After 4 weeks of madness, things around here seem to have settled back into a happy routine. Here’s a terse summary of the recent past:
- Spending every Saturday, all Saturday, at IKEA for 4 weeks straight. The Saturday just past was the first that we were not there.
- 6 IKEA deliveries. The total mass of all the IKEA stuff brought into our home was somewhere around 3’000 kilograms, based on the figures on the delivery receipts.
- 2 of the above-mentioned deliveries included assembly crews; specifically, for our bedroom armoire and our living room wall unit. The armoire took 2 people with power tools 3 hours to assemble. The wall unit took 3 people with power tools 4 hours to assemble, including bolting it into our wall in 8 places. Needless to say, these days were not good ones for Sammy. The sound of a power drill is the first thing to which I’ve seen him react with abject terror.
- The tools necessary for assembling all the stuff from IKEA were packed in a unlabeled box. As such, until this past weekend all I had to work with in assembling the furniture for our bedroom, Sammy’s room, the living room and the office was my Swiss Army knife.
- In the middle of all this, as I mentioned previously, Sammy and I were both ill for close to a week with a stomach flu of some sort…
…AND Sammy got his first tooth during this stretch. We have dubbed it “Chomper”, and taken to calling him “Gummy Joe”. Numerous other white bumps have also developed recently, with the most prominent being Chomper’s immediate neighbour which we have taken to calling “Chomper Jr.”. The journey to his first tooth was not a pleasant one for little Sammy, with which the ongoing disorder in his living arrangements did not help at all.
Our first couple of weeks in our new apartment were not happy ones for us, with stress and discomfort on all our parts wearing patience thin and making tempers short. Now that we’ve gotten past the craziness, things are much better for all of us. Sammy’s teething has abated somewhat; enough at least that he doesn’t require the continual intake of pain medication. With Saturdays no longer being filled with IKEA and house preparation, we finally made it to our local farmers’ market this past Saturday morning. We had a wonderful time seeing what was available and practicing our French. The rest of the weekend was spent at home, playing with Sammy and leisurely getting the last of the furniture put together. All is right again with the world.
I hope that this will mean the resumption of normal posting and commentary about life here in Neuchâtel. There are lots of pictures, so expect a big photo update post in the next day or two. I’ve also been watching developments in the Americans’ ongoing healthcare reform drama, and have thoughts on that saved up. If Sammy continues to nap as he has of late, then I’ll share them with you.