Postvillllle. Sigh.

Hello everyone. We have survived phase one of our move. Getting here. Moving into our house is another story. It's been sitting empty for quite a few months now so I wanted an exterminator to come through, just clean up any 'squatters' who may have been enjoying the place! One would assume that I would have taken care of this before getting out here. That would have been smart. That would have been the efficient way to do things. I, obviously, did not. So, tomorrow, a week after getting into town, is the first day available to have the place treated, and of course the best thing to do is wait 24 hours after such a treatment. So we have gone from my mother's house in New York to my father's house in Iowa! We'll be here for Shavuos and then we can start putting our stuff in the house.
Well, first we'll have to go through and give the place a once-over, cleaning-wise, and then we can start moving in! We have a few projects we want to do over the summer. For one, I would like to paint the two bedrooms that we will be using. I would really like to make a nice room for Benny and likewise for ourselves! We haven't really been able to lay claims to any place yet since we've been married and we know we're here for at least two years. Why not really make it feel like home!
So I've been eying paint colors and trying to decide which way to go! We've also been fantasy shopping at Walmart a few times. Similar to window shopping, where you come home with nothing. But in the land of fantasy shopping, you can afford whatever you want. We are going to have one heckava place in this fantasy world!!!!!
The good news is, everything we own is now local. No more saying, 'Oh we have that in our boxes in Postville!'. And all of our New York stuff made it out today, so we REALLY have everything!!!
Alright, Benny has started this fun new schedule. He goes to sleep at a normal hour, usually between 7 and 8, depending on how his naps went during the day. Obviously, that is affecting what time he wakes up. Gone are the days of sleeping until 10 or 11. Hello 6:30-7. Hello birds chirping. Hello crack of dawn. Hello Shuky. Here's Benny.
I would like to create a snooze button for my child!
And now, being that it's 10 and Benny has been asleep for a while, I guess I should hit the sack as well!
Good night to one and all.
Oh, before I go, we would like to extend an open invitation to ANYONE who wants to come out for a visit, it's really beautiful here!!!!!!! And we finally have tons of space for guests!

What a Day!

I never thought getting to the airport could be such an ordeal as it was for us today! I got up at 6 to finish packing and get our carry-ons ready. Sruly picked us up around 8:45-9. We stopped at our old place first to grab something we forgot. The roads are all being redone so two blocks took almost ten minutes to drive! Then we stopped at Buncho for some to-go food and coffee. Another 15 minutes or so. And then we were off to LaGuardia!

So, merging onto the Grand Central from the Jackie Robinson, there was a van coming fast that we didn't see so we both ended up stopping short. The driver of the van was BEYOND pissed! Let's just say that even though both our windows and his windows were closed, we were able to hear the profanities quite clearly! He let us go and that was that.

Or so we thought. We were joking around about it and the van passes by to see us all laughing. I don't think that was the reaction he was looking for. Instantly, he went into crazy mode! He slows down, hoping we will pull up right next to him. Which wasn't something any of us were interested in doing, so we slowed down too. At this point, we are both pretty much stopped in our lanes, everyone around us is honking as two of the four lanes are being blocked up by this man's road rage issues! We moved over to be in his lane behind him so he switches to our previous lane. Back and forth a few times. Mr. Van is driving erratically, we're all really nervous. Sruly notices a cop in the far left lane and quickly pulls up next to them to get their attention. They stop to talk to us, Sruly explains what happened and asks for help. The cop tells us to get behind her and off we go. She speeds up with us in tow, takes us past the van and keeps driving with us. We see the van speeding up, swerving in and out and around all the cars. We start honking at the cop and pull up next to her letting her know what he's doing. She sends us in front of her and keeps the rear. Stays with us until our exit, where we SPEED off, hoping he won't see and follow. He didn't, thank G-d! We told Sruly to call when he got home!!! (He made it fine :) )

Off to the adventure of making it through the airport. After checking in at the last minute, we headed off to security. I walked through the wrong line and got yelled at. No biggie. We went back to the beginning of the line and waited 'like everyone else'. We gwt to the front and go to give our tickets and ID and realize the agent never gave us Shuky's ticket! So I continued through with Benny and he went back to get it. The workers saw what happened and helped me out to the gate. Shuky had a nice argument with the ticket agent, who, for some reason, was taking it personally! She finally printed his ticket and when the security guys saw Shuky they pulled him through super fast.
We made it onto the plane, enjoyed our stopover in Chicago and just left Rochester.
Oh, they lost my stroller too. Fun times, fun times!

So long, farewell

Our last day in New York. Just went to Ikea with Melissa, fell in love with everything I saw, planning a trip to Minneapolis already! Got a cute bag for our pool stuff for the summer! All we have left to do is pack what we're traveling with and we're good to go!

Last night, we went with Benny and Zaidy to 'Carlos & Gabby's', a great Mexican restaurant on Coney. It was awesome; the great kitchy decorations, the huge sombrero sticking out of the storefront, delicious food! They had little mariachi-style instruments for kids to play with which Benny obviously loved!

