Our New Home

We are finally moved in. We are so thankful, happy, and feel like we found the perfect place for us. It was so sad to leave our amazing neighbors in North Park. That was the hardest part. We were over the house, done with it, tired of not having a back yard and living on a busy street. But our neighbors were the best. But we promised to visit, especially because we are keeping Axel at his preschool in North Park. We love it, he loves it, so we're not changing.

 A lot of people have been asking us how it feels to be in our new home. I have been telling people that the best part about it is that we don't have to leave! We can actually stay home! That probably sounds weird to most people, but in our North Park house, we were always so antsy. Since we had no backyard, there was nowhere to really relax or play. We left the house almost every morning and every afternoon that we were home,and it was exhausting a lot of the time. But now, we can play in the backyard, inside because we have so much more space, or in the front because we live on a col-de-sac street. Axel can ride his bike without worry, Leia has already made her way to the next block checking out the 'hood (okay, she "walked" away), and one of the best parts are the trails just down the street. We can walk for about 45 minutes through the trails. Axel loves it, and Leia gets to run free, it's exactly what we love to do, and to have it just steps away is such a luxury for us. It's also so quiet, and feels so safe. It really just feels like home.

(Nia and Suzanne, close your ears) Our neighbors have all been so welcoming and wonderful to us. One brought over some amazing cranberry almond bread. Some others have just come over and introduced themselves. They all seem so nice. There is definitely a contrast of people who have lived here for the past 30 years, and young families with kids. It seems the people here are either or. Which I think is wonderful because I love having families in our demographic to hang out with, but I also love having an older generation around. Axel was so close to our old Greek neighbor, Helen, who is probably in her 80's. He'd call her "Yaya", which is "Grandma" in Greek. There will never be a replacement for Yaya, but there are some really nice older neighbors who we hopefully will get to know better. Suzanne, our crazy fireball artsy fartsy by day stand up comedian by night neighbor, there will never EVER be a replacement for you. It just doesn't exist.

Overall, we feel so extremely blessed and fortunate to be here. Three months ago when we sold our house and were looking for a new one, we were so disheartened at the options in San Diego. We never thought we'd find a house that we felt was nice, in a good neighborhood, and that we could afford. Well, there is still some work left to do on this one, but for the most part, it's been updated. Our contractor Josh is amazing and made the house even nicer than our original vision. I totally recommend him to anyone who needs a contractor! Anyways, here are the before and after photos. It's hard to even imagine what this house used to look like. Josh (JJH Construction, yo!) and his guys did an incredible job. Now we just need some new furniture!

 

Renovating, Moving, and Enjoying Being Two and a Half

We are one week away from moving into our new house! The house has undergone extensive renovation over the last six weeks and still isn't done, but the goal is to be done next week so we can move in. I will post complete before and after photos, but for now, here are two photos, before and after, taken of the living room and fireplace. The kitchen will be located to the right in the room behind the almost-done fireplace. This gives a good picture of how much needs to get done this week! We love our new neighborhood in Del Cerro in San Diego, and are so excited and feel so blessed.

I don't know what it's like to raise a teenager, but I often joke that having a two and a half year old sometimes feels like having a teenager. They both think they're right all the time, they want to do things on their own, they don't like to hear the word "no", and they are both capable of going from happy as a clam to flailing on the ground in protest of your "no"  faster than you can blink.

It really is amazing to see how fast Axel is learning English at preschool. It seems every time we pick him up that his preschool teacher Miss Kim tells us of a new word he said to her that day. A couple of months ago right after he started preschool, he didn't have more than 30 words or so. He would reenact everything for us since he couldn't explain what happened. But now, he talks and explains and describes everything that went on at preschool.....except we can't understand about 25% of what he says. I'm proud of him for being so confident in talking, but we can't tell what language he's speaking unless he speaks in short two to three word sentences. His enunciation is not the best, so yu really have to think about the context of what he's trying to say. Sometimes we ask him to show us what he's saying, sometimes we start a guessing game.

He still has some really random words for things. But some new words are:

Mos = applesauce (Swedish)
Tack tack = Thank you (Swedish)
Pumpa = pumpkin (Swedish)
ogu = yogurt
Poon = spoon
Manzana = apple
Circulo = circle
Cam= cama, or bed in Spanish
Gracias
Go way = se cayo, or fell down in Spanish
Ma-ke! = I did it!. Yeah, no idea where that came from
San = Suzanne, our neighbor and his favorite babysitter
Pumpkin
Ghost
Halloween
Trick or treat!
Books
Bike
No like!
Axel do it!
Snacks
And tons more words in English.

I can't count how many words he has right now, but I would guess its just under 100. The thing is that he has a ton of words that he doesn't enunciate very well, so you don't know it's a word unless you're familiar with his speech. For example, he calls blocks "bosh", and he says "Axel go way" which is supposed to be "Axel se cayó", which means Axel fell down. He uses this sentence quite often.

His favorite new word at the moment is "Why?" I thought the "why" phase was reserved for the 3's but apparently it can start as young as two and a half.

He is becoming such a sweet little man with so many sweet qualities. When I went to picked him up at preschool last week I met one of the moms of a little girl in his class named Lennon. She asked who my kid was and I told her it was Axel. She looked at me with an "Awwww" look and said she and her girls love Axel, that he was the class greeter. Every time they arrive to school, he greets them, then shows them to their cubby and where to put their stuff. Stuff like that just melts your heart to hear about your kid.

He has two BFF's at preschool. Two sweet little boys named Jax and Tyson. Axel talks about them constantly and is always telling us about their adventures on the playground, when one of them gets hurt "Jax boo boo, go way" (get it??), and when one of them says no to the teacher. Miss Kim says they are inseparable, which makes you happy as a parent to know that your kid has good friendships.

And at the same time, the second we get home, we get into a heated battle over the Halloween chocolate only being allotted to one piece per night and only after he's eaten his dinner. Our response is usually met with him flailing his body on the ground because , as he knows it, his life is over without his Halloween chocolate. But the really fun part about this stage is that we can discuss things. We can explain to him why we have certain rules and he can, for the most part, understand. We are learning that toddlers really want to be heard and understood. So if we say "no" and he throws a tantrum, we usually take a minute to talk about why we said no. This has been really good for us, and it feels like he feels happy that we got to talk about it.

I think he is equally attached to both Johan and myself. Although, he loves playing with Johan. He always says "mamma/Pappa, watch!" Whenever he does something silly.

He loves to help clean, wipe up, vacuum, help us lift objects, cook, and most of all, do things all by himself. It is so cool to see him becoming his own person and seeing ourselves in him. Another one of his favorite phrases is "axel do it!" Which sounds pretty familiar to me! And Johan thinks his cuddliness comes from him, although I think we are both contributors. But the coolest part of this phase is having talks about being kind and loving people, and then seeing them actually acting it out, like choosing to go pick up trash because we've always told him to keep the earth clean, or to see him willingly pick up a bunch of tipped over sidewalk cones that had been blown over while everyone else walked by, or to get a kiss when one of us gets a boo boo, or for him to do something that I didn't like and have him come up, give me a hug, and say "sorry mamma". You see these small things in your kid and just become amazed that there really is so much good in the world.