Moving update

Today was a big day, but it’s been a ride getting here. An immense amount of effort has been expended by us, and by our cherished friends on our behalf. Last Wednesday, Jen and I had packed up a goodly portion of the house into boxes. That evening, Matt, Jeff & Jen, Leif & Amedee, and Eric & Jen came over. Matt used his resourcefulness to fetch a stack of boxes and everybody pitched in and filled ’em.

On Thursday morning, our truck arrived. Six phone calls later, I got permission from the City of Cadillac to park the tractor trailer (that was already there) on the street in front of my house. I worked all afternoon to pack about 3 feet of the truck. That evening, Eric and Matt showed up and hauled all of the packed stuff out to the truck, as fast I as could find places for it. More was accomplished in a few hours than I had all day.

My best friend, Michael Surls came up from Marshall on Friday. That afternoon we fetched all the building supplies we’d need to give the patio a face lift and trim out the upstairs. By Saturday evening I had the entire upstairs all trimmed out while Michael & Daniel demolished the patio and prepared it for it’s new skin. Deb & Jen continued packing, caring for Kayla, and keeping the men nourished.

On Sunday, work on the patio resumed. We disassembled the DS3 rack and removed it (a sad day). Amedee came over and did a fantastic job of cleaning the basement. I’ll simply say that her standards are higher than mine, and it shows. Later, Jeff & Jen and Eric & Jen came by and helped some more. Eric and I went to town on the patio while everyone else packed. Eric worked like a man on a mission and by 11 we had the patio done and started loading the truck.

We weren’t certain when the trailer would be picked up (scheduled for mid-morning) so I planned to work through the night to get it all loaded. Fortunately, Jeff & Eric helped out and around 2AM, the truck was loaded. The question of the day was Jeff’s: “So Matt, how’s it feel to pack 30 years of your life into 19 feet?”

After we were “done”, I found several other items to load. I set them aside for the morning. At 7:30 Jen woke me. I loaded the other items onto the truck and then prepared to fetch Kevin’s truck to haul all the construction debris to the dump. Martha & Greg intervened. I went and re-wired their newly renovated store and tomorrow, a fellow will come and haul away all my trash.

Jeff & Jen came by again and caulked the trim I had installed. What a difference a $2 tube of painters caulk makes when used by a pro. I cleaned out the garage, piled up all the debris for the trailer, carpeted the stairs & landing, and other little things. Finally, at 9PM, we stopped and went out to watch a movie. It was my first real “break” of the day and two hours sitting down felt wonderful. That would not have been possible without the help of our friends.

Tuesday, we have a few more loose ends to tie up, a few construction projects to finish, and then spending time with friends during the evening. Then, we’re on the road for two days, arriving in Texas late on Thursday evening.

It’s late, I must sleep now. I hope I haven’t slighted anyone’s contribution. I’m tired and short of time, but I wanted to vocalize our friends have been an incredible blessing to us. By far, the hardest part of leaving is those we leave behind. We will miss you all very much.

Why I love technology

Today we drove from Cadillac, MI to Nashville, TN. It should have taken 10 hours, but it took eleven. We are quite thankful to have only been delayed by an hour, and we owe those thanks to technology. As we cruised through Indianapolis, I glimpsed a flashing sign that said something like “accident on SB I-65, closed at mile 50, seek alternate route”. The 50 mile marker was a good hour away so I cruised onward. We scanned the AM frequency several times looking for more traffic info and found nothing.

Once out of Indianapolis, I used my laptop and cellular Internet connection to Google “I-65 accident Indiana” and got no results. It hadn’t made the news wire yet so the flashing sign back in Indianapolis was the only clue that something was amiss. At mile marker 55, I noticed brake lights and a two lane parking lot where the Interstate should be. I noticed it just in time to catch an off ramp.

Southern Indiana consists of narrow single lane roads and lots of corn fields. We followed the traffic for a while on the most obvious alternate route. As the miles long procession crawled along, it became obvious that it was going to take a very long time (hours) to make it to the next freeway ramp. This is where technology saved the day.

Thanks to a GPS receiver and Route 66 (my mapping software) I had complete maps of the area, and I knew exactly where we were. I veered away from traffic and charted a course through the corn fields down country back roads scarcely a lane wide. My alternate route ended up being about 10 miles longer than the other option but was largely untraveled and much faster.

