One-on-one with the boys

I have some posts I need to do (spoiler: we went to a lot of splash pads last week), but I think I'll just share these little tidbits instead.

1. When Matthew is napping, I usually try to get in a little bit of teaching with Joseph, whether it's reading, math, music, or some other educational topic I remember. Today we did a little bit at the piano. We did a few pages in Piano Adventures and then I decided to play a bit of piano for him to listen to.

"Does this sound happy or sad?" I asked as I played Chopin's funeral march. (Sad)

"Does this sound scary or not scary?" I asked as I played an upbeat song. (Not scary.)

"Does this sound more like summer or winter?" I asked as I played Jingle Bells. (Winter.)

Then Joseph went over to the lowest keys and started pounding them. "This sounds like superheroes!" I said it sounded more like monsters and he said it was superheroes fighting monsters.

Then he wanted the Demo key which played all short pieces for each of the possible instruments on our piano. He has always said that Strings 2 sounds like Superman, and there was a while a few months ago where it was on constantly for that reason. Today he branched out.

"This one (electric piano) sounds like the Jungle Book!"

"This one (vibraphone) sounds like Sesame Street!"

"This one (grand piano) sounds like the mailman!" (still not sure why.)

"This one (church organ) sounds like Superman too!"

"How does it sound like Superman?" I asked.

"It sounds like Superman is dead." Then he started singing "Superman is . . . . dead" to the melody of the organ piece. I guess it sort of fits. Whether or not piano lessons are supposed to look like with a 4-year-old, it's what works for us.

not really dead

2. I took Joseph to preschool today at a friend's house today, and she lives far enough away from home that I decided to just do errands in the area with Matthew. We ended up at a children's section of a nearby library, and it was fun to just get to play with him for a bit and listen to him babble about the action figures and Barbie car there.

Since we were at a library, I figured I ought to read one book to him. We got about 3 pages in before he closed the book and said, "Amen! Amen! Amen!" and walked away. He also says that during prayers, but I think it's just because he's excited that he's figured out what's going on.

We moved over to the puzzles. They're still a little hard for him, but he could usually manage to take one piece out and put it back in. Each time he did, he would say, "Ta da!" and grin, charming everyone around us. I feel like he's got the world wrapped around his finger, and he already knows it.

When they're together, it's a mixture of chasing and squealing and laughing and squabbling. But sometimes it's nice to interact with Joseph and Matthew separately.

We sure like them.

A little bit about our new haven

If you're from the west like I am, you may not know too much about New Haven. In fact, you might not have known which city Yale is in. (Or which state. That's okay, too.)

So armed with my camera and Wikipedia, allow me to share a little bit about the city we now call home. (And I mean a little bit. Like 2 blocks worth.)

According to a recent census, New Haven has about 130,000 people in the city limits. That is similar to Ann Arbor (and takes up similar area), but unlike Ann Arbor it is surrounded by other cities rather than fields, so the municipal area has more than 800,000 people. It was settled first by Native Americans, then the Dutch, and then by Puritans in 1638. Yale was founded in 1701.

New Haven has a thriving restaurant scene and holds the Library of Congress certified yet widely disputed claim of being the birthplace of the hamburger. New Haven is also exceedingly proud of its pizza. Additionally, it is replete with food trucks which show up at the medical school, ice rink, and Long Wharf each day.

My son enjoying the flavors from a taco

My other son not falling into the harbor.

Perhaps even more famous than its food scene is its crime scene. New Haven has made headlines with its ranking as one of the most dangerous cities in America. From my observations so far, I think that might be an exaggeration, but I do still hear a lot of sirens. To be fair, we got plenty of alerts about armed robberies near campus in Ann Arbor, and bike theft was common in both Ann Arbor and Provo, so perhaps no city is totally safe. Most of the crime seems to occur west of Winchester and over in Fair Haven (which is on the other side of a wall by I-91), though I guess packages have been stolen right off of porches in our complex. But that happens everywhere, and I've heard that community policing has been so effective in some neighborhoods which might seem sketchier that nothing gets stolen there.

Signs like this everywhere. Also lots of police officers on bikes in the evenings.

Point is, I haven't felt too scared here yet, except that every time I drive people either drive or walk out in front of me when it's my turn to go. I can also count on someone riding their bike into oncoming traffic, namely me. (Pro tip: look both ways even when crossing a 1-way street.)

