July/August 2013

We are homeowners....again!

On July 26th, we closed on our new home in Hoover, AL.  Hoover is a large suburb about 25 minutes south of downtown Birmingham.  There are great schools in Hoover...the high school football team won the 6A Alabama state championship last year (football is a big thing here) and it is close to a lot of everyday things.  Within 10 minutes we can find Costco, Super Target, YMCA, Sam's, Publix, a mall, outdoor shopping, and tons of places to eat.  Our neighborhood is called, Trace Crossings, and within the neighborhood there are about 5 or 6 smaller subdivisions, doctor's offices, and the elementary/middle/and high school.  We live in a subdivision called Scout Creek.  Our subdivision is not gated, but we do have a playground and community pool which is super nice! 

The day after our house closing, Shawn and I drove to Atlanta for the weekend (only a 2.5 hour drive). This was planned months ago for Shawn's birthday and Granny had already planned on being here.  We only spent one night in Atlanta, but it was great!  This was the first night that Shawn and I had spent together away from Madelyn since she was born.  We have both been away from her for work events, but never together.  We enjoyed a Braves game, dinner a nice sushi place, brunch with my cousin, and lots of shopping for the new house.  Atlanta is the closest big city to Birmingham and lots of people drive over just to shop at the stores they don't have in AL (IKEA, Crate and Barrel, West Elm, etc.).  

We we so lucky to have Shawn's mom (Granny) in town for the week once we got back.  I had to take my music certification test to teach in Alabama (and I passed!) plus we had a whole crew painting our house before we moved in.  It was nice to be able to run around without having a toddler in tow.  

On Wednesday of that week the moving truck arrived from Florida and we were so happy to see our stuff again.  We had everything in storage for almost exactly 2 months.  After a week of getting the house settled, Granny went home, Shawn went back to work, and Maddie and I started our adventure together.

Maddie is doing so many new things....here are just some highlights...

• Talks up a storm!  She says so many things that are actually very clear and picks up on 2-3 words per day.  She also gets into these moods where she babbles on and on....she makes a whole string of stuff (adds in a mommy/daddy in there) and then says, "yeah" looking at you as if you should understand it all....too cute!
• Runs everywhere and spends a lot of time on her toes.  I don't believe that toddlers actually walk anywhere....everything has a little bounce!
• Follows directions very well (when she wants to).  She enjoys helping mommy do lots of things...puts laundry in the dryer, pushes the button to the coffee maker/washer/dryer, gives Noah food, puts things away.
• Tries to dress herself.  She can get the shirts on her head but get stuck when she tries to find where the arms go.  
• Is super STUBBORN!  She likes to try everything on her own and is very independent.  Once she gets frustrated enough she does say, "help"
• Call Granny "nay nay".  She never could say Granny, so she came up with her own name.
• Can be very bossy.  She enjoys telling us where to sit and when to sit (I think Noah taught her that).
• Points to all of the chairs at the kitchen table and tells us who's they are.  "Mommy chair, Daddy chair, Maddie chair, (to the empty chair) nay nay chair"
• Talks to everyone before going to sleep.  She still sleeps well, but sometimes she'll be up for 20 minutes talking to everyone in her crib.  
• Sleeps with 1 million stuffed animals.  Right now we have, da dog (we can't sleep without this!), Mimmie, E-O (the sock monkey), Elmo, Abby (Abby Cadabby), baby E-O (the smaller monkey).
• Says, "Sorry" a lot.  When she steps on Noah she says, "sorry Noah".  Bumps her head on the table "Sorry head", runs into something "sorry toe".  It actually quite funny!
• Has a new friend, Bella, that we met at story time.  She loves Bella and asks for her often.  Bella (Isabella) is one month younger and we have had many play dates with her and her mom, Jen.  Maddie gets so excited to see her and then asks for days after about "ba".
• Is working on sharing.  Most times she is very good about sharing and then there are lots of times that she just takes things and yells, "mine"!   
• Enjoys the pool.  Since we have a pool in the community, I have been taking her there a few afternoons a week to get use to the water.  So far she really enjoys the water.
• Loves animals!  She loves any dog we see and absolutely loved the zoo.  All we heard was, "more zoo"
• Says "yeah" all the time.  "more cheese, yeah"  "more toast, yeah" "more pata (pasta), yeah"
• Loves cheese, toast, pasta, and yogurt -- carbs and dairy!  We have to be careful what we say around her.  She also loves to snack..."nack, nack, nack!"
• Loves to dunk anything in anything!!  She will dunk anything in some Greek yogurt.  It's hard to eat things in front of her and sometimes we forget, so we give her very small amounts of things we are eating if she sees them (syrup, ketchup, etc.)  Recently she loves hummus or as she says, "hummis"
• Loves to sing!  She especially loves Raffi.  My Aunt Anne sent Maddie 2 Raffi CDs and they play non-stop in the car.  When we go in the car now she asks for "Raffi".  Maddie knows many of the words.  She also tells me "no" when it's a song she doesn't like.  This happens when I sing too!
• Knows the words to almost all of her books.  She will end every phrase in the books we read. 
• Loves Elmo, Abby, Minnie Mouse, and Curious George
• Has a name for every song we sing....sunshine = You are my Sunshine, bee song, turtle song, things = My Favorite Things, zoo, Mr. Sun, sea = Baby Beluga. 
• Loves to turn the radio on and dance.  She knows exactly what button to press, so she just goes and turns it on.  :)
• Is so animated and makes such great faces...it's hard to share her cute growing personality on this blog.  She is so smart, talkative, interactive, and just a wonderful girl. Shawn and I spend many nights just laughing out loud because she is so funny!  She feeds off of the attention and puts on even more of a show! 

