I don’t think I’ve ever written a post that wasn’t focused on the girls, so this is weird but here goes. As you’ve probably deduced by now, we’ve moved. After having Hayden and realizing that 2 kids is MORE than twice the work, we decided that we need to live somewhere where we have a support system. So, after years of pressure by my family to get up here, we’re finally living in Portland, Oregon.

We moved almost a month ago and are loving everything but the constant rain and hail (surprise, surprise). The move itself was excruciatingly painful and we finally have time to offer many many thanks to everyone who helped along the way:

- My Mom, who helped us through everything from the house hunt, to packing, loading the truck, flying up with the girls, unloading the truck, hosting us till our house was ready, meals, babysitting, laundry, and the list goes on.

- My brother Gavin and brothers-in-law, who unloaded our huge truck (including our ancient piano) into the new house from 10:30pm-1am on a Sunday night even though they had to work the next day.

- My sister Lorna, who helped us pick out all the finishings for our new house since we couldn’t do it from San Jose, and is also now working as our very own Supernanny.

- All our other babysitters extraordinaire, without whom we never would’ve finished packing or unpacking (well, we actually never did finish packing and are still unpacking, but you know what I mean), especially Boi, Susette, Akiko and Maren.

- Dave’s friends Lu, Nam and Raj who helped him load up the truck and drive our cars all the way to Portland after my mom and I had already flown up with the girls.

- Our neighbors Maria and Shelly who helped us pull off a profitable garage sale our last weekend in San Jose with surprisingly little effort on our part (yes, those are 80s TVs we sold, and yes, Dave and I were both about to keel over when this photo was taken).

Also, thanks to all our awesome San Jose friends for the great sendoffs and well-wishes. We miss you and hope you will come visit us in the great Northwest!!!

I don’t even know where to start. Maddy has evolved and entertained us so much over the past month+ that it’s very hard to capture in a blog post. But I’ll try.

She has become SO precocious and SO imaginative and SO expressive. A few examples…

- Of precociousness:
We’ve had lots of strangers around for the past several weeks (realtors, prospective homebuyers, inspectors, appliance delivery people, blinds salespeople, office designers, etc.), and she has tried to make best friends with each and every one of them. Anyone who comes into the house is immediately accosted by her, and then she follows them around / gets in their way until they’re done with whatever they came over to do.

My favorite was when our realtor came by and Maddy, meeting him for the first time, walked right up and said “Hi! I’m wearing underwear! Want to see?”

- Of imaginativeness: Maddy loves to make up little stories, games or songs. The best one lately was at the dinner table when she was just finishing up her sweet potato fries. I was feeding Hayden and noticed that Maddy was mumbling to herself so I started listening and I heard her engaging in a fascinating conversation with her last 2 fries. They said to her in one voice: “Maddy, where is our family? We miss our mommy and daddy!” and she said back in another voice: “Don’t worry. They’re in my mouth, do you want to go find them? You can come inside.” And then she ate them.

- Of expressiveness:

The other morning Maddy was being apprehensive about having Aunt/Nanny Lorna and cousin Jude come over to the house, so I asked her why she didn’t want to play with them. She clearly explained to me “because I don’t want you and daddy to work, I want you to not work and play with me instead.” It was nice but sad to hear her finally express this so clearly – with our old nanny she would complain about having her come over but was never able to explain why.

On a more positive note, when we got to our new house, Maddy ran around excitedly with a frightening amount of energy and then after 2 minutes started singing/shouting: “if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!”

Maddy is thrilled that Hayden is able to “play” more now and has to be reminded constantly that just because Hayden can do lots of stuff, doesn’t mean that she can handle a major hug or defend herself in a toddler sharing battle. She also loves her cousins, except when they have a toy she wants, and then the real toddler battles ensue.

Our little Maddy is pretty much potty-trained, and that makes her seem even more grown up. She’s been using the potty consistently for about a month now, except during naps and nighttime when we still put her in diapers. She had such little interest in it for the past 6 months that I was shocked when one day Dave said “I’ve had enough, I know she can do it” – and then she did. She’s only had 1 accident since then (if you don’t count the times she peed in her pullups because we were lazy or out of clean underwear to put her in).

On the less pleasing side, Maddy started having nightmares earlier this week and now bedtimes are quite painful. She’s genuinely scared to be left alone in her room and insists that the closet and hallway light are left on with the doors wide open. That said, she is usually enjoying sleeping in a “big girl bed,” which she’s been doing mostly successfully since we moved. When she wakes up in the morning, she surprisingly resists the urge to come and wake us up, instead she gets a book and quietly sits down in the hallway directly outside our master bedroom door (even when it’s open) and reads to herself until one of us gets up.

Also, she still has this vomiting issue. It happens about once or twice a month, in the middle of dinner, for no apparent reason other than she’s had a lot to eat. It’s not like we’re force feeding her, she just keeps eating until she throws up, and it’s so sad. I do think we’ve identified yogurt/milk as a consistent contributing factor, though, so we’re trying to cut back on those things and hopefully that will help.

If you read this far, I’m impressed – that’s enough for now.

My mother’s day gift to myself is permission to write this blog post, even though there are still plenty of other things around the house I should be doing. I also have about 5 other posts swimming around in my head that will hopefully be coming shortly, but for now let’s focus on another Hayden update.

I cannot believe she turned 10 months old this past week. It’s very sad to me that she will be 1 soon, but this is also such a fun phase to observe.

Here’s what Hayden’s up to:

- Crawling very very fast.

- Getting very good at standing independently, but not so interested in walking. Seems to enjoy pushing around her walker, though.

- Climbing all over everything. Just discovered the stairs last week (no baby gates up in the new house yet), and was fascinated by how high she could get just by climbing up 2 steps. Of course she had no idea how to get back down.

- Loving mommy. It brightens my day every time a walk into a room and see her face light up with a huge smile. She does this sometimes for Maddy and Dave also, but I enjoy how frequently I get those special smiles.

- Adoring her big sister and loving when Maddy interacts with her. Today they started playing a “game” which involved them bonking heads over and over again. Surprisingly they kept the impact low and there were no tears, only hysterical laughter from both girls every time their heads touched. I must get a video of Hayden’s latest laugh.

- Perfectly content playing independently as long as she’s not trapped in her playpen and has plenty of great toys to eat.

- Has developed a wonderful pageant wrist wave, which she employs constantly.

- 4 teeth now with a big gap between her top 2.

- Much less stranger anxiety. Still doesn’t especially want to be left alone with strangers, but will tolerate it if necessary and is perfectly happy to be around other folks as long as one of her family members is in the same room.

- Always has her hair in her eyes. Dare I trim those bangs????

- Weighs just around 16 lbs, still below the 5th percentile for her age – but her tiny-ness sure doesn’t seem to be slowing her down!