What is interesting to me is how stark a contrast there can be even a few blocks can be from each other. I'd heard about adjacent streets in Detroit looking vastly different, but it's true here, too. Since I don't really have pictures yet of the most picturesque parts of New Haven (Yale and East Rock Park), I will defer to Google Images for those for now and focus on the few blocks I photographed yesterday.

Driving back from Stake Conference through some of the neighborhoods west of campus, it tends to look like this:

Almost all of the city is draped in slouching power lines like this, and they slouch even more in residential areas.

So, just sort of typical city, I guess. I still need a GPS through this part because there are so many diagonal and one-way streets that it hasn't been intuitive at all for me.

Within a block or two of passing this Detroit-esque building,

we arrive in the East Rock neighborhood!

And oh, it is lovely. It just seems protected from the world around it. Maybe it's all the trees. Maybe it's the tidy straight streets on a grid that brings back order after the chaos of all the one-way roads.

Either way, I like it.

Overseas Ministry Studies Center

A steep hill. There are lots of these each direction.

The entrance to a dog park. 

There are fun colored houses everywhere in this city!

And lots of houses squished up against each other.

flowers in Yale Farm

Some Yale building

Farnam Memorial Gardens. 

Conference Center

Entrance to the Divinity School.

Despite the lack of cars in this shot, it's a pretty busy street. And, you know, surrounded by trees.

The Divinity School is at the northernmost part of Yale Campus, and buildings and residential colleges pop up here and there as you move south through the city. (So it's not nearly as compact as BYU or Princeton, and you're more likely to find churches and restaurants between buildings than at University of Michigan.) The southernmost part of Yale has the hospital and medical school where Kevin works, and the campus is circumscribed on the south and east by business parks, skyscrapers, and restaurants.

Sorta like this.

I have yet to do a proper tour of Yale or a proper walk/drive up East Rock or West Rock, and this post is long enough without a description of nearby parks, but . . . you get the point. New Haven definitely has its pretty parts.

And we still have lots to discover!

Zeno's Paradox

Have you ever heard of Zeno's paradox? It basically states that before an object can travel a distance d, it must first travel d/2. And then to go halfway again, it goes d/4. And so on. But if it only goes halfway each time then you'll never arrive at your destination.

Here, I'll let Meg Ryan explain it instead.

Zeno's paradox is applicable in much of my life. It explains the 93.75% empty cereal boxes I would find at my parents' house each time I would visit. It explains how quickly 75% of a pan of brownies can disappear when we make it, but how the remaining 25% gets partitioned into smaller and smaller pieces. No one wants to be the jerk who took the last brownie, so instead Kevin and Joseph and I take turns leaving half of the remaining brownie until it's just about 1 square inch just sitting there.

And, of course, it is applicable to unpacking. We arrived on a Thursday and began unpacking right away, starting with beds. By the next night, the kitchen was almost all unpacked (after I went through the stages of grief once or twice about not having two sinks, a garbage disposal, or any drawers), the bookcases and couches were where they were supposed to be, and lots of the toys were unpacked. We felt like rock stars! We spent the next day clearing out space to set up the table and chairs again, and by nighttime we had not only achieved that but had also put books on the shelves and pictures on the wall, because what better place could they be?

People would ask, "How's unpacking going?" and I would respond enthusiastically. "We're already almost done!"

And then things began to slow down. Some things couldn't get unpacked until other things were moved, but those things couldn't move until something else was unpacked. Additionally, there was some furniture left by the landlord that we weren't going to use, but until it was gone we couldn't put other things where we wanted them. Decisions about organization became harder and harder, and each box felt like a lot more work. When people asked, "How's unpacking going?" my answer changed from "We're almost done!" to "It's taking longer than I thought!"

And so we settled into a Zeno's paradox, half-as-many-boxes-unpacked-as-the-day-before, almost content sort of life for the next week. It wasn't until a few hours before our landlord stopped by that I decided it was time to be box free, time to take care of the boxes that had gone back and forth from ground to desk to ground again, time to put all those empty boxes somewhere! So we did. Zeno's paradox had been defeated.

(Well, not quite. Every now and then I still find a box with things we're not using in a room it doesn't belong, So I guess Zeno was right.)

