Sunday, August 1, 2010

Month 5 recap

Note: Again, I'm just reposting what I wrote in another forum at this time in Nora's life.

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It appears that Nora is also an aspiring rock climber--she's always headed for the high ground. She's especially good at climbing her dad--she pushes off his belly with her feet and uses his beard as a rope.





Nora doesn't sleep more than a few hours at a time. During the day, she will sleep at most 45 minutes on her own. She cries without waking up, and if I am there to comfort her, she'll sleep for several hours. At night, she will occasionally sleep for 3 or 4 hours, but most nights she is crying every 1-2 hours. She seldom opens her eyes all the way during those times, but she cries and cries, until I feed her. Is that really a learned thing? She really seems hungry.



 I just caught Nora trying to pull herself up on the windowsill from the back of the couch. Home girl is STRONG!




Wow. I am more exhausted than I've been...maybe ever. Last night was my fourth in a row of 5 hours of (heavily interrupted, narcoleptic) sleep, followed by stressful days of teaching, moving related shenanigans, and taking care of Nora. Yesterday we sent Nora off to her Aunt/Uncle/cousin for a few hours, and while we did get about 1000x more done without her, it was almost worse to not have her around to keep us company. I guess that's true love for you. Yesterday the packers came, and magically transformed our house full of stuff into a house full of boxes. Today the movers come and put it all in a truck. Tonight is last dinner with the Detroit family. Tomorrow we try to take care of the quintillion things that have to be done before we leave. Saturday we load the baby, cats, and a weeks worth of stuff into our car and a rented van and drive down to Pittsburgh. My feelings on that vary depending on how recently I've woken up. 

One really cool thing to balance out the above: we had to inventory all of the items in our house that are worth more than $100/pound. It turns out that there aren't many things that fit into that category, because many things are expensive but heavy. The exception in our case was artwork. As we cataloged our unframed artwork, it became clear what our main indulgence is. We have over 100 major works on paper (not counting my own artwork). Going through it all was lovely, and renewed our resolve to get more of it framed for the new house. We've been working on it slowly over time, but it's time to step it up.

Also, the most valuable item in our home? A library book from the University of Michigan from the 1880s. It is one of two books that first promoted posters as an art form. Ross got it from the vault, which the place where they put books that don't get used very often--a kind of storage facility. We've had it for 5 years now. It's never been reissued and currently goes for about $5000. I feel like it should be in special collections, rather than in a storage facility, badly bound and falling apart. Perhaps we'll contact special collections before we return it.




****PITTSBURGH!****




Our younger cat, Roxy, puts up with no shit from anyone. Except the baby, who can pull her ears and suck on her tail. Just when I think I have that cat figured out...