking. All I know is that there's a gorgeous mall across the street (with a Nordstrom) that'll be seeing me soon.

We dropped the price of our house 12k on Saturday. When it sells, we'll be able to look for a house here and get out of this apartment.

Yesterday we went to Carter's Grandma's house for Halloween. We walked around to a few houses, and then he gave out candy with Grandma. He was stunned at the sight of eager trick-or-treaters snatching chocolate out of the bowl.

He was the most tired cow I've ever seen. (If you're wondering, we made him a cow because he's obsessed with signing "milk.")