Anyway. Enough talk. After weeks of forgetting to take pictures, here's our new home!

This is the only place we can sensibly store the stroller (there is absolutely nowhere outside), but at least the bikes aren't there anymore. (They're in the basement, which isn't ideal either.)

It's nice to have a dishwasher again! 

We are using lots of cheap plastic drawers to compensate for the lack of drawers in the kitchen. Also, side note -- one of the hardest things about when we first moved to Michigan was having only hardwood and no carpet. This time, I was just so grateful that the hardwood didn't have hair and dirt finished into it that I was totally fine with it. So nice to move into a clean apartment. I mean condo. (the property manager's favorite phrase is "this is a condo. Not an apartment.")

We do use lamps in the living room, but everywhere else has light fixtures, which is so nice! It was also nice that the blue couch was left for us to use.

This might be the best bathroom of my adult life. There is actual counter space. And there's another bathroom on the main level, too!

Our bedroom. We have two bookcases in here, two dressers, and a desk for crafts/sewing. It's not super big, but it can fit a lot.

This is the biggest bedroom of my life. We love it! (and yes . . . I took the picture at night when kids were asleep.)

This is a pretty good basement! It's warmer than I'm used to basements being because we have to keep the dehumidifier running, but now that it's fall that shouldn't matter. When we want to use the bikes we have to carry them up the stairs, which isn't fun, but we have fewer opportunities to use them than in Michigan.

Living in New Haven has its challenges, and we will probably never be 100% happy with everything, even in our wonderful apartment (I mean condo). But Kevin and I are engineers, so Zeno's paradox or no, we are close enough to perfect happiness for all practical purposes.

Especially because of these two.

Eastward Ho

It's been three weeks now since we up and left Michigan, so it's time to talk about the move! (And hopefully this will be the last mammoth post for a little while.)

Whew. That move. Every day I would think about other moves -- the time we moved with a newborn and Kevin spent 3 days at a conference right when I was packing, the time we moved when I just had found out I was pregnant and was dealing with morning sickness and the stress of a Christmas concert/creche exhibit, and . . . it was kind of funny. I had plenty of help with babysitting, Kevin was done with his PhD, and it was still by far the hardest move yet.

Of course, this time there was the combination of a horrible humid heat wave, mild stomach bugs we kept passing back and forth to each other, a laptop that kept crashing and showing the blue screen of death (only a year after the previous one had done so), headaches, Matthew teething (of course), sleep deprivation, constant butterflies in my stomach due to stress and anxiety, expensive car repairs (looking at you, brakes), Kevin being helpful in a myriad of ways but none of them involving packing boxes (his stuff was harder and extremely important, but it wasn't as visible so I had to remind myself he was working hard too), and above all, being oh so sad so much of the time. No crying, but I would go to parties and just feel sad about missing people already, and then I would feel guilty for not having fun. Fun times!

But, everything worked out. We all got better from our various ailments (including the computer and car), and we stopped being so sad and anxious once we were out the door. It was kind of like being 41 weeks pregnant -- it's not necessarily going to be easier once the baby is born or once you've moved, but the anticipation and heaviness is just plain miserable. And anyone who deals with chronic illness or fatigue or depression or anxiety, I salute you! A week or two of it is bad enough!

After packing up on a muggy Saturday evening that turned into a stormy Saturday evening that left me drenched (but none of our stuff, thankfully), "sleeping" two nights on an air mattress, and scrubbing and sweeping with the help of some kind friends, we were on our way! Except we had to drive around the circle one last time so I could get one last picture.

Those flowers are probably not doing so hot now.

Our first stop was the Johnson farm that we never went to when we went to Kirtland last year. Matthew was a little bit more opinionated this time compared to the time he was 5 weeks old, so the missionary rushed through a few parts and I left still not really knowing why Joseph Smith was ever there. (He did manage to tell the whole horrible tale of Joseph's tar and feathering to my sweet Joseph, who stood there with wide eyes. It didn't really seem to faze him, though.) When Matthew acted hungry, the tour basically ended. Haha! (In actuality, there were some really cool parts, especially seeing the room where Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith had the vision of the celestial kingdom.) We left without taking a picture and headed on our way.

I've shared this before, but it still makes me laugh. He had to hold every credit card this trip!

