We moved a mountain this month! Okay, we just moved into our new house after doing some light renovations. But we did it all with a 2-month old baby, which is what makes it a mountain. It’s going to be a long time before I’m ready to eat another frozen pizza!

We’re not just burning the candle at both ends, we’re also burning it like three places in the middle too. We spent the month traveling between our apartment and our house, four days at the apartment then a three day weekend at the house. During the week we’d get as much work and general life admin stuff done as we could, then during the weekends we’d bust our butts painting the kitchen, building new countertops, installing flooring, redoing bathrooms, or whatever else we could find time for. All the while, we’re getting up a couple times a night with an infant, and then following a eat/play/sleep schedule that repeats every two hours during the day. It’s been a lot.

Here’s a milestone we’re weirdly excited about: we’ve been offering Atlas the oball to play with almost daily and he just didn’t seem to have any interest. Then one day he grabbed it. With both hands. And immediately put it in his mouth. Ever since that day he’s been playing with it like he’s been doing it his whole life.

I got a better shot of one of our black squirrel neighbors. That thing has talons! No wonder they’re so good at climbing trees.

Mid-month we got our first snow! It was beautiful. And terrible. I’m not ready for snow yet. This is our new back yard!

It also snowed at our apartment, and our lone release dove snuggled up to the inner corners of our roof to stay warm.

I may not be ready for snow, but this guy sure looks ready! (He’ll probably be less excited once he learns what snow is!)

As we got ready to move in, I collected a houseplant or two. Then some neighbors gave away their ferns. Then Amy told me about a big sale on plants. Suddenly we have a whole jungle of tropical houseplants. It’s so bad that I had to make a spreadsheet just to keep track of what conditions they need to thrive. In addition to the plants in the photo below, I also have seven more plants in small pots. Yeah. It’s bad.

We all got shots this month. Atlas got his two-month shots, and he handled it way better than I expected. Kyle and I got flu shots and covid booster shots.

The end of the month brought the final mega challenge: moving out of our apartment, attending Thanksgiving with family, and moving into our house.

We brought a big truckload to the house the weekend before Thanksgiving. This is a trip that has to be carefully timed in between Atlas’ feeds, and if we drive separately we have to try to make it from awake to napping without having a meltdown. I had to pull off the freeway on a couple of these trips to soothe a crying baby, but he seemed to get better the more we traveled (fun fact! It was the same exit every time. At least he’s predictable?).

On Wednesday we headed back to our apartment and started disassembling furniture. In order to fit everything in two trucks, we had to disassemble everything as far as it would break down. On Thanksgiving morning, my parents arrived at our apartment and we filled up their truck. Then they carried on to my uncle and aunt’s house, where we all gathered for a wonderful Thanksgiving meal. I forgot to take any relevant photos, but Atlas often prefers his play mat rather than being held, so I dropped him off in the living room while I got a house tour. By the time I grabbed the camera to take a photo of him from the loft, Kyle had come inside, so I got a sweet photo of my boys.

Properly stuffed with food, we headed back home and continued disassembling furniture and started packing our truck. We needed to keep the mattress out so we could sleep on it one more night. In the morning we woke up to a beautiful sunrise, downtown Grand Rapids was glowing! Our last sunrise in our apartment.

We flopped the mattress down the stairs and carried it up the driveway. I was dying, I haven’t done anything physical since having a baby and the mattress weighs ten million pounds. We got it to the truck and…it wouldn’t fit. There wasn’t a big enough gap between the wheel wells and the shelves in the topper.

After taking a minute to reassess the situation (the mattress HAD to come with us!), we thought that maybe it would fit if we could sort of taco it in. Kyle climbed onto the tailgate to push it up in the middle, while I pushed it into the back of the truck. At one point all I could see were a pair of legs sticking out under the mattress and I had to stop because I was laughing. We pushed the mattress in and Kyle collapsed in the driveway. It was a monumental feat.

Atlas and I filled up the car and started driving back to the house. Kyle stayed behind to take care of the final packing, followed by a thorough cleaning of the apartment. When I arrived home, I found that there had been a snowstorm Thanksgiving night. The roads were slick, and the landscape was a winter wonderland. I’m not ready for snow yet.

We spent the rest of Thanksgiving weekend unpacking and putting things away. And for real, a lot of lazing around because this is the most tiring thing I’ve ever done in my life. There was also another snowstorm.

A friend gave us a bottle of wine as a housewarming gift. I wanted to drink it this weekend, now that we were finally moved in, but when it came down to it I didn’t feel like celebrating. It’s hard to admit, but now that there’s snow everywhere I’m already feeling the seasonal affective disorder, lethargic and unmotivated. I don’t think we’ll be able to stay here for the winter. We never meant to, but it’s hard to travel with a baby.

That being said, Atlas went through a lot of changes this month and will probably be a good little traveler soon. More smiles, more playtime, more sounds. He’s more interactive, and he’s started “talking” and making all sorts of facial expressions. It’s been a lot of fun to watch!

So! Let’s wrap this all up. We’re getting settled into our new house, figuring out where things go. We still have more reno to do but it feels manageable and we need a rest before we start that up again. We’ve got some things to figure out, like how and when we can travel, but I think we want it bad enough that it’s definitely going to happen.