Today on I-65, motorists fell into four camps. The tragic were involved in the accident. The unfortunate didn’t see the warning sign(s) nor the sea of brake lights until they were stuck in miles of parked cars. The fortunate motorists detoured early, or got lucky and were able to get off the freeway. Of the fortunate, only the enlightened few had suitable maps of the area, or knew the area well enough to get through with only a minor setback. We were through Kentucky and into Tennessee before the State Troopers hoped to get traffic moving.

It wasn’t until late this evening that information became available. At about 9:30AM, a car had a blowout. A truck driver swerved and lost control of his truck. He crossed the median and Southbound lanes and was killed when his truck collided with a guard rail. At 3pm traffic was backed up at least 5 miles. Police hoped to have the scene cleared and traffic moving by 6PM.

Today, we were fortunate. Alert driving spotted the backup, luck provided an exit ramp, and technology allowed us to navigate through the corn fields and back to the freeway.

Simerson Moving Schedule

Howdy pardners,

Everyone wants to know when we’re leaving. The final answer is: Aug 10th. That’s the short answer. If you plan to see us on Aug 10th though, you’ll be disappointed. Here’s the full schedule:

July 27th – Drive to Nashville
July 28-30th – Marco’s Wedding
July 31st – Drive back to Cadillac

Aug 1-5 – Pack up the house, install trim and paint in a few places
Aug 5-8 – Load everything into the truck
Aug 9th – Last minute odds and ends
Aug 10-11th – Drive to Texas
Aug 12-14 – Unload the truck in our Texas home
Aug 16-22 – Unpack
Aug 25th – School starts

And, no post would be complete with a Kayla photo.

This morning she had her 2 month checkup. She’s now 22 inches long and weights 10.6 pounds. She also got her shots so now she’s got Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussus (whooping cough), HIB, Hepatitis B, Polio, and Pneumococcal disease. Despite her little body being a disease riddled mess, she’s holding up remarkably well. She is mildly fussy and has a low grade fever, which is to be expected. What surprises me is that in spite of not feeling well, she’s still a very happy little girl.

Daddy Day Care: A Spoiler?

As I sit here with the world’s cutest and happiest baby cooing in my lap, I can’t help but think that we’ve been blessed with a spoiler. What’s a spoiler you ask? Quite a few parents we’ve talked to (even before we had Kayla) have made comments such as, “Oh yeah, we thought we had parenting all figured out with Bobby and Sue, but then we had Billy…”

Now that I’m getting used to living on less sleep, I’m beginning to think that Kayla is our spoiler, given us to cut our parenting teeth, and encourage us to have another. Let’s be realistic here, who wouldn’t want another precious little easy to care for baby? Before we had our first we had all sorts of doubts. Oh sure every parent tells, “You’ll know how to tell which cry is which.” I can take such statements on faith, but there’s a difference between expecting something, and accomplishing it.

We were given quite a few excellent books on parenting. Thanks to Jen’s friend Christina, our baby actually DID come with the baby owner’s manual. Jen and Eric gave us Babywise, which is also excellent. The What to Expect… books are also good. We read them all and referred to them often during them first weeks. They helped set our expectations realistically and provided us with an arsenal of tools to help us manage our new baby and integrate her into our life.

Now, 7 weeks into this gig, it’s easy to determine what her needs are. We know that each evening she’ll have her fussy time. To get her ready to eat, just uncover her for 15 minutes while warming up her milk. She’ll cool off and wake up ready to eat. Keep her awake for a half hour of “happy play time” and then warm her up and she goes to sleep. Now we’re listening to The Rolling Stones and I’m about to get a little work done during her nap. In short, life involving a baby is becoming predictable.

I mean sure, we did have to learn some new skills, but we expected that. Just as we had to learn new skills to thrive as a cohabitating couple, so too did we need to make changes and grow with this new addition. It almost seems to have been too easy. Is this the calm before the storm?

Chronicles of Day Care Daddy

She looks beautiful doesn’t she?

Perfectly innocent, and safe. Not a care in the world, and nothing at all to be concerned about. Well, there are things we’ve learned that are simply too precious not to share, especially since they weren’t mentioned in our Baby Owner’s Manual.

There are certain things about changing a diaper that are intuitively obvious. Chief among these is that leaving certain parts of baby uncovered is hazardous to everything near babies discharge ports. Discharge is normally on the bottom end, but you can’t count on that. Again, this is obvious. However, what isn’t obvious is Day Care Daddy’s first corollary:

Never remove babies diaper within 5 minutes of any activity near the babies bottom.

