Back in the Saddle of Blogging

Whoa, I cannot be more behind in my blogging and so much has happened in the past several months, so I am picking a day to start again, letting the months in between go. If I ever find the time to go back to those months I will but for now I will touch on a few highlights up to the day before our second child entered this world. January 23.

The first is not a highlight, but a confirmation that it was time to get out of Venice... December 5th we discovered that Jimmy our homeless neighbor for the last 7.5 years had died.

Sidewalk memorial for Jimmy, we spotted it walking down our street to the farmer's market, right where Jimmy's brown van was always parked. We knew immediately he must have died. We got the details by Jon talking to some other homeless people in the neighborhood, he had been hospitalized with pneumonia and was found in his van just days after being discharged. Quincy will always miss Jimmy's belly rubs.

We signed the papers on our new house in December 3rd and closed on our new house December 8th.

Closing day - the keys were finally ours!

I went out on early maternity leave after chest pain landed me in the CHLA ER and SM-UCLA L&D... (let's be honest: stress-related) in mid-December. I semi-successfully french-braided Avery's hair for the first time.

We celebrated Hannukah and Christmas.

Avery lit the Hannukah candles herself every night after saying the prayer. She is growing up!

Rugelach for Santa
Happiness Christmas morning

The moving truck came to Rose avenue Jan 7th. We spent our first night in Redondo Beach that night, very very late that night after moving all day and going back to clean Rose that night.
Grancy stayed with Avery that first night without heat and I couldn't sleep at all on our new mattress in our new house with new strange lights outside and new noises.

Last meal at 544 Rose #3, PB&J and Whole Foods salads

Grancy and Avery on the way our new park moving day afternoon

Avery did great with the transition, never looking back, happy to sleep on the floor for a week before we found a special big girl bed on Craigslist.
Pretty new bed.

We settled in like crazy for the next 2.5 weeks. We unpacked the last boxes around Jan 21st.

Jan 15th: We went to check out our new pier, Hermosa pier. I barely made it back up the hill to the car!

Jan 20th: Avery and I went to Mission Viejo to see Grancy and met up with some very special high school friends at the park. They were all so sweet to meet us there. Amy, Shalimar and 2 of her kids Wyatt and Amaiah, & Amanda (and some random kid at the park).

On Jan 23rd GG arrived to hopefully be around to take care of Avery if I went into labor. Originally she was coming Jan 25th but I decided the 23rd would be better; what a fortuitous decision. We all finished cleaning up the garage that afternoon, scrubbing old baby toys/swing/etc. That night both cars were parked in the garage for the first time. I had a feeling labor was coming so I took a nice shower and did my hair at 8 pm and at 930 pm, when I lied down to rest, my contractions were 2-7 minutes apart. Around 1130 pm we headed to the hospital, relieved that GG was there to be with our sweet girl. We went in to say goodbye to her, that we were going to the hospital because the baby was coming and she didn't say a word, just got a big smile on her face and went back to sleep.