New normal

Today begins my "new" normal. We are now settled into my parents' home. It's a nice three bedroom townhouse is a peaceful Coconut Creek neighborhood -- a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. While adding four people to my parents' quiet life is a lot for them, and the space in their home does not run in abundance, we have plenty of room to make this work for seven more weeks. Abigail is sleeping in a pack-n-play in the guest room with me, and the boys are sleeping on a mattress on the floor in my parents' office. When the baby gets here, she and I will occupy the downstairs living room for the two weeks before we return to the Azores. JB will take over my spot with Abigail upstairs, and the boys will continue to share their full size bed. (By the way, we always put them on beds sideways so as to maximize their space -- something we can keep doing until they get too tall.)

 

Today looked a little like this:

• Boys awake about 5:30am (hang out with grandparents -- thank goodness!)
• Me awake about 6:30am
• Abigail awake about 7:30am
• Parents leave for work about 8:00am
• Go to park two blocks from my parents' house 9:00am
• Go to pool in my parents' neighborhood 10:00am
• Sidge shuts sliding glass door and locks me out of my parents house at 11:00am (Thank goodness I could talk them through opening the front door for me!)
• Eat lunch
• At noon, Abigail naps and boys and I relax with some cartoons in the living room
• Hardest time of the day, no surprise, is 2-5pm while we wait for Grama and Grampa to get home.

 

Both of my parents work full-time. I thought my dad would be going into work later while I am here, but alas, that is not the case. So basically, I am running this show solo just like I do back at home.

 

JB's parents live about twenty minutes from my parents. They are down a vehicle right now so Mom K.will get over here to hang out with me as much as she can. I'll also head to her house now and then.

 

Joni (Isaac's birth grandmother) is out of town. This is sad for me in the sense that I'd love her to be her. But it's good for me in the fact that we are borrowing her vehicle. She returns mid-August. She'll be here to hang out with us for a week before she heads to Vermont with Isaac! I'll write more about this later, but basically, Isaac's birth great-grandfather (who is 94) really wants to meet Isaac, and we feel like this is something he needs to have the opportunity to do.

 

We have other family here too. My brother and his wife AD and their two girls came by to see us last night. They live about an hour from here.

 

JB's brother Ray and his wife Gabbi along with their two children live right around the corner.

 

In addition, John's brother Matt lives about an hour from here with his wife Danielle.

 

So there are a lot of people to hang out with and see while we are here. We are still a little off jet-lag-wise (boys are getting up close to five a.m.) but generally speaking, we are doing very well. I am feeling as good as can be expected for 34 weeks pregnant, and excited to meet this little girl.