Houston, we have a tooth!
Just marking this day down in little Bianca's history: first tooth made it's appearance (finally) today! Hooray! She started to pick something off the floor and put it in her mouth, and I discovered said tooth when fishing out the foreign object. Silly girl! We love her though, soooo much <3
Dear Maplewood: I hate your stinking guts!
We made pretty good time driving back to NY. We got to Maplewood, got our keys and went into our apartment. We noticed it was a bit stuffy, but we figured it was just because we hadn't been there in 2.5 months. So what do you do? Put the air conditioning on, duh! Well. We tried that. It. Wasn't. Working. And yes, NY is a northern state, but it gets pretty darn hot there too. And it was hot. We were SOOO angry! Bianca hates hot weather too, so she can't sleep very well if it's hot out. Awesome. Of course they cannot fix it that night and of course the computer is still packed in the car.
That night we drove around Ithaca and tried to find a hotel to stay in because that was just ridiculous, but since it was right before the start of school of course there were no vacancies anywhere. Needless to say, it was a horribly hot night. We unpacked the next day and we just ate whatever we didn't have to cook on the stove to cause MORE heat in the apartment. We got a little fan for little Bianca, but it didn't help THAT much.
To get maintenance to come, you have to put in an internet request. They don't have a phone number (that's what you get at grad student housing I guess), so we just sent in a request for the same thing every day. Granted, in Ithaca you get your occasional cooler day where it wasn't TOO horrible and Bianca could actually wear clothes, but I mean, COME ON! We even said we had a little baby who was sweating in here. We spent a few nights in stupid hotels in Cortland over the next like 2 weeks. Bobby would do homework in the computers there and Bianca and I would just watch movies and play. UGH! What a waste of money we didn't have though. :-/
They eventually came to fix it. They put in a new unit. But it didn't work very well. At least a little bit of cool air came out though. Then a week later they came and put ANOTHER unit in and this time, it worked! The workers there weren't nice, but the ac specialist guy was the best! He was so nice and understanding when they finally sent him over and he got our stuff fixed asap! So thanks to him! Boo to the rest of them.
Let's talk about good things now shall we? I got Bianca her first real pair of shoes, aw! And we've been having fun at branch activities and playgroups (now that Bianca can kinda play). Bobby's schedule is CRAZY! He even got an on-campus job like 10 hrs a week, which is good, even though we hardly see him, even if he's home. But all is (finally) well here. I can't WAIT to get out of Maplewood though, yuck yuck yuck. Ok enough complaining, look at pictures of our cute baby now :)
:::::EDITED TO ADD ONE YEAR LATER:::::
oh yeah, it didn't stop there with the AC. The heater wasn't working when it finally got cold enough to turn it on. But yet they came right over for that one, even though it was like barely in the 50's or something crazy out. We weren't freezing. We were fine. But we let them know early because we know how these people are. But apparently to them a broken heater in 50 degree weather is an "immediate emergency" but a broken AC in the 90's is nothing. *smacks head* Poor people who live in C19 after us...I swear it's cursed...
Goodbye Knoxville, Hello again Ithaca!
Our time in TN has went by wayyyy too fast. :( Luckily we didn't bring that much stuff, so packing wasn't bad (it was just shoving the clothes in the trunk and buckling in our old TV). It was sad once the furniture people came and took away all of our furniture though. We never saw our apartment empty, so it made it all the more sad. Here is what our apartment looked like before and after furniture:
A view from the road
Our building
Go past the stairs and we're the last door on the left!
Our apt!
Living room
Door to the balcony
We got to decorate a little at least lol
Whole living room
View from balcony
our AWESOME kitchen!
Computer area
Bathroom
Bedroom
So sad :(
Our last night was spent eating at Abuelos one last time and shopping for a tent for Bianca to play in on the beach...Yes we are stopping at VA Beach on our way to Ithaca, hooray! We said our goodbyes that night and left as early as we could the next morning.
We made good time and went right in the water when we got there! Bianca absolutely LOVED it! She had so much fun splashing in the water with daddy! Then I took her to the tent, where she also had a lot of fun...eating the sand. Ohhh well.
When Bobby was done getting thrown around by the waves, we went back and changed and went out to eat at this yummy Mexican place. We noticed that our storller was packed up in the car...underneath all of the clothes packed tightly in the trunk OF COURSE!!! I went to Walmart and got Bianca a cheap $15 stroller that we used this trip and worked pretty well. It was nice having a lighter weigh stroller actually. We went right to sleep that night when I got back since we were so tired.
(She was so tired she fell asleep at the table, haha!)
The next day we went to the beach to take her 9 month pictures! I can't believe our little baby girl is 9 months already! Holy crap! We swam a little and then noticed that I had gotten sand in the camera, UGH! Bye bye camera...Bobby says I'm the camera ruin-er. I have no comment. We got a disposable camera for the rest of the trip though.
We spent our beach time just relaxing. We walked around and ate some sno-cones, ice cream, ate at the same Mexican restaurant AGAIN (same waitress too haha!), went swimming, watched an outdoor show at night and had a blast!
The next day was our last day there, sadly. Of course we swam, went shopping for candy/salt water taffy, ate at a different Mexican restaurant (getting our Mexican on before Ithaca, the land of no Mexican food), and got ready to leave. We left the next morning and returned to Ithaca...but we were not ready for what we discovered when we arrived at our apartment......................
TO BE CONTINUED...........