Here are some of the pictures from this past month...

Shawn and I at the Atlanta Braves game.  This was Shawn's birthday present from May.

Vinny's pizza made us think of our old neighbor and friend, Vinny-B! ;)

My cousin Jeff and his daughter, Zuzu!  Zuzu is exactly 6 months older than Maddie.  We haven't seen Jeff and Liz since our wedding, so it was really nice to get together.

This is how you eat lunch on moving day when there are no chairs!

Granny did a great job of keeping Maddie occupied while we set up the house.

Bob, our retired neighbor from 2 houses down, was very excited that we moved in.   

Maddie doing a little coloring at her new table. 

Sidewalk chalk at the library

Snack time!

Lunch at the park

Breakfast at the little table

Cheesy toast...one of Maddie's favorite.  

This banana saved the day in the grocery store!  Poor Maddie thinks that the Publix baggers are stealing our food when it goes into the bags.  We are working on the concept, buy before eating. 

Mommy and me!

Lunch after playtime at Wee Flip

We had lunch in the little plaza where the kid's gym is.  Maddie love this fountain.  It makes you stop and appreciate the smaller things in life when you watch the world through your children's eyes.

The fountain was the highlight of the afternoon!

Maddie loves to push the stroller!

Watching the Zebras

The lion...this was one of Maddie's favorite

Lunchtime at the Zoo

The morning that Maddie refused to wear anything except her Minnie PJ top....ugh!

We made oatmeal raisin cookies one morning as our activity.  I think Shawn is really getting spoiled. ;)

Adding the raisins

Blueberry pancakes from scratch for breakfast

Blueberry time

Lunch at the park

Yay PB&J

This is Maddie's drawer.  Anyone that really knows me, knows that it's a big accomplishment for me to have a drawer in my house that looks like this! 

Sidewalk chalk after dinner with dad

Reading the Big Hungry Bear for the 20th time that day...Thanks Courtney and Philip!

Maddie likes to be held like a baby

Hummus!

Wearing a bow. :)

Lunchtime at the  park

Swing...or as Maddie says, "wing...wee"

Helping with the laundry

Such a good helper!

