Hope in the War Zone

The DAndiKai's are getting pretty excited... only 3 days until they leave for America for their 3 week vacation. That vacation is DESPERATELY needed for all of them. Andi and Kai can't stand the apartment anymore and Dan is getting burnt out on work. Fingers are starting to tap in impatience to get going, even if that means a 12 hour plane ride with a 3 month old baby. Just get us out of here!

Unfortunately for Andi's sanity, going home means packing, and packing means an explosion of stuff EVERYWHERE in the apartment. Yesterday you could not have seen the floor in the tatami room and by the evening, the living room had been fully contaminated as well. Piles of Kai's out-grown clothes, extra yarn that Andi's going to save at home for later, decorations that we don't want to have to move next year, and things that we had borrowed from family and need to return made a completely new landscape much to Kai's delight. It made Andi want to pull out her hair.

Thankfully we got that all packed up and are now down to just clothing and travel stuff. Andi told Dan that he wasn't allowed to go back to work if the apartment still looked like a war zone. If he had, he would not come home to a very sane wife and as a result have a pretty crabby baby on his hands too! So two suitcases are standing packed and ready to go, we have two clean bathrooms, and only a small pile of dishes in the kitchen (instead of the mountain it would have been). We will probably get to packing the clothing Tuesday (maybe if we feel up to it, we'll start on it tonight). The bomb rubble has been mostly removed from the floor. Today's challenge is to get the laundry down (hanging in the tatami room to dry over night) and wash up sheets and towels. Boring stuff, really, but fully necessary. Andi wants to come home to a clean apartment if at all possible.

The exciting, non-mundane things that happened yesterday involved Kai: he finally figured out how to buzz his lips! We've been blowing raspberries at him and buzzing our lips and rolling our R's for him (amidst a variety of ridiculous noises to keep him happy and distracted) and he's been thinking REALLY hard about it. He's gotten close before, but yesterday something clicked and he just buzzed away with his little lips. The result was a face (and onesie) full of bubbly-saliva and a very proud baby boy! He was so funny though -- as soon as Dan did it back to him he stopped and got this look like, "Hey, I didn't know anyone was LISTENING!" But after he ate dinner (milk, as usual) he finished and started talking to Mommy. And then he showed her that he could do it. Heart-melting, let me tell you!

The other very exciting development is that Kai started pushing his body up off Daddy's chest during "tummy-time." Kai HATES laying on his belly and usually just cries and cries, so Dan and Andi have had to get creative and figured out if we put Kai on our shins or chest (while laying on their backs, of course) he doesn't seem to mind it as much. Still comes in little doses, but it's progress. Anyway, because of his lack of tummy-time he can't push himself up. We're convinced he's going to walk before he'll crawl. So yesterday's push-up was a very exciting, relieving moment for Mommy! Good Job Kai!!

So it is off to the chores of the day... Dan's out the door for work at elementary school, Kai is cooing at the laundry in his room, and Andi is wondering what to eat for breakfast. It's going to be a good day... 3 days till take off (but who's counting?)