Tatum's Tenth Week

Big girl at ten weeks!

She has gone through another growth spurt and feels much heavier--I'm curious how much she weighs now! Look at the rolls on those cute little legs!!!

And we had so much fun taking this week's pictures, I had a hard time picking which one to use! Here's a little photo reel of her varied expressions (I basically was just holding the shutter down!)

I know I'm terribly biased but isn't she just INCREDIBLY CUTE?!?!?!

In other Curran/Palmer household news, last night held two hilarious events.

1.

I bought Tatum and Roy matching Halloween costumes.

I couldn't resist.

Here's ONE glimpse...

We've gone bananas! Hahahahahahah!

The first time we put it on Roy I laughed so hard I cried and nearly peed in my pants!  He just stood there, not moving, wondering what in the heck we had done to him!  Tatum wasn't so happy with her costume either, but this is one of my first moments as a parent to take pictures that she'll be embarrassed of in 13 years!

2.

After the bunch of bananas had peeled off their costumes, I heard a:

GET A BOWL!

in a high pitched yell from my mom.  Followed by a calm

Why? What do you need a bowl for?

from my dad.

JUST GET ME A BOWL QUICK!

she yelled again, her pitch getting higher.

What is is for?

My dad asked again, quite calmly. At this point I had made it to the laundry room where my mom was and saw the liquid laundry detergent pouring out of the container and into a laundry basket and about to overrun the holes in the side, and then here came Matt with a bowl to help out.

A small cereal bowl.

For the second time that day I laughed so hard I cried.

My mom is in the room struggling to contain sticky flowing detergent and begging for a bowl and my dad is standing there asking what she needs a bowl for and Matt comes running with the only size bowl he knows to find!

And then for the next twenty minutes my mom slowly ladled detergent back into the container.

A bowl would have been so much easier.

And so things at the Curran/Palmer household are going along swimmingly for the time being.  Its really nice to have two more ready and willing sets of hands to take Tatum so I can shower or eat or that thing you do with your teeth...what is that? Brushing them? Oh yeah. That. Its great when that happens. :-)

A Little More Rock n' Roll

Finally.  I've been running around trying to unpack, organize, take care of Tatum who hasn't been feeling so well, and get settled into this next (short) chapter of living with my parents for a month or two. 

Pant, pant, pant.

I asked my brother (who has been living in Oklahoma since August) what he thought of the place, and he said:

If Orange County is techno and hip hop, Oklahoma is a little more country and rock n' roll.

Great comparison.  And I have to say I'm enjoying a little more rock n' roll in my life.

When I walked to Walmart with Tatum in a stroller, four women stopped to oogle and fawn over her in the 10 minutes I spent in the store.  I hadn't realized in Seattle people hardly ever commented on her...it was almost like the stroller was invisible (especially in the mall on labor day weekend...yikes).

A neighbor came over with banana bread batter all over her clothes and asked to borrow a loaf pan.  I invited her in while I looked for one and she just chatted away and promised to bring us some bread before hurrying away with a "thank y'all!"  In the year and a half we lived in an apartment in Seattle no one ever borrowed anything...and I was too shy to ask to borrow anything myself.

Matt was in customer service workshops yesterday and said it was so refreshing that when a funny video clip was shown, people weren't too cool to laugh.  And I mean, really laugh loud.

So week one of Oklahoma living, and we're liking it a lot.  Its supposed to thunder and lightning today, which is awesome.  While Seattle may have had rain, I can count on one hand the times I heard thunder in nearly three years. I like me some weather.

Anyways, here's a couple pics of my Tater Tot...the camera has mostly been on the shelf this past week while we've been getting situated!

I am so blessed to have a husband who provides for me to be a stay at home mom.  Yesterday when she obviously wasn't feeling great, I could just sit in a rocking chair and hold her until she fell asleep, and then keep on holding her.  Last night Matt and I got our first real date night in 10 weeks, and I got to (tearfully) thank him for that. You don't get those moments back.

And so we're here.  Hokey Okies just rock n' rollin our baby, and loving it.

Tatum's Ninth Week

WE MADE IT TO OKLAHOMA! And since we're in the heartland of good ole' Americana I thought Old Glory would be appropriate for this weeks picture (actually it was my mom's idea):

I just got internet in our room so I'm reconnected to the technological world again.  These past few weeks have been great, exhausting, wonderful, hard, energizing, tiring and SUCH an experience!

Through it all, Tatum has been SUCH a little trooper! She got overwhelmed and had her melt-downs, but then again so did I.  I'll tell you later about the danged Taco Bell in Flagstaff, but let's just say Tatum might have more long suffering than I have.

We arrived in Edmond, OK last Saturday night and my brother and Dad got to meet Tatum for the first time

She did/does have her first little cold, and no wonder going through seven states and meeting well over 100 people in a week and a half! But we're taking it easy now and on the mend.

Matt started his job on Monday and really thinks he is going to enjoy it.  He even has his own office!  He's excited to be able to help people, and get to see the fruit of it as well.  Part of what he always liked working at REI was hearing people's stories--where they were going camping or what river they were going to kayak.  But at MACU not only does he get to talk to people and hear their stories, but keep in contact with them and see them go through a program and get their degree.  We definitely feel this was the right move for us.

That's all I've got energy for tonight--I'd better try to get to sleep while the baby girl is asleep!

Tatum's Eighth Week

That's an odd word to spell.

Eighth. 

But here she is at eight weeks old! The hi-lighted part shows the route we're taking from Seattle to Edmond, Oklahoma.  

Roy decided since she was a bit fussy on the floor that she needed a kiss to cheer her up...

