Today marks four weeks in our new house, though it hasn’t technically been a month yet. One of these days I might get around to finishing my post about our move.

The last few weeks in brief though…

Milly stayed here for the last almost two weeks of school. Her mom sold their house, but didn’t have another one to move into just yet. It takes about 20-25 minutes to get to the school from here, but I was enjoying the routine. Her last day of sixth grade was Thursday. Big thanks to Torrie and Laura for helping manage picking her up in the afternoons, which came during all the boys’ nap time. It wouldn’t have been a huge deal to disrupt it once or twice a week like we already were doing, but we figured if we did that every day for a couple weeks it would be the end of nap time, and I’m not ready to deal with that yet.

Milly’s in Winston-Salem this weekend visiting the Lambeths with her mom.

Another last on Thursday was swim lessons for Fawkes and Phoenix. Unfortunately they didn’t even start getting comfortable until the last couple sessions. They’re both pretty comfortable floating around on pool noodles and this point and sometimes they’ll paddle or kick (usually not both at the same time). They’ll monkey walk (moving along the side of the pool while holding the edge) and neither seems to mind briefly going under water, but I don’t know how well they’d do if either one just fell into a body of water, which was the whole point. They’ve got the foundations and they’ve got some of the muscle memory started (kicking or bicycling), but it didn’t go as well as we’d hoped, and part of that was surely their reticence to do anything for the majority of the sessions.

In other news about the kids, they’re really developing. Fawkes is saying all kinds of things, things where you can tell he’s learning what to say in situations or that he’s expressing a thought process. Phoenix is starting to too, but as usual he’s trailing Fawkes in that a bit.

That said, he started doing his ABC’s a few weeks before we moved and will randomly sing the whole thing on his own now. He’s pretty funny in how he says H. Describing it as best I can in textual form, it’s kind of a long I sound with a SH at the end, but through gritted teeth. ?SH or eyesh, or ice with a severe lisp. And gritted teeth. He also likes to sing.

Both boys will see words and spell them out. The first one they did it with was DUKE when looking at my autographed 2015 championship team poster. They often ask how to spell things lately.

Griffin is also coming along. He’s almost as tall as Fawkes (who is noticeably shorter than Phoenix). I think I mentioned that he was three inches taller and three pounds heavier at his two-year checkup than the twins were at theirs. He’s also saying more words and expressing himself better. I also wouldn’t be surprised if he were to be potty trained really soon after the other two, since he seems to already be aware of the urges sometimes.

Tristen starts her surrogacy in earnest in a couple weeks. That’ll be a big deal!

I’m swamped at work with three or four biggish projects I’m bouncing between.

Backing up a bit, Mom and Dad came for a visit last weekend. They were going to come the previous weekend, but between not being able to come until late Saturday due to a prior commitment and gas shortages because of a run on gas in the wake of a hack on the east coast’s oil supply (even though there was only a shortage once people started making runs and stockpiling) they pushed it back to last weekend, which worked out better because they could stay longer plus Milly was here.

Dad always liked to do things when he’s around, it seems. Last trip he helped me repair a section of fence at the old house. This time he helped me put up a temporary fence of netting in the backyard.

On Saturday we went to Curren’s fourth birthday party (a prior engagement of our own) and finally got to meet Janessa and MacKenzie’s sweet little baby Dylan for the first time. Mom took Milly to get some ice cream while we were out and Dad kept working on the house and stuff.

He told me that Shelly, a neighbor from our previous neighborhood, had stopped by. She had told me that she biked down this way sometimes and even knew which house we were buying before I told her. She texted later and I’ve been meaning to text her back, so Shelly, if you read this, I’m sorry I haven’t texted back yet! I’ll try to remember to do it soon. (It’s pretty late as I’m typing this.)

We were going to go to Smoke on the Water for dinner Saturday night. I’ve heard great things about it and we could (if we really wanted to) walk to it from our house (a bike ride would be very easy), it’s so close. But we got there after putting the boys down and the wait was something like two and a half hours. With Covid restrictions lifting, a lot of people seem ready to get out and about. There was also a wedding party there, which didn’t help matters.

