The Big Move & Our Families Newest Addition

Oh how I wish my short blogging hiatus had more to do with our families newest members but alas no such luck- and I have not had the baby yet. I'll get to our mini additions in a moment. But first, we are moved in! Certainly not settled but our belongings are all here, somewhere. The night before the movers came we came over to the house and went for our first swim. I have been longing to get in a nice cool pool since we've been here but I waited until we got access to our pool so I wouldn't have to worry about everyone staring at my swollen westerner body. It was worth the wait, SO wonderful! Love how you can't feel a pound of baby when you're submerged in water. Everyone enjoyed the swim.

We live up this extremely steep and narrow hill and the movers had to fill a bunch of smaller trucks from the bigger truck with our things. A whole crew of Phillipino men did the hard labor and then helped us to unpack many of the boxes. I swear two of them were assigned to follow me around and make sure I didn't lift anything which was actually very sweet. But then I felt kind of dumb as they were trying to help me unpack boxes and I'd have to stop in the middle of a box and say, "I have no idea where this should go, we'll have to come back to it." There are very few closets or garages to be found in Taiwan and although this house isn't as old as some it still is lacking heavily in the storage department. It's going to take some time and creativity to find a place for everything.

Last night was our first night in the house and we discovered a problem we had already suspected. The house is big. There aren't many choices, especially at the time we came house hunting, you either have an apartment or a large house. We tried to rent one that was a bit smaller but would have fit our needs just fine but the owners were insane and wanted us to pay their taxes which is absurd and an agreement couldn't be made (though they called our realtor 2 months later and said they thought they'd made a mistake, DUH!). In the end this house was the only other option and we are very pleased with how great the landlord is and the proximity to school etc.

This house is 3 stories and a lot of wide open space. As is standard each room has it's own AC unit . I hesitate to put details of where everyone sleeps on the blog so I will just say that it is a weird configuration of rooms and we are not on the same level as the children. Due to the AC blowing in each room we can hear next to nothing. I'm thinking I'm going to have to have a baby monitor in each of the kid's rooms just for peace of mind, unless anyone has any other suggestions.
Also customary in Taiwan is to work with 2-4 realtors at once, which really was odd to me when we were house hunting. We trusted and loved our first realtor Fiona and are friends with her still but the lady who insisted we just see this house only she had access to, named Jane, seemed to sneak in at the last second and now we are left working through her on house issues. She is fine and a hard worker but the bottom line is that Nathan and I don't really trust her. In example, we've become friends with the tenants previously living in our house. Angelica was going to surprise our children with a turtle for the little Koi pond we now have. Jane gets wind of this and shows up yesterday with two adorable little pet turtles. She didn't even ask Nathan or I first and she definitely stole Angelica's thunder. Jane rubs me the wrong way. Now let's look at how ADORABLE these little turtles are :)
There is a bigger one cleverly named "Master Uguay" by Kennedy -after the turtle on Kung Fu Panda, and then the littler one named "Speedy" because I think I'm funny. Kohen and Kennedy were ecstatic and truth be told I pretty much love the little cuties- I actually had two little turtles just like this for a while growing up. I wonder if we can keep them alive for any length of time...
Though there no signs of imminent labor for me as of yet- I am satisfied at how our family has expanded with Master Uguay and Speedy. You all should really come over and meet them :)

Until then wish us luck getting this place settled and send our little guy encouragement to not procrastinate the day of his arrival- there is nothing wrong with being a little early. With all that needs to still be done I suppose I could really use this last week and a half- though take just a moment to visualize what a 10 month pregnant woman moving into and unpacking a house looks like. It ain't pretty but I'm getting the job done!