As you can see, she is nicely entranced. We were inspired to get this swing by our visit to Colorado, when Susan let us borrow a swing. It did wonders for extending her naps and allowing us a little baby holding break. The lights and mobile are more for when she is awake. ;)
The other thing we used quite a bit in Colorado was a bouncy chair. This was great for active/play time because she could be upright but still relax. The bouncing motion seemed quite soothing to her as well. She fell asleep the first time we put her in it. Of course, that never happened again, but she seemed to like it all the same.
So, mommy went on the hunt for a nice bouncy chair. Of course, Baby Bjorn has fabulous chairs. The thing I liked about them were that they didn’t have the bells and whistles that the swing had (gotta have less stimulating options) and they kept her more upright, which I think helps with the whole spitting up extravaganza. The thing I didn’t like about them was the pricetag! Holy balls on a stick! Those suckers are expensive. Of course, they say you can use them until the kid is about 28 lbs, which is into toddlerhood (more as a chair than a bouncer at that point). Anyhoots, I was able to pick up a gently used one for much cheaper. She’s not super into it, but she’ll sit in it and look at the toy bar and such. As is evinced here:

See that dislike of having her photo taken? Yeah, she gets that from me. She doesn’t smile in this chair as much as her other ones. I wonder if that’s because the toys are less interactive. She really likes when I move her toys and make them talk to her. Or the mobiles–those are a big hit. These toys just sit there. Three little wooden bears. Since she’s not quite able to reach out and bat them, they don’t really do much for her. She’ll watch them for a while when we spin them, but they’re just not as fun.

Well, Liora certainly has a lot of stuff. I guess it’s nice that we’ll have stuff to pass on to her sibling in the future. (Farther into the future–keep your pants on, grandparents.) Or to lend to other people. It seems like there are tons of babies popping up all over the place. On our block there are 13 kids with 2 more due by September. Liora sure will have a lot of friends if we stay in this neighborhood!

Luckily Loki didn’t seem to mind her using him as a pillow… for about 3 seconds. Then he ran away. Plenty of time for a super-cute photo op!

Here’s a pic from our lunch time. I think she really liked being outside.

Tonight, we decided we should probably give our little stinky baby a bath.

Her reaction to the bath can be summed up pretty nicely in this one picture:

Actually, she kinda liked it, unless she got chilly. Then we would just turn on the tap and give her a bit of a shower from it. That calmed her down very nicely. She did great and we were able to get her nice and clean. Atkins gave her a little lotion rub afterwards, I fed her and she fell asleep nicely.

Stay tuned for more Liora adventures! I am sure we’ll get some pics of her in the airport and on the plane as well. :)

I took these pics today. She is becoming even more aware of the world around her. It started with the mobile (in the video below) and our faces. Now you can really tell that she’s focusing and reaching for things. Atkins said she can even see the dragonfly mobile above the crib now. It’s so amazing how far she has come in a relatively short amount of time! A month brings an incredible amount of development for a wee baby.

Let us know what you think!

So, here’s some pics. I also tried a couple of panorama shots, so I’ll set those up up front. It’s easier to see how everything comes together. These are taken from opposite corners. It’s a pretty small room, though, so there’s a lot of overlap. The camera couldn’t get everything, which is why I took some other pics as well.

Here are other pics taken with a little more height so you can more easily see the decoration.

Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to put pictures side-by-side on this damn blog, so you’ll have to deal with them as-is. ;) You can click on each one and bring up a slightly bigger version, so you should be able to see some good detail.

So, you may have noticed that I said the nursery is ALMOST 100% done. What could possibly be left, you must be asking yourself. haha. Or not. Maybe you didn’t even see that. Anyway, the only think I’d like to do is put the baby’s name up over the crib on the wall. Yes, I know, everyone is doing it, but I don’t care. I think it’s cute. Well, the only thing stopping me from doing it is that we don’t have a baby yet! :) Once the baby comes, I’ll work on getting that done. That means it’ll probably happen in the next 6 months or so. Considering that I’ll be a tad busy there for a while. haha.

Hopefully the next blog post will show Pickle on the outside of the tummy. I’m 5 days overdue as of this post, so it really should be any day now. :)
Keep an eye on the blog! (I’ll probably have Atkins type a little something up as I will likely be sleeping.)

It was also difficult to find places to go see. I searched many online listings and found decent places. We decided to use an agent to find our dream apartment, so we looked on this agency’s website. This is when we were introduced to the fact that apartments are renting damn fast. I perused the site, and found 22 properties. A lot of them looked amazing, and some of them looked pretty good. When it came time to see these listings, I was told that all but 4 of them were rented. And three of those were not what we were looking for (i.e. crapholes).

So, disheartened by lack of a good apartment, we drove up to the last place on the schedule for the morning. I liked the street immediately: one-way, tree-lined, quiet. Okay, so the El is right behind the property, but it’s not all that loud.
We go inside and immediately I can tell that this place is a cut above all the others. It’s a three-bedroom with new kitchen, bathroom, hardwood floors, and laundry in the unit. Yay! Here are a few pics. I didn’t take any on my tour because the real estate agent told me there was a virtual tour online. (Had I looked at the quality of that tour, I would have just taken my own pics, but c’est la vie. Here’s the link though it may be taken down soon)

This is the living room, looking into the sun porch. This is the front of the building.

This is the absolutely huge dining room. We’re not sure what we’re going to do with it yet.

Nice, bright kitchen with a dishwasher. ;)

There are a lot of cool things about this place that aren’t apparent even in the virtual tour: there is a little brick patio in the back where we can have our grill. We may be able to do a little bit of gardening as well, though our landlord seems to maintain the flowers around the patio. We’ll have to see about that. And, there is enough space for a guest room! Yeah, there’s only one bathroom, but at least you’d have a nice room to yourself when you come visit!
Okay, so it’s not the perfect place: there is no central AC, no garage spot, and it’s more expensive with fewer amenities than our previous place. The hardwood floors and first-floor location make it a little noisy (as does the El), but we think it’s all worth it for the location! It’s really close to Lincoln Square, which has a lot of fun shops, restaurants, and a movie theater. We will be able to walk to the El in about 3 minutes, and Atkins’s work is only 4 stops down the line. Near to Atkins’s work (3 stops down) is an art studio/cafe where I am thinking about taking some classes this summer. It will be much more convenient and safer than going from Edgewater to Lincoln Park and then traveling back at 10 pm.

In short (too late) we are super excited about the move! That does mean, though, that we are going to have to put the anniversary party on the back burner. In fact, it will probably just become a housewarming party once we are all settled in. What does this mean for our first anniversary? Well, it may mean that we are going to be celebrating with wine and pizza in our new place surrounded by boxes.
That sounds pretty good to me! :D

]]> http://www.tanda.im/2009/05/we-have-a-new-place/feed/ 0 http://www.tanda.im/2008/10/amazing-photos-from-the-distant-past/ http://www.tanda.im/2008/10/amazing-photos-from-the-distant-past/#comments Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:18:41 +0000 Atkins http://www.tanda.im/2008/10/amazing-photos-from-the-distant-past/ Over the last couple of weeks I’ve slowly been pushing out all the photos I have on my computer to my flickr account. I’ve been pretty good about posting newer photos on flickr but now there is a lot of older stuff too.

Some of my new sets that people might find interesting are: Germany, San Francisco, San Antonio, Puerto Vallerta, Las Vegas and Glenwood Springs.

For a broader look at the photos I have online check out my flickr collections.

Anubis watches Atkins.