Gezuar Vitin e Ri!

Wow, my first post of 2011 - seems like I should say something profound. Alas my brain cells don't seem to be up to it at the moment.

Here we are the day after Christmas, just before going to church (which is why Valerie's and my hair is all wet).

Sorry I haven't been posting for a while; we are still in a state of chronic sleep deprivation and seem to have come down with a collective cold/sinus/sore throat kind of thing. And Gabriel's first tooth seems to have made its definitive debut after flirting with us for almost 6 weeks! Poor little guy was absolutely miserable yesterday, with a fever, watery eyes and runny nose. He's doing better today though.

We're thinking of moving and have looked at a couple different places, all of which have their various pros and cons. We like our place but there are three strong counts against it: 1) we'd like a third bedroom so Gabriel can have his own room. At the moment Terry and I are dragging our mattress out to the living room every evening so that every little noise he makes doesn't wake me up. 2) There is constant construction noise going on from renovation projects on the 9th and 2nd floors of our building; it reverberates like crazy through the building and is very annoying. 3) Most problematic is the leaking roof in Valerie's room - the dripping water isn't as big a deal, though, as the spreading mold and flaking paint. We had to move her bed so the paint wouldn't drift down over it all night.

We've seen some promising options - one is just 2 blocks from our favorite park! - but haven't quite made a decision yet. It's always hard to anticipate what, er, challenges might emerge after moving that we can't quite envision yet. And moving itself is so stressful. But we're hoping it will be worth it to eliminate the three problems listed above.

On another topic altogether, my Peruvian/Japanese/American relatives who were unable to attend my grandmother's funeral and memorial service in Peru all got together for a virtual reunion on skype yesterday. It was really nice to share memories of Abuelita and hear voices of loved ones I haven't seen in years (over 15 years, some of them). It was a little distracting with the kids needing my attention at the same time but worth it. Again - I wish I had something more profound to say but it's only 7 p.m. here and I'm ready to fall asleep. Guess I'll sign off for now and hope the next post will be more interesting :-)