Where in the world did I leave my mobile Nate?

Nate's crawling. That's pretty old news, really. I utterly failed to announce this major milestone here on Trouble's Tribune. Mostly that is because Nate decided to start crawling about 2 days before we moved to Houston. So to recap, to reward Nate's life changing step of freedom, we bound him tightly and securely in his car seat and drove for 4 days. Nate went along quite begrudgingly, if not indignantly, with moments of complete outrage. However, between his dramatic displays of displeasure, he was spending large portions of our car ride contemplating ways to improve his technique, speed, and balance. Or at least that is what I believe. Because when we set him loose after we finally arrived in Houston, he was like a caged animal set free. Crawling this way and that, grabbing things, hiding under chairs, back and forth. We were sort of hoping that 4 days of confinement would set him back a bit. You know, back to just a few weeks prior when we could set him on the floor just out of reach from, say, a large glass of red wine or freshly folded laundry and know that disaster was not eminent. Alas, once he had a taste of independence and the joy of dragging our belongings to the tiniest corners of the house, he could never go back. You can imagine that this made our moving and unpacking so much more challenging. I have never in my life been more grateful to the inventor of the bouncy chair. So that is our life with Nate these days. Along with looking for my misplaced keys and cell phone, I have to spend large amounts of time searching for my mobile Nate. Is he under the bed? Behind the couch? Around this corner? Usually if you call his name, he'll pull up on the nearest piece of furniture and give a smile so big it melts my heart every time. Which is good since often the remnants of my purse are strewn on the floor behind him. That being said, it is a milestone we celebrate and cheer him on for and are proud to share on this medium. Good job, Nate! And from the looks of it, walking is not too far in the future, buddy.  

In an effort to get some recent photos of Nate, I pulled out the camera and finally found him up to some sort of mischief in the bathroom. I was going to get photographic evidence of his cuteness without his knowing but, as you can see from the (blurry) pictures, I totally got busted. But I do love to see this determined ball of Nate hurdling at me!     

The Plus Side of Storms

In my last post, I mentioned that it has been raining a lot. People tell us it has been exceptionally rainy this year. I love it. I love the storms, especially since they seem to roll in at naptime, when everything is quiet anyway, and cool things off. First I started drinking afternoon lattes on the porch and watching the rain. Soon Regis joined in. If the kids woke up, they were right there with us. It has been a nice respite. Time to sit, hang out, chat, think, relax. We have been grateful for this time to resettle together, hectic and crazy as some days have been. Because it has also been a time to enjoy each other and our new adventure.

As much Adrienne dislikes the thunder, it is begrudgingly tolerated because of the resulting muddy puddles. There is much anxious waiting until the rain subsides enough to get out. Then there is joy!

She was a bit too enthusiastic here, the upshot of it being a head long dive into this muddy puddle. But after some kisses on the skinned knees and an outfit change, she was cautiously back at it.

But it didn't take long to regain confidence.

Nate wanted in on the action too. Now we just need a pair of rubber boots in his size, too!

On a completely unrelated note, you may have guessed from the number of pictures I just posted: we have wireless internet! Finally. Just a mere 27 days to get it hooked up. That was practically a lenten penance. In fact, remind me I have a 27 day credit next lent. Hope you are staying cool where ever you are!

Hello Again!

Hello Again, and Hello from Houston! That's right, I'm sure you have been anxiously awaiting news of our arrival in Texas and I am sorry to have kept you waiting for so long. I have a laundry list of excuses that I can give upon request. The most valid is that we have yet to get our wireless internet in place and I hate using my iPhone for doing anything other than checking my emails. And that means checking, not responding to, so again I am sorry if I haven't responded to your emails. 

I left off here as we were beginning our 'road trip' to Texas. This amounted to 24 hour drive with 2 babies, of which we prolonged so the pain stretched over 4 excruciating days. It can be summed up like this:

It was, however, made more enjoyable by catching up with friends on each end of the trip and we were grateful for the hospitality!

Once we arrived in Houston, we settled into an extended-stay hotel while we looked for a place to live. While this chore was stressful, it was done with relative ease as we signed a lease and moved into our new house by the end of the week. To boot, its a great little house less than a mile from my work, which I consider good karma after having a 50-minute commute each way in Singapore. Once we moved into our house, we realized how little 'stuffs' (as Adrienne likes to say) we actually have. Just in case you were considering it, selling all your stuff and moving half way around the world is not advisable, particularly if you have two small kiddos. The first night we stayed at the house, we only had a port-a-crib for Nate and nothing else. 