I'm not sure she appreciated it...

To date we've had 10 get-togethers for people to meet our little Tater Tot, and met nearly 100 people for the first time!

Today we're in Prescott Valley, AZ with Ammah for two days of rest.  Hallelujah!  Those long days in the car are hard on a little one!

Last weekend Matt and I were able to have our first date sans baby! Grandma Beth and Grandpa Dave watched her while we went to lunch and for a walk around the lake.

Tatum did great, but apparently Roy was anxious for us to get back.

Oh, and here are the shots that Matt's cousin, Jacob, took of Tatum. He really is a talented photographer, painter, graphic designer and all around artist.  You can see some more of his photography on his blog, Jacob Reid Design Photography.

We've been so blessed to have so many people SO excited to meet our baby girl! Thank you to everyone who has arranged your schedules to accommodate us, driven long distances to see us, invited us and our very large and bossy dog into your homes and hosted gatherings of people, and loved on us and our Tatum. We have only two more days of driving until we reach our new home!

Tour de Tatum

And the Tour de Tatum has begun!

I'm sitting at my in-laws sipping Mother Lode coffee and finally able to take a few minutes to write.  Over the past few days (week, actually), the words have been piling up inside of me and I write and write in my head without the time to write it out on paper or my computer, and now that I have the time to sit down and write I've forgotten most of what I intended to say! Drat!

Writing is necessary for me.  Like eating dinner or brushing your teeth. I write in my head constantly. Now I just have to remember what I've already written!

Our pods from U-haul were unloaded last Saturday and on Sunday, in true Seattle fashion, it was cold and drizzly all day.  We hired a mover to help us fit everything into our two 5' x 7' x 8' pods.  He arrived on a motorcycle with a pony tail and long beard and looked like someone right out of Hell's Angels.  He also happened to tell Matt he was a hoarder and had to work to make pathways through his house...interesting.  But he was awfully nice, and really did bust his butt to fit as much as possible into the pods.  

Sadly, those pods are not as big as P.O.D.S. ones and we were forced to leave a lot of things behind for donation.  Our coffee table that held all our games, dining chairs I had lovingly painted robin's egg blue, TV from my dad (it was really large and heavy), TV stand I had re-stained, the beautiful bassinet we were given second-hand, and a truck load of other things had to be left for the donation truck since there was no time to try to even sell it.  We even posted it on Craigslist.org for free but there still wasn't any takers in the short amount of time we had.  

Its true its just "stuff."  But even though it was mostly second-hand I still had poured some energy and time into that "stuff," and it was sad to leave it behind knowing once we get to Oklahoma we'll need to spend more time and money to find replacements.  Looks like I'll be garage sale shopping soon! And I think I'll buy some more robin's egg spray paint because I loved our painted Ikea chairs. 

And now, a moment of silence for my chairs:

We originally meant to pull out on Monday morning, but with so much stuff left over we were trying to do the math of whether it was cheaper to try to get a hitch installed on my car and pull a trailer (it was a whole other pod's worth of stuff, basically.  U-Haul lies when they say an apartment can fit in two U-boxes!), or ship it or donate it.  We also hadn't even started cleaning the place and had a goodbye party for Matt that evening.  So we decided to stay one more day. 

The next day we cleaned and hauled more stuff to Goodwill and I crammed as much as I could into every available nook and cranny of the pods.  We had to have some friends come over to help move the TV and base into the car since I probably shouldn't be lifting anything super heavy this soon after delivering a nearly 10 pound baby...

That night, with three full bottles of breastmilk in the fridge we went to our last Seattle dinner at our fav Mexican place, Torero's and I indulged in a "regular" sized margarita for the first time since finding I was pregnant.

So. So. Good.  And appreciated.

The next morning we started loading the car.  But as it goes with a crazy dog and a baby and only one of us being a Tetris master to make everything fit in my car (me), and having used all our bottles of milk so I had to breastfeed every hour or so and finish cleaning the apartment...we didn't finally drive away until 2ish. 

Then the tarp I had tied over the things tied on top of my car wouldn't stay down, and we were so tired and fed up with it we went to FedEx and shipped it to Oklahoma.

Then we finally got on the freeway and pulled off when we saw a sign for Taco Bell and tried to get some lunch, and there was no Taco Bell to be seen! Seattle had to get us lost just one more time!  You can read my first driving experience in Seattle that I wrote nearly three years ago on the Ups and Downs and Waiting post.

That night we stayed in Meford, and the next day headed to Paradise, CA to meet up with some of Matt's family.  

Everyone was so excited to meet our little Tatum, and she did so good being passed around to all the different family members.

Even Roy had a good time the next morning with Belle the dog. 

The next morning while hanging out with Matt's Aunt Teresa and cousin Jacob I got to borrow Jake's 50mm camera lens and drool...

Jacob also took some pictures and as he's light years ahead of me in photography skills I can't wait to see them!

Thursday (was that only yesterday?!) we headed to Matt's parents with a stop in Sacramento to see some more of my family.  The last time I'd seen most of them was our wedding! We had fun catching up, despite Tatum being a little grumpy.

Tatum thought Aunt Candy was pretty funny!

Beth and Dave (my in-laws) are both elementary school teachers, and today we went to their school to show off Tatum. 

And the rest of the day we have just rested.  Well, nursed, did laundry, made a cup of coffee, wrote a paragraph of this blog, held Tatum, changed the laundry, grabbed a bite, wrote another paragraph...you get the picture...

Sorry this was such a long overload, I'll try to do shorter blips for the rest of the trip!