Chase Danger Jones

Since today is three months exactly after Chase's due date, it's only appropriate to post about our ultimate DIY project (technically mine -- since somehow my body has made this thing and kept it alive for almost three months!).

Little Chase showed up exactly two weeks late on April 12th, 2014. I was induced because of his tardiness, so who knows how much later he would have been if I had not been. In the end, as much as I wanted to avoid an induction (the reason I wanted midwives over an OB), everything turned out just fine. Chase was born a bit shy of 9 pounds and has been one large baby since then. He was almost 14 pounds at 7 weeks (last time he was weighed). Yesterday, he turned 11 weeks and I would not be surprised if he was close to double his birth weight now. Other than eating, Chase enjoys hanging out on his own, sucking on his hands, and kicking lots and lots. He hates hugs and kisses and is not a fan of being held unless he's really tired. While he has been looking at things with interest for a while, he has just started to reach out to toys. He's pretty cute so I think we'll keep him. Overall, he's been a really chill and easy baby -- "a starter baby" as Nate puts it. And, yes, his middle name is actually Danger. 

I have failed to get good smiles on camera, but these are cute pics from two day ago. 

To announce that we were having a boy -- we used scratch-off cards: 

We had two wonderful baby showers -- one in Nebraska and one here in Cambridge. Bridget blogged about the latter one here (Thanks, Bridget!!). We were overwhelmed by all of the excitement and generosity of our friends and family and family friends. 

We also used paper announcements for the birth (someone has to keep the USPS in business, after all!): 

Cleaning and Listing

[This entry was mostly written at the end of March but not published until now. Sorry!]

In one of the entries around the new year, I mentioned that we were going to be renting our apartment when we leave for Switzerland later this summer. This is just a quick update of how that's all coming along and what we've learned from the process so far. The weirdest part is that everything is pretty much already done. Crazy!

We contacted an agency to manage the apartment while we were gone -- it's so hard to deal with tenants if we are abroad. We wanted to rent it furnished so we wouldn't have to deal with putting our furniture in storage.  I took the time to clean up all the clutter around the apartment so potential tenants could get a sense of what it looked like without all of the extra stuff in the way. This mostly included getting rid of clothes and items for donation. I put together 11 bags worth of stuff (spoiler: this didn't actually get donated until June -- oops!):

For the time before donation, they sat in our closet, next to Chase's stuff: 

I also tidied up everything else so that the previously messy bookshelves looked like this (the first one in our bedroom and the other in the living room): 

The bedrooms looked like this: 

The only pictures of our bedroom on this blog! The open door leads back to the entry and the closed door leads to the closet (shown above). 

This is the other bedroom/office. The desk is finally back there, although it used to be in our closet for a long time. 

The kitchen, living room, bathroom, and entry looked just like the pictures I posted earlier of the apartment tour with various updates - here, here, and here. So with everything nice and clean, we had the management company/realtors come by and take some pictures to list it! We listed it on Thursday afternoon, someone contacted the company the following week to look at it -- which they did on Wednesday. By Friday, they put in the application and by the following week, they signed the lease. So literally the first people to view it, went for it. I am so glad that we got it done in March, way before Chase showed up. And the best part is that they wanted all of the furniture except for a few items. Most of those items we have already arranged to give away to friends. 

So now the list of things we have to do before we move: 

- install ceiling fan in our bedroom

- send personal knick-knacks for long-term storage to my parents' house

- sell the twin bed/nightstand

- PACK PACK PACK!!

- donate everything else that we cannot pack/give to friends