As luck would have it, we moved in next door to the NICEST people in all of Houston. Maybe in the whole state of Texas, actually. Which is saying a lot since, as far as I can tell, Texans are pretty much the nicest and friendliest people in the world. They lent us an air-mattress, sheets, pillows, baby blankets, a portable DVD player, etc... This first batch of stuff was later followed with books and toys for Adrienne and Nate, all of which helped keep the small sliver of sanity from disappearing in a puff of crazy on California St. To add to it, they even took Adrienne to play with their adorable kids so we could have a chance to shop for....well, basically everything in the house. It might sound kind of fun to buy things to fill a house. I admit that I thought it would be. You know, a chance to remodel and pick out things that you really like. That would probably be the case if you had an endless supply of cash and kid-free time to do so. By the end, we were walking into stores, pointing at the nearest (fill-in-whatever-piece-of-furniture), and saying "I'll take it if you can deliver it and assemble it today" simply to avoid meltdowns at the store. That being said, things are finally coming together and I would venture to say that we have almost, almost achieved somewhat of a homey feel in here. 

In the midst of all this craziness, we have had some time to drive around Houston and get to know our area a bit. So far, we really like it. There are beautiful oak-tunneled streets, southern-style covered patios, fabulous grocery stores, and kid-friendly parks. Oh, and it has been exceptionally rainy here and abnormally cool, fooling us into thinking that Houston summers aren't really that bad. My biggest complaint is that Houston seems to be REALLY slow for wiring houses with internet. You will know when we get wired because I can update you with all the stories I am mentally writing in my head. Or because, more likely, I will just tell you. I hope that you are enjoying your summer and your wireless internet. And please forgive any auto-corrected sentences that don't make any sense. 

I leave you with a gratuitous picture of my cuties from their first American 4th of July. Cheers!

It's Go Time

It looks like it is go time for the Covey's. We have received 'Our Call' from the movers and this has set in motion a frenzy symbolizing the beginning of our new adventure: Road Trip! Watch out, Texas, here we come.

They say that life is full of cycles and I feel that at this moment. It was almost exactly 15 years ago that I was packing up from my parents house to begin the next phase of my life in Texas. I was going out to see the world, to learn important things, to find myself on my own. It was an exciting time that I had been looking forward to. A time of independence, of change, of the unknown. Back then my belongings fit in a large suitcase and the dollars in my bank account were best counted by the hundreds, yet I was armed with the fearlessness that accompanies the teenage years and the naivete that tells you know it all. Now as I prepare to start this journey again, I am carrying the additional weight of 15 years of experience. I would like to think that most of that is in the form of wisdom but these years have proven that, contrary to my teenage-self, I don't know it all. As before, I go forward optimistically, hopefully, even excitedly. Yet the 'what-ifs' are great, too. What if things don't work out like we planned? What if my family is unhappy here? What if we can't find an apartment/job/friends/schools/etc..? Too bad we can't always be as bold as our youthful selves! But part of life is pushing on, moving forward, changing, adjusting and becoming better. It is not always easy as we harden with age but it is always worthwhile. One thing is the same between 15 years ago and now. I feel a bit of sadness upon leaving home. It is bitter-sweet, really. I am so grateful for the extended time we had at home and to enjoy family, yet as always the end comes too fast. At least now as we move on, there will not be half a world of distance separating us and that is reassuring in itself. So tonight I go to bed with a longing for looking back but tomorrow we will drive looking forward. Here's to what lies ahead!

Father's Day 2012

On Father's Day, a thank-you for all that you do for us. Thank-you for smooshing bugs and kissing owies, for wiping tears and cleaning bums, for reading extra stories and sharing the limited bed space with babies, for studying safety manuals and fretting about recalls, for playing cars and exaggerating games of hide-and-seek, for setting an example to our children, for being playful and faithful and reliable and honest, and, most importantly, for choosing me to embark on this crazy adventure of parenthood. Happy Father's Day, Hubby!   

Storage and More

I never thought I would write a blog about storage units. I mean, I generally try to bore you with details of my adorable children, not other mundane things. However, I have been thinking a lot about this subject because 1. We are preparing our storage unit for its big move down to Houston and 2. I got sucked into watching back-to-back episodes of the dumb show Storage Wars on a slow night last weekend. 

When Regis and I were moving to Singapore five years ago, we only anticipated a 2-3 year stint abroad. While we got rid of almost everything we owned at that point, we decided to store some of our essentials, valuables really, in a storage unit in Salt Lake City. At least that is what our storage unit grew to be in our minds over the past five years--a unit full of our awesome possessions--to be unearthed upon our grand arrival back to the USA. It'll be like Christmas, we thought, opening box after box of fancy surprises! 

So last weekend, Regis and I drove to Salt Lake City to open our pressys organize our storage unit before the movers come next week. I might add that this was also our first weekend away from our kids together (Aren't grandparents the BEST?!). In a perfect world, I imagine we would have been spending the weekend hiking up big mountains and breathing in some fresh air instead of being stuck in our dingy cave-of-a-storage-unit breathing in five years of accumulated dust. Not so romantic, right? But, on the plus side, we were on our own and could accomplish a lot in a short amount of time.  