There have been numerous “events” that have led us to draw this conclusion, but I’ll share one of my favorites. While Ricardo (grandpa) and Paulette were here, we left Kayla in Paulette’s loving care while the rest of us went shopping. This might be something peculiar to Kayla but we failed to warn Paulette that if Kayla does a “download”, immediately going to change her is a bad idea. No sooner than Paulette got one diaper off, Kayla was letting go and discharging more. Several diapers and fresh clothes later, things got back under control. This leads us to Day Care Daddy’s second corollary.

Never change baby on anything that isn’t easily cleaned (or disposed of).

All the evidence we’ve seen indicates that exposing a babies excretion ports significantly increases the likelihood of discharge. Because of this, we’ve adopted a method whereby we leave the old diaper under her until the new one is ready to be slid into place. Thus, excepting a two or three second transfer period, there is always a diaper under her. This has prevented many an incident, and I can’t say exactly how many times I’ve had her discharge into the new diaper before it was installed. However, this practice alone is insufficient to insure against catastrophe. Today I disregarded the first corollary. I did not forget the second, and therein lied my salvation.

Daddy got careless and unlatched her diaper within 5 minutes of a discharge. Two wipes later, her nasty little tail was cleaned up and ready to go into a fresh diaper. In the few seconds after the first diaper was removed, a precious little stream emitted that didn’t stop until the entire disposable changing pad was soaked. These are wonderful little things. They’re just like a painting drop cloth, plastic lined paper that absorbs fluid but won’t let it through.

I wrapped up my freshly soiled bundle (in the disposable pad) and took her directly to the sink with the new diaper still in hand. Ever mindful of the events necessitating the unscheduled bathing, I wasted no time getting her back into a diaper. This brush with disaster was a major accomplishment of the day. Yawn. So concludes today’s issue of “Day Care Daddy”. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures to come.

Hallelujah, we’ve scored!

Buying a house can be a daunting task, but Dallas has treated us well. We have three days invested in selecting our new home. I spent a day looking at houses on my last trip down here to get a feel for the market. On this trip, our intent was to buy a house. Yesterday we looked at over a dozen houses. That’s far too many to keep all the details straight, but just enough that a real estate agent can get a really good feel for exactly what you’re looking for.

Yesterday we dialed in the compass and today we marched. We looked at only five houses. Two were houses we returned to for a second (and a third) look and honed in on two houses, both of which we really liked. We deliberated a bit, visited both houses again, and finally settled on the slightly more expensive (159 vs 155) of the homes.

We placed an offer of $150k and they countered with $153 which we gratefully accepted. We are extremely pleased. Even though both houses are terrific, we know we made The Right Choice. There have been a considerable number of “coincidences” that have confirmed it. It’s as if someone is in control and we’ve been able to see Him working behind the scenes to make everything fall into place.

Our Texas address is 313 Crooked Creek, Garland, TX. Our closing date is July 25th, and we’ll be able to move in any time thereafter. It’s time to start packing!

Greetings from Dallas

What a day. We looked at over a dozen houses today, ranging in price from $134,000 to $189k. We’ve been fretting over how to make the $134k house work because it’s such a great deal but it just doesn’t have enough space. It’s adequate, but cramped and we’ll be here for 4 years.

We’ve found several very nice houses that suit our needs wonderfully and range from $160 to $172k. Although that will seem high to our friends in Cadillac, it’s terribly reasonable compared to housing in Seattle, Atlanta, and many other metro areas. That’s about as good as can be expected for a nice home within 20 minutes of downtown.

Greetings from Oklahoma City, OK

In the spirit of being footloose and fancy free, on Sunday evening we decided to pack up and drive to Texas to buy a house. Yesterday we left home around 1PM and spent the night in St. Louis, MO. Today we once again got up bright and early (9:45, just in time to catch breakfast) and got onto the road by 12:30. This traveling with a baby takes a wee bit longer than we’re used to. If all goes according to plan, we’ll arrive in Dallas at 9:45PM this evening.

Tomorrow we meet with Jack, our realtor. We’ll spend a day or two house shopping and then return home. Unfortunately, I did forget my Compact Flash adapter for the laptop, so there won’t be any photo uploads on this trip. Kayla is a good traveler. The motion lulls her right to sleep. We wake her to feed and then let her go back to sleep.