We drove downtown, but it was the same every place we checked. Well, there weren’t two-and-a-half hour waits, but there were long ones. We ended up going to Henry’s not too far from our house and had a really nice time.

Erin and Daniel were supposed to come with us to dinner (leaving Milly to make sure her brothers didn’t wake up and burn the house down or anything), but on Friday night Erin came down with something that she thought might have been food poisoning. She was in a lot of pain and ended up in the emergency room, but she was discharged after getting something for her pain. She was mostly fine, but I think she just didn’t feel up for eating out.

Dad also helped me set up Milly’s old bunk bed in the playroom (previously the pool room) and helped me level a TV mount. We put the 65″ TV up there (as, sadly, it’s too big for the living room in its current state).

That room is turning out to be a pretty nice one, and the boys have enjoyed spending time there. Their toys are up there along with some games and now a kitchen that was bought with money Mom gave us for belated birthday presents.

Speaking of games, sometime during the last week I introduced them to some games. There’s an ABC train puzzle, Candy Land, Chutes & Ladders, a matching game… Fawkes and Phoenix do a pretty good job of putting the train together. They both enjoy Candy Land, but Fawkes asks for it more. They haven’t totally got the hang of Chutes & Ladders yet and they really got excited when we found matches the first time we played the matching game, but the enthusiasm has since waned. We did try Twister once, but they’re not ready for that just yet.

I just realized I’ve been telling everything in mostly backwards order.

Outside of all that, we’re still getting settled in. We got a mattress 15 days after moving in, which was nice. We’re much more comfortable in it, but Tristen said she could feel every movement so she ordered a foam mattress top, which I kept forgetting to open up. I did it this afternoon though, so it should be ready for us to sleep on it tomorrow night.

We also finally got a washer and dryer on Sunday. I guess Tristen enjoys using the set because after nearly a month of not doing laundry, she’s sure been doing a good bit of it.

Hazel was sick yesterday. Eyes were swollen, barely ate, poop was really runny. She was better today, but she’d made several bad messes in the house so I took the boys to Walmart this morning to get a few cleaning supplies (mainly a Nature’s Miracle knockoff) and other things. I talked to Blake before we left and we agreed to meet up with all our boys (my three plus Beau) at a park. We ended up going to River Road Park, which only has one little play set for now, but they were adding onto it while we were there.

At one point a lady with three kids showed up. I’d guess the girl was about four, the boy was about seven, and the other girl was around nine. They weren’t there long though, because apparently one of them (definitely not the oldest girl since she ratted out whoever the perp was to her mom) pushed Phoenix down. Blake and I heard him crying in a rather upset manner and I thought it was just because he’d gotten mulch in his face and eyes. We didn’t think much about that because he and Fawkes had been playing with the mulch, but the mom came up and apologized to us and said she was taking her kids because one of them had pushed him. We told her she didn’t need to do that, but she said they needed to know there were consequences for their actions.

I’m glad I didn’t see it happen. I wouldn’t have hurt the kid or anything, but I… I don’t know how I would have reacted. I’d have probably sternly said something to the kid, but at the same time I’d be seething inside because I don’t want my kid, at three years old, to think other kids can be mean and physical for whatever reason just yet.

All the boys did some swinging for a while. Griffin even sat on one of the big swings for a bit. They tried (with varying but always limited success) to drink from a water bottle.

We walked to a kayak loading area so the boys could see the water. A guy was getting out and told me that he was a twin too and when I asked him what it was like for him he said it was like always having a best friend around. They also had another brother who was 18 months older than them. He showed the boys some shark teeth and fossils he had picked up at the aptly-named Sharks Tooth Island. (Some info I just found about that here.)

Aside from waking up this morning, the rest of the day was mostly uneventful other than all the boys taking a nice nap and Torrie and Sebastian stopping by..