I'm sitting in a bookstore overlooking "Mount" Oread (I'm sorry, I have to include the quotes. It's a hill, people!) on the campus of the University of Kansas. The last week has been a whirlwind of unpacking, acclimating to our new home, and exploring our new city. The week before that was an even bigger whirlwind, perhaps even a cyclone, of tying up loose ends in Athens, throwing everything we own (save three suitcases) into a moving truck, and driving 775 miles (over three days) to Kansas.

Looking back, I'm really glad we decided to spread the trip out over several days. It gave us a nice buffer between the loading and the unloading, and it limited the hours we spent trapped in a car with a two-year-old who would only interrupt her medley of songs to ask rhetorically, "What do I want, mama?" in a tone that can only be described as petulant. Or perhaps whiny. What she wanted was a mystery. It was typically some food item we didn't have on hand.

Overall, Charlotte did very, very well, and has continued to do well. She loved staying in hotels, swimming in the pools, sleeping in the little cribs. And she loves our new house, and is adjusting well to her "new" bed, which is really just her crib mattress on the floor. We hope to transition to a toddler bed or a twin soon.

Jeff and I feel the same way about our new house: it's fantastic. The space, people. THE SPACE! It's so huge compared to what we were used to, and even what we were expecting. Our living room alone is about the size of our former first floor. And the kitchen...well, we had three people in there at the same time the other day, and none of us felt crowded! I couldn't be alone in our old kitchen without feeling claustrophobic. We're still getting a few things unpacked and put away, but my mom (a.k.a. Hurricane Kathy) descended upon the boxes and lo, there was much unpacking and organization. It was wonderful.

Today is our first day in our house with just the three of us (plus the baby in utero, I guess). It feels a bit quiet. Charlotte misses having a grandparent around to command to read to her, feed her, hug her, etc. But it also feels like this really is our home...not just a strange, temporary place we were filling with our stuff.