Beckett Update: Singing and Napping

I want to post little updates as Beckett grows and changes. So many little things happen that I don't want to forget!

A few weeks ago, it was after we moved to Juneau, he started laughing an giggling at our funny antics. Matt's gotten really good at making him laugh--he'll scrunch his face or  draw his mouth wide as a stream of silly noises gurgle from him. I'll lay on my back, Beck resting on calves, and I'll raise my knees to parallel, his tiny hands grasped in mine. "You're flying!" I exclaim, and then coo, "Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba Beckett!" to the tune of the batman theme. His mouth opens wide in a big grin as he soars over mommy.

I got my library card here in Juneau about a week and a half ago and checked out a bunch of books for Beck. When I read them to him he really sat and listened and looked. I was so surprised, he's still such a little guy! He loves feeling things with his hands and got a real kick out of turning the pages with his very own hands, though he likes to push them in the opposite direction than we read.

On Friday he started napping! Such a shock! Matt and I always tried laying him down, and he'd never sleep more than 10-20 minutes without one of us holding him or sleeping right next to him. But on Friday my mom was here, and said, "do you ever lay him down to see if he'll nap?"

"Yeah," I sighed, "he never does. But we keep trying because we know one day he will."

So I tried it, and guess what! He konked out for like an hour and a half! Yesterday and today both he took like 3 naps; his lids sink closed as he sucks on his pacifier. He descends into peaceful sleep. I keep peeping in on him as he dozes sweetly, then and come out to celebrate with Matt. "Our baby naps!" I croon.

Tonight he started singing. Maybe he's always been singing and we just never new it, but tonight Matt sang along to "Edelweiss," one of his favorite Sound of Music songs. Beck has always said "Oh!", that was actually his very first sound, but tonight he said it in rhythm to Matt's singing. His sounds normally have the same pitch, but tonight he added a lower, "Oh!" really trying to match Matt's voice. "Oh, oh," he trilled, one high and one low. So cute!

He was a real joy tonight, talking and babbling lots to grandma, mommy, and daddy. He's also completely obsessed with chewing on his little hands, gobs of slobber running down his chin.

I think sometimes I underestimate him, he's so tiny and can do so little himself. But he ovserves and processes the world around him all the time, that's why he needs so many naps! He never ceases to surprise and amaze us, each day we wonder what little joy will unfurl as he grows toward adulthood.

Living Without (or living with Box): Moving to Juneau part 2

There's this limbo period when you've moved somewhere like Juneau, when your crap is still in transit. Until then you just make do with whatever you've managed to cram into your Outback.

Or you get inventive. On a trip to Costco our groceries got packed, as is the custom, in a box. But necessity showed us that this humble rectangle, clothed in paper, was so much more than just a box.

Emptied of its contents at home it revealed itself to be the perfect height for table--if you're eating while sitting on the floor. The next obvious use was a desk, where I drafted this very post. I even jotted notes right on the top of it. The cats burrowed underneath, and so it became a much-coveted cat hidey-hole.

One day, as I attempted to lug our giant load of diapers in my arms, I realized I'd been eating and working on the perfect laundry basket! A few days later awesome Box unveiled its skill for being the perfect height for Beckett to practice standing!

 Our plebian Box now sits in the burn pile. A terrible fate for such a useful thing. But I'm hopeful that kindling is not Box's final use. Box will surely transfigure again before then!

"Recliner"

"Entertainment center". Note the blue "cat bed" next to it.

Box.

Sleeping on the ground and eating on Box might not be so fun for extended periods, but living minimally has made me realize how much I don't need.

We've been cooking dinners in one skillet, eating off two plates, sitting and changing diapers on the floor, and we're just as happy as ever. Maybe more so because the house is actually clean.

I'll admit, our backs are a little sore from lifting Beck up from sitting on the floor so often (no lie, at least 20 times a day because that's how many diaper changes he needs), and even more sore for sleeping on the floor, but I can see when you have what's important, your family, you really don't need all that much.

Almost more adventure than our Outback could handle: moving to Juneau

So, I mentioned that we moved to Juneau, but the actual move was quite a little adventure.

Moving to Alaska, or off the road system in Alaska has it's own challenges. Our stuff (aka "crap") has to be trucked and then barged from Anchorage to Juneau, so it takes several weeks to actually get from the old place to the new one.

It really makes you think about weather or not you really want to pay to haul around all the crap in your life, and I cringe as I report that Matt and I paid to have 8,600 pounds of crap hauled down here. And that's after we purged. We are in major need of simplifying.

This leaves you with a few weeks where you basically need to live without stuff.

On top of all that, we are moving in January. In Alaska. Our crap is being hauled as I write this along the Alcan Highway, where is it well below freezing. So no liquids could be packed.

This might seem like a little thing, but since we are already living in Alaska, where things are more expensive, I started to order and buy things in bulk, like the special laundry detergent to wash our darling son's diapers.