So, on another note, I've been slowly getting my name around as a 'baby genious' of sorts. I've been doing consultations, helping people find the right products for their needs, within their budgets. I'd like to start charging soon, for now I'm letting people see that I'm good at it. Hopefully they will refer me to their friends! I'm still treying to figure out rates and things so if anyone has feedback, what would you be willing to pay for such a service? I can help you with anything, from small to large, give you comparisons if you want choices, order for you if necessary...I've already helped a few people pick out strollers and they've all come back to me with help getting other items! And so far, only happy results!
I'm also trying to come up with a cute name for the service, so any suggestions?

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

Well, they're not packed but we're working on it! We made our tickets, we leave Wednesday, May 20th. Whodathunkit. Back to Iowa. Craziness.

We're still based out of my mom's place. We just couldn't see Benny crawling around on that floor, even though it's been cleaned very well and is definitely sanitized at this point!

Anyway, we're off to our apartment to get a-packing!

Goodbyeeeeeee

So, even though our apartment was cleaned really well, I just can't see Benny crawling on that floor anymore. Something about floating poop and him putting things in his mouth, you may understand a bit of why I'm feeling what I'm feeling! Basically, we're heading back to Iowa next week hopefully.

Heading out to Monsey now for the next few days, get our goodbyes and come-visits out of the way!!

Wish me luck!

Welcome Home!

We had a great second week in California. So busy that I barely had time to check my email, let alone write here. We visited with a lot of people, lunch and the park with Tia Luba, amazing steaks with Shmuly, Micki, and Mendy, Orange Delight with Aliyah,  lunch and a great shmooze with Tia Olga, a very exciting visit to Tante Russia with Tia Miriam and Arielle, and much more!

Tante Russia is my grandmother's aunt. She is the sister of the woman I was named after, my great grandmother, Chana Berdicewsky. Between her and Benny are 5 generations!! She was so happy to get to meet Benny!! 

We had a great bbq at Gardner Park, or Pan Pacific as they pretend to call it...nice turnout of people! 

I was pretty worried about the way back home. Going out, I had help, which was amazing! Firstly, Burbank is definitely the way to go, everyone is so extremely helpful there!!! I got the only empty seat on the plane so that I could bring on the carseat. Benny didn't take his morning nap so he fell asleep like 20 minutes into the flight! Everyone around me fell in love with him and offered a million times to take him and give me a break (I thanked them all but politely turned down the offers). The flight attendants all came to talk to him whenever he was awake! I let him crawl around the aisle for a good 20 minutes and he ended up eating with me and playing for a bit and then going back to sleep until we landed! In the middle of all that, we did have a diaper explosion and of course forgot to take the change of clothes from my bag. Had to wake up the nice guy sitting next to us to get the bag. Brought the wrong bag. Woke Mr. Aisle Seat up again. Got the correct bag. Changed the little monster who does not sit still for ANYTHING! 

All in all, California was great, the trip was great (a bit long but great), there were a few celebrities on the flight with us - Neil Patrick Harris, Juliette Lewis, and one other guy I can't remember his name...

Shuky made the most AMAZING lasagna for me for dinner and we sat and ate our delicious food with Benny at home finally! Not long after, we were sitting on the couch, just watching some stuff on our laptop. I pulled out all of Benny's new toys for him to play with and tire himself out with. All of a sudden, Shuky started yelling and pointing to the door. Water was gushing in from under the front door. I grabbed Benny off the floor and ran into the bedroom. We kept Benny on the bed and ran around like madmen, grabbing electronics off the floor and any valuables we saw...Shuky called our landlord who came running down instantly. At this point, we had realized that this is very special water we now had in our large indoor pool. This was sewer water, with proof of residency. Not to be too disgusting but we now know what our neighbors have been eating for the past few days! Ok, so maybe that was too disgusting. 

It went from the front of our apartment well into the back. Stopped through the bedrooms to say hi. Ruined all of Benny's new toys. Stuffed animals, food sets, a million pacifiers that were apparently under our beds (been looking for those!!). My box of maternity clothes got all wet. We had towels that were drenched. Blankets that went for a swim. It was a mess. We packed up what we needed for the night and my mom came to pick us up. Today, we went back with masks and gloves and tried to clean up as best as possible. All the clothes and linens were thrown into garbage bags and dropped off at the local laundromat. We moved all the surviving things into the other side of the basement (our landlord has a little studio-type apartment that they use for the kids and guests). A cleaner came in to the apartment when we finished and chemically treated the entire place. We will be temporarily residing at 770 Lefferts once again until after Shabbos, at which point we will see if the chemical treatment was succesful or if the place needs more work done. Yay us!

In the meantime, for anyone who has not yet heard, Shuky is officially a student once again. We will be moving back to Postville in the first week of June (or sooner, depending on the status of our apartment), g-d willing, and come August 20th, Shuky will be in college. Our goal is to knock out our first two years in Iowa and then move somewhere with a school that has a good program for Shuky (computer science) and a good school for Benny!

It was amazing seeing everyone these past two weeks. It's great to be back!