Career Change

With the new move to Alabama, my immediate thought was that I would just go get a job here like I had in Orlando.  Well, that was much easier said than done.  With Maddie, my need to keep a clean house, meals on the table, and clean laundry in the closet, I really wanted to work close to home.  My original thought was that I would find a job and then we would look for a house, but with such a narrow field being a music teacher, that was a difficult task.  Alabama also requires that you be certified in their state (no temporary certification available like Florida) and they don't have reciprocity with Florida.  Even with a valid Florida certificate and 8 years of successful teaching experience, I was required to take all of the teacher certification exams for Alabama.  The subject test was not available until July 29th and school started on August 12th, which made finding a school to interview me very difficult.  I sent my resume to many principals and applied for every music job that opened up (which was only about 5 and only 1 of them was band).  After we decided to just go ahead and buy a house in an area we liked, I got a call from a principal wanting to interview me for an elementary music position.  The interview went very well and the principal called me a few days later to ask me to come in again.  The only problem was that I had already made a plan in my head for staying home.  I had drawn up a budget, thought of activities I could do with Maddie, etc.  Suddenly having a job opportunity here really made things tough.  I never saw myself as a stay at home mom and not because I didn't want to, but because I have always thought I could do everything and I have never been very good at saying "no".  Well, I did.  I have turned in my baton for the diaper bag!  Teachers started back to work yesterday, so I am officially employed as a stay at home mom (SAHM as it referred to in the biz).  I joined my first mom's group today and I am getting out there trying to make new friends for myself and for Maddie.  It's been a very different experience for me and I am trying to stay in the loop of the working world, so I can still have something for myself.  So far I am less stressed and I have more time for my family, so I guess that's good.


Christina

We moved to Alabama!

Sweet Home Alabama!  Welcome to the newest edition of "Christina tries to blog!"

I am hoping to be able to keep everyone up to date with what we are doing now that we have moved to the Magic City and officially know like 2 people. :)

How did we get here...

Well if anyone knows my husband, he is very ambitious (what I love and don't love about him all at the same time).  He has always been curious to put his resume out and now that he finished his CPCU (remember our Vegas trip) and his masters, he had the resume to do it.  After listening to me talk about my lack of job satisfaction, he asked if he could put his resume out and I said yes (thinking nothing much would come of it).  Well within weeks he had multiple job interviews (I guess I was in denial).  We really thought we'd end up in Atlanta, but when an opportunity came to go to Birmingham we decided to just go for it.  Birmingham is only 4 hours from Shawn's family and he has a cousin here, so this seemed like a good place to go.  Everything happened so fast.  Shawn accepted the job on April 30th, we put our house on the market May 1st,  sold our house on May 3rd, Shawn moved to B'ham on May 18th, and now we are all here!  There was a 4 week period where I stayed to finish the school year in Orlando and Shawn was up here.  Luckily, we had help from friends, neighbors, and my mom. The end of the year is always busy with band concerts, cleaning, closing out the year, and not to mention the four baby showers I had in a five week time period!  After turning in my keys to my classroom and our house, I was finally able to focus on all things Alabama.   Maddie, Noah and I drove up here on June 22nd to put our family back together.  We all lived with Shawn's wonderful cousin, Jennifer and her husband Brett while we looked for a house.  The first week was very overwhelming and I decided to go from "find a job" mode to "find a house" mode.  I finally put together a huge list of houses and just started driving around town everyday.  After narrowing things down, we did a one day all out house hunt.  Maddie wasn't as thrilled with the idea of going into house after house as we were. :)  The third house we went into was the first one that we both really liked and became the one we compared everything else to.  After the day was over we had our top three, but kept coming back to the third house we saw.   We went back to the house two more times and decided to finally put an offer in. The house had been vacant for a few years and on/off the market due to the health of the owner who had passed away from cancer.  Her daughters were selling it from Georgia and I think they were just happy that it found new owners.

We closed on our new house on July 26th and moved in on July 31st.  Now that we have internet, I can post some pictures of our new house, the changes we already have done, and of course our sweet Maddie Claire.  (I guess it was meant to be when we gave Madelyn a Southern nickname)

Y'all come back now!

Christina