Most people would just have donated or given away their liquids, but not us. We were determined to get them here.

Matt devised this genius idea to get one of those old Sears cartop carriers to facilitate our plan. This way we could bring some of our more important liquids as well as some of the essentials we would need for living in Juneau until all our crap arrived.

The list of things we wanted to cram in our car got longer and longer. Especially when you consider the three cats and dog that also needed to fit in there. Oh yeah, and our son.

So the day of our departure we started packing the car three hours before we needed to leave. Matt played a genius Tetris game getting everything to fit: 40 cloth diapers & accessories, 2 gallons of laundry detergent, 12" cast iron skillet, two plates and place settings, sleeping bags and mats, essential clothing and toiletries for three humans, litter box, pet food and bowls, car seat, stroller, cooler full of salmon I couldn't bear to part with, pillows . . . as I write this I'm a little in awe that he fit it all in!

Despite the three hours, and Beckett being an angel as I wore him and tried to help Matt as best as I could, it was still way to much stuff to cram in an Outback. As our departure time rolled closer, knowing if we missed our ferry we wouldn't be able to catch another one for a month or so, I started to panic a little. Not my usual mode.

I needed to move fast! And hauling around a 13 pound infant hampers that. I put Beck down with the vacuum cleaner running in the same room and RAN!

I dragged everything left to go down the to car for Matt to load. As the critical hour approached we realized it wasn't all going to fit. The wine! We grabbed four bottles to stash in our car, and dragged the rest over to our neighbor.  I hauled trash, and everything else we couldn't fit into the car, out to the dumpster. I crammed cats into their carriers while cooing them into acquiescence. I lifted our aging Golden, Jack, into his small space in the car, stacked the cat carriers into place, and ran back to Beckett, just sure he would be crying. He was happily staring at the ceiling playing with his hands. I put him into his car seat, snapped it into place, jumped into my seat while lifting my feet over the frying pan, and we were off! Only a few minutes behind schedule!

As the garage door closed on 134 E Cook, I didn't even have time to think about how we'd never see this place again because the cats were yowling, Jack was staring at me with his big eyes, and of course, the baby started screaming.

Beckett had loved his car seat up until now, being lulled to sleep in his warm little cocoon by the motion of the car. I'm sure the bustle and stress of packing and moving (as well as the yowling cats, you'd think someone was playing Mr. Potato Head with their limbs or something!) finally got to him. He was inconsolable. Sweet Jack, who was next to him, put his head at his feet. Nothing helped. Our exit from Anchorage was not a quiet graceful one.

We made it the 60 miles Whittier in one piece, despite the howling and screaming. The Spacebag of diapers only fell on Hugo's cat carrier twice. Soon we were driving onto the ferry M/V Kennicott, our home for the next two days.

Enjoying the view.

Looking back, being aboard the ferry was actually the most comfortable stage of our move. We had bunk beds in a little state room. The cafeteria served warm food three times a day, and we could stroll or carry Beck around the ship to get him to sleep. During the daylight hours we had splendid views of the Alaskan coast.

Not so for the pets. We had agonized over the 40 hours the pets would spend on the ferry leading up to the move. Matt, my ever prepared boyscout, found a pet playpen online, which he set up in the back of the car with a litter box for the cats. While he was doing that of course, Kenzie, our perky cat, escaped. She eluded him briefly as she explored the car deck, but after only a few minutes (which felt like hours) she returned to be stuffed back in to the car. Jack lay in the middle of the car, and we crammed all the other stuff in the two front seats. We were able to come down to walk Jack and attend to the cats every 8 hours or so. Hugo, our biggest cat, who is also the biggest scaredy-cat, hid in the litter box most of the time, but everyone else seemed to do just fine.

View from the bow

The first day of sailing was splendid. Sunny and clam, but by that evening we were told our first (and only) stop at Yakutat would be as short as possible as the captain was trying to stay ahead of a storm.

Our short stop in Yakutat

That night the storm caught us. It was hard to tell looking out of our little porthole into the dark night, but what I saw of the ocean reminded me a little of The Deadliest Catch. Fortunately the rough seas were at night, so we slept through most of them. My short and necessary forray to the restroom at 3 AM was a made especially memorable by all the lurching. By morning the ship had made it to the inside passage, where it travels along inside barrier islands, and the seas were much calmer.

M/V Kennicott safely docked in Juneau

Before we knew it we were cramming everything back into place in our little Subaru for the 20 minute drive to our new home. The cats yowled, Jack gave his best heart-tugging stare, and of course, Beckett started screaming again. On top of it all we didn't do as good of a job repacking so the sleeping bags kept falling on poor jack. Hello Juneau! The Walkers (and their laundry detergent) are here!

 Soon, but not soon enough, we were pulling into the driveway of our new home on Douglas Island. All of us were glad to set food on solid, snowy ground. The cats, I know, were glad to be free again.

Home!

And with that, our next adventure began: camping out in our new round home for the few weeks until our crap gets here.