Once we got there and, with dramatic flare, threw open the door to our unit, I was practically expecting rays of light and hallelujahs to come spilling out. Rather, when the dust settled and our eyes adjusted to the dark, it was really more like a glorified trash deposit. The deeper we got into our unit, the shallower our estimated value was on the unit (Because we like to imagine what our storage unit would go for on Storage Wars. Let me tell you now, it wouldn't be much!). 

Before our wedding in 2005, Regis and I did the marriage encounter weekend through our church. I remember there was some test we took on compatibility. Apparently we passed because it was never mentioned to us again whether or not the test agreed that we were in fact compatible (or maybe we were a lost cause, offered up to the Lord to handle?). I have been thinking that a more practical test would be to let couples share a storage unit for a short amount of time. There is a lot you can learn about a person by their storage unit, like what they are planning for the future. I remember before we left for Singapore, we agreed to put things in the storage unit that we would need when we got back. For example, I put in a vacuum cleaner, a shower curtain, and a coffee pot. Regis, on the other hand, put in his high school football jersey, a box of comic books, and some beer steins. So my future self was planning to drink a bunch of caffeine in order to clean our new place and follow that with a shower. Regis' future self, on the other hand, was planning to sit on the couch in football jersey drinking beer and reading comics?!  You can also tell a lot about one's past, like how much messy baggage they are carrying. 

My baggage:

His baggage:

Alas, bound by a common goal and following multiple trips to the dumpster, we have organized this unit into movable boxes of useful things. So now we wait for the movers to come sometime next week and for our new adventure to begin! We will keep you posted on our leave date and our estimated time of arrival in Texas.

In the meantime, we are enjoying the beautiful weather, spending time with family, and the break from reality.

He's Back!

Guess who is back??

This guy!

Of course, this is not his arrival picture. I am not that mean to post a picture of someone after suffering a 24 hour flight. But this IS, like, the only picture we have of the 2 of us in the past 4 months (and I almost deleted it for vanity's sake due to my neck rolls but decided to hold on to it anyway). We have been enduring the necessary evil of 7 weeks separation during this transition to the USA. It wasn't the way that I envisioned our homecoming, which was with a large good-bye party and perhaps an extended stopover at some exotic locale. This, rather, as been drawn out and without much fanfare. But, as I said, necessary and, importantly, now over!

I am obviously happy to have my hubby back. I missed him like crazy. Life just isn't the same without your best friend and partner in crime. Plus, anyone who knows Regis understands that he certainly makes things more interesting for sure. After six and a half years of marriage, life seems a bit more dull without him around. I have gained a new-found empathy for single-moms and military wives (even though, technically, I have not been alone doing this since my parents are a HUGE help!). This, however, was an expected consequence of being apart. There were others which I did not expect.

For example, with Regis in Singapore, I found that there was a lot of extra space in the bed. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing; in fact, spreading out to have the whole bed was something I was secretly excited about. Rather, I found that, because of the extra space, I became very lazy about putting Nate back into his crib during those nighttime feeds. My logic--there is room here, he might as well stay here and then I don't have to get out of bed if he wakes up again (and there is a really good chance he will wake up again!). This always seems like a good idea in the midst of my grogginess during the wee hours of the night. However Nate, bless that sweet little baby, has no co-sleeping manners. He sleeps loudly, he takes up way more than his share of the bed, he eats in bed (worse still, sometimes that food comes back out either end during the night!), and he feels the need to wake me up every time he wakes up. On top of it all, he is really too small to warm my cold feet on in the cool mornings--so useless, really. Nearly every morning over the past 7 weeks, I chide myself for not taking to extra minute to walk him back to his crib after his feeding. Now with my husband back, there will not be the space for Nate to spread out and I can assign Regis the task of returning Nate to his crib. Win-win!

Adrienne also suffered while apart from her dad, which in turn made me feel horrible. I'm sure Adrienne didn't understand what was going on. All she knew was that Daddy was not here but was in Singapore for a bit. Like Dora the Explorer episodes, she decided what we needed to do was rescue Daddy. So every time she was an airplane or helicopter in the sky, she thought they were there to rescue Dad from "Singypore". She also went around telling everyone who would listen in her saddest voice: "I lost my Dada!" and "I miss my Dada awot!". You should see the disapproving looks that this generated in my direction after that! This always made me feel the need to explain what was going on to total strangers, of whom I am sure either stopped listening or didn't buy a word of my long-winded explanation. "Husband....Singapore....moving back....selling all our stuff...will be back soon...yadda, yadda, yadda.". Last week Adrienne told me that she felt sad because she missed her Dada. My heart broke just a little, I was feeling so terrible about this. Then she told me that she thought a little ice-cream would make her feel happy again. I take this as firm proof that it is ingrained in our female genes to believe that we can fill man-made holes in our hearts with ice-cream. Luckily, we had a little vanilla with chocolate sauce to do the trick and both Adrienne and I felt happy again.  

So now Regis is back and we look forward to the future and adventures ahead. In the meantime, we have some time to reunite and be a family. I am so looking forward to the next few weeks of togetherness! Welcome home, Regis.