The Eight Month Update

Well, life is speeding up, and I don't particularly want to go into elaborate details, but here are some recent photo and a little commentary.


This is a picture of the place we're eyeballing in Boston. We all went up to Boston last week (some longer than others), and did some serious house hunting. If all goes as planned, we'll be buying the first floor here within the next month or so. This isn't something we'd anticipated being able to do, but we figured out recently that the housing market is such that it may actually be cheaper to pay on a mortgage than to pay rent.

Anyhow, we like this place. Benefits include: two bedrooms, a small study, a deck, a fenced yard, basement storage (these are all things we currently lack), children upstairs, and a playground (plus an enormous old cemetery) across the street. It's in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, which has a reputation for housing lots of artists, young families, Latinos and LGBTs. It seems like a pretty happy little community. Plus there are many green spaces, and we'll have easy access to the T. Andrew will be a 10-15 minute drive from the hospital, or a 30 minute bike or subway ride. Our offer has been accepted, and Andrew attended the house inspection today. Generally speaking, things seem to be falling into place. We're excited about it so, you know, fingers crossed!

And now for a slew of Anika photos:



We think this monkey could be "the one." Time will tell.


Anika is getting close to crawling finally. Just this weekend, she began getting up onto her knees and sort of rocking back and forth. Now it's mostly a matter of finding a way to propel herself forward.




Needless to say, this kid is not short on pride in one's accomplishments. She can't pull herself up yet, but she sure does love the view from up here.




Note the ridiculous Popeye arms.



And again: those arms!






Here she is in her bathing suit, getting ready for her first swim.


The pre-swim shower...
The pre-swim capping...


And finally, the swim. She didn't hate it, but wasn't thrilled either. It was very cold; I think we all would have enjoyed it more if we weren't freezing.