We've always wanted to cross West Virginia off our states list, so we grazed a corner of it and spent a wonderful 2 or so miles in it. And it was dark. So I don't know if we should count it. We drove past Pittsburgh and spent the night in a pretty good hotel.

The sign you can't read says Moon, Pennsylvania. We considered it.

We spent a bit of the next morning at the hotel watching Olympics and Daniel Tiger, and Kevin took Joseph to the pool.

Enthralled.

We then spent the next few hours driving through beautiful Pennsylvania while surviving Scripture Scouts and Three Doors Down (Joseph's new favorite song is "Kryptonite") before arriving at my dad's place near Princeton, New Jersey where he worked this summer. Man, they sure make up a lot of crazy driving rules to make it impossible to correct your mistakes if you happen to miss your turn. After dinner, we headed over to campus to admire the buildings. There were definitely a lot of beautiful buildings at University of Michigan, but this was a whole different scale of castles.

So many great archways!

This was probably used for some scene in Harry Potter

After we finished walking around, I wanted to go see our old house in Hopewell Township, so we drove there. My family has stayed in contact with our former next door neighbor who is probably in her eighties by now, and she invited us in for a chat. She reminded me of how she would watch us ride bikes and play and how every morning she would open her window so she could hear us practice the piano. I am so grateful those are the memories she's held onto because I feel like all I ever journaled about back then were our fights. I spent a minute looking at our old house, remembering the musty old basement that we got used to, watching Babysitters Club and putting on shows, the old brick driveway, the stuffed animals taped to the broom that Kaylie and I tapped on the window the time Leslie wouldn't let us hang out with her and her friend, and the days I spent cross-stitching bear after bear after bear. There were lots of great memories in that little old house.

(I forgot to take a picture of the house. But here is a picture in the house.)

We had promised Joseph some ice cream, so even though it was late by then he stayed awake to get his just desserts. After a little bit of Olympics, we headed to bed.

The next morning, we all went to Philadelphia to see the temple open house. Before we left, we were discussing how nice it was to have family on the East Coast since Kaylie's here too now. "Well, I guess Mom has a cousin over here, too, but we probably won't run into her." But as fate (or providence) would have it, after dutifully following instructions to head over to the church to watch the intro video that we've all seen at least twice at various open houses, we were richly rewarded with "You're my cousin!" My mom's cousin was our usher! (And the video was good, as it always is. I love the narrator!)

And the temple was beautiful! We kept Joseph's attention by counting the pictures of Christ on the walls (I think we got 33), and there were just such lovely vases and designs throughout. (See here.) After the tour, we chatted with my mom's cousin and my second cousin a bit and then got some lunch.

My phone never took a picture, but luckily she shared her picture with me!

We had also considered going to Independence Hall, but when we got there we couldn't find parking. Not that we looked super hard. We were tired.

"I've been here before," Kevin said.
"I've been here before," I said.
"The Liberty Bell is just a bell that doesn't do anything," my dad said.

Joseph and Matthew wouldn't have cared either way. So, I didn't channel my inner Aaron Burr and we did not go in the room where it happened.

We did, however, stop by Washington Crossing State Park. The boys were asleep, so my dad stayed with them in the car while Kevin and I walked around. I have been really interested in the Revolutionary War lately, so it was really neat to be there. I felt like this was sacred ground in its own way, and as we walked I peppered Kevin with trivia. "The Hessians were German mercenaries, so they celebrated Christmas. Americans really didn't celebrate Christmas til the mid 19th century. They had the 4th of July and Washington's birthday, and they thought that was enough holidays so they didn't celebrate Christmas." (though . . . that doesn't explain why they didn't celebrate Christmas in the 18th century, since neither of those mattered in 1776.) I imagined Washington and his ragtag army crossing the Delaware that cold night and felt such a sense of gratitude for their bravery.

Where Washington's boat crossed the river.

Boats from that time.

We drove past my old middle school and grocery store, saw where my brother-in-law almost won BYU 50, and then went for a brief walk along the canal.

We swung by the old church,

drove past some funny power lines,

There's definitely some reason those are there,

and then headed back to the hotel for dinner, swimming with friendly kids, Olympics, and Disney Channel.

The next morning, we met up with Kaylie at a park

and then we were finally off to our new home in Connecticut!

And thus began our next big adventure.