On Sunday July 26th we finally got ourselves moved into a hotel (our local Residence Inn), because repairs were anticipated to begin on Monday.
Me 52.9: Hotel
It was a pretty nice place. We had our own kitchen which was such a relief from eating out the previous three weeks. It was also set up like a little one bedroom apartment. So we were able to put Elliott to bed his normal time and still have freedom to spend our evening without waking him up. The biggest problem: no internet! There's internet in every room, but ours was broken. The other problem? The price. The bill was $2400 by the time we checked out. Fortunately, the insurance company has a direct billing relationship with hotel and we didn't have to pay a dime.
Elliott 52.9: Hotel Towels
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, things were pretty rough...
Other 52.9: Hermetically Sealed
They took the opportunity while the drywall people were completing the repairs to also take down the nasty popcorn ceiling from our bedroom. The kitchen and bathroom looked pretty much the same way and the rest of the apartment was sectioned off with large plastic drapes making it look even more like E.T. than before. But, as we found out a little over a week later, that didn't really keep the mess out.
We also celebrated our 12th anniversary on August 3rd; our last night at the hotel. They had a really nice social hour weeknight evenings with food and free beer and wine. So we enjoyed that then fixed a nice steak dinner in our hotel kitchen.
Me 52.10: Anniversary
By the time we moved home on August 4th, our entire place was covered with a thin film of drywall dust. There were big globbers of putty on top of the fridge and texture over-spray on the counters, appliances, toilet seat and even our light switch. We thought we could move back in and get on with things, but its taken more than a week to get things all cleaned up and back to normal. (We had to wash everything in the kitchen cabinets...which meant we couldn't put the stuff back in the kitchen from the dining room, since we needed the counters to hold all the cabinet contents while we ran load after load in the dishwasher. Ugh.)
Once we got everything cleaned up, things pretty much returned to normal. And a certain little man celebrated his 6 month birthday! And with that came his introduction to solid foods.
Elliott 52.10: Love at First Bite?
Well, he was a trooper, but his first taste of rice cereal wasn't exactly the best thing he'd ever had in this life...especially after a small round of profilactic antibiotics because of his kidneys. It was one of the sweetest things I've ever smelled, so its no wonder its taken him a week or so to get used to non-sweetened food. But since he isn't starving and doesn't need the solid food for his calories right now, we aren't too concerned if he doesn't eat much at each sitting. We didn't want to start the 'sweet food spiral' and now he's used to the taste of his cereal and last night even openned his mouth willingly several times.
Oh yeah, so the antibiotics! Well, Elliott had a follow up ultrasound for his kidney on July 24th (the same day I had my first mommy's day out by going to Long Beach for the International Quilt Show with some friends). Turns out his left kidney is still enlarged and that he needed to have a procedure done to make sure urine wasn't backflowing into his kidney...that would be bad, hence the profilactic antibiotics. He had that procedure done on August 3rd and found out everything was fine. They've now got him on the list to see the pediatric urologist (who will also be seeing him about his undecended testicle at the same time) as a next step.
Finally, we had a very social weekend last weekend. We were able to get together with some of our friends who were visiting from Japan. We had dinner at Suz and Kanji's so that we had more freedom with Elliott. We had a great time and Elliott did amazing despite being up significantly beyond his bedtime.
Other 52.10: Friends
Then the next night, Brad and I celebrated our anniversary properly with our first evening out together sans baby. It was so nice! My parents came down, hung out, played and handled getting Elliott to bed. We opted for dinner and a movie. Needless to say we had a great time and we didn't freak out once! ;) We knew he was in good hands and he did awesome. He didn't even cry when they put him down to bed. He just rolled over onto his side and went to sleep. (And yes, my dad has a video of it! ;) Apparently, he only cries for us ;)
Okay, that's more than enough for now. I'll have more photos to share from this week, a more in-depth 6 month post for Elliott and a contest coming up so stay tuned!
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