Schwartz Family

Here we are!! It's been awhile, I know. We found a place towards the end of May, put in the app, went to Ohio for a weekend, came back, packed up, moved and have been cleaning up the new place ever since. The place: we are renting a house that has an apartment on the second floor where another family lives. It is a darling house with vintage charm- deep window sills, pretty trimwork, brass old-fashioned doorknobs with keyholes, a little archway between the kitchen and mudroom. There are two bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, mudroom/entryway and then what we call the bonus room- a 7.5'x25' room that used to be a front porch but was closed in- we've divided it into an office and a family room. I'm not sure when the house was built but it's probably 60-70 years old and I think was last cleaned sometime before I was born. We were told it would be "immaculate" when we moved in, but the definition of immaculate apparently varies, widely. The previous tenant also had a cat and smoked. It was just disgusting. So, we have been scrubbing away here for the last two weeks. We are running low on elbow grease and 409 is running in my veins, but there is no place in the house not touched with a scotch-brite. We have been blessed with so much help though. Dear friends helped out with cleaning, painting, watching Anna and moving all our stuff over. Chris' parents have been up twice helping us out. We are very thankful to be taken care of by folks around here.
Chris' work has been helpful too- lots of free stuff! It has been providential. One home's basement flooded (big headache for Chris and the company) but we received all the undamaged carpet- enough for both bedrooms! The company switched paint brands so we could have the old brand of paint. Free trim and a co-worker's miter saw to do the bonus room. Extra light fixtures now brighten our home. Plus Chris' experience building homes makes for one dandy jack-of-all-things-house-related. I've fallen more in love with Chris and also with the shop-vac. I never knew how awesome shop-vacs are. I use it more than the vacuum now.
Because every surace had to be scoured, unpacking has been slow. We were pretty close to being settled last week, but painting has set us back a bit. As soon as we take up the drop cloths and put things back in order, I'll take some pictures.
Okay- the real reason you read. Anna. She is almost 10 months now. The picture above was the day she turned 9 months. She's been a blessing to us, spending hours contentedly looking at books in her room while we work on the house. She's been my little helper too:
Here she is helping me unpack.




And when I was scrubbing cabinets on night, she crawled into our bedroom, pulled Chris' sock out of the laundry hamper, crawled back into the kitchen and started scrubbing too.


She's been growing up too. She says "uh-oh" and when you ask her what a tiger says, she'll say "Grrr!" She still eats Gerber oatmeal cereal, but everything else is grown up food. AND, at long last, she sprouted a tooth! On Father's Day, we saw that first pearly white. See? She was teething.