Forced hiatus

Unfortunately my post-packout, in-the-midst-of-packing post didn't happen. I even had a plan for a photo of the living room with all seven suitcases spread out. Oh well.
Now we're in Milan but don't have Internet access -- or even a phone, for that matter. But it'll all be better soon. And when it is, I'll try to remember everything about which I've thought "Wow, I should blog about this!"

Packout proves two is the magic number -- of kids, that is

Three years ago when we packed out to move to Port of Spain, we had too much UAB. (Unaccompanied air baggage. The employee gets 250 pounds, the second person 200, the third 150, and the fourth and subsequent people each get 100.)
So for POS we got 600 pounds. I couldn't fit everything in we wanted to take. I joked with my friend Melinda that I needed to borrow a couple of her kids just to get more UAB on our travel orders.
Having Owen got us another 100 pounds. We packed out yesterday, and I only sent 580 pounds of the 700 we were allowed. (The packaging materials the movers will add to those 580 pounds will put us somewhere around 620 pounds, but that still means I could have sent more.)
I suppose the main difference between the two moves isn't really the number of kids we have as much as it is that I'm not worried about what we won't be able to buy in Italy. We'll be able to get everything there. (It turned out we could buy a lot of things in Trinidad, too, but I'd wanted to be on the safe side.)
I have no idea how much our household effects weigh, but it sure seemed like a lot of stuff as they were boxing and hauling it. And the apartment is eerily empty now.
Of course, there are two big questions:
1. Will everything we held back to carry in our luggage actually fit in said luggage? I swore I was going to pack the suitcases before the movers came this time, but it didn't happen.
2. Where in the world did I put the velcro wrist-strap thingy for the Bob stroller? I'll need it when we check it at the gate before we board the plane Friday.

Identifying big gaps in my knowledge: A visit to the Sackler Gallery

My sisters Nicole, Laurie and Courtney -- accompanied by my nephew Liam -- are here for a visit, and yesterday we went to D.C. for some Mall time.
Nicole and Courtney went early in the day and saw the National Gallery of Art and National Museum of the American Indian before we joined them after Laura got home from the aforementioned last day of school. (Although it is the museum of our people and all, I don't visit the American Indian museum very often.)
Everyone wanted to see/do something, but none of them had a strong opinion about what. So I suggested we visit the Sackler Gallery because I'd been wanting to see Gods of Angkor: Bronzes from the National Museum of Cambodia.
We did see that exhibit. It's awesome, and I highly recommend it. It's not a huge display, and none of the pieces are very big. But there are some amazing works, and the historical/descriptive narratives are very well done.
When I asked at the front desk how to get to the Cambodian exhibit, the woman gave us directions and then said, "You should see the Buddha exhibit, too. It's very special."
And so it is.
In the Realm of the Buddha is a much bigger exhibit. The most impressive part is a Tibetan shrine. Photos aren't allowed, but I borrowed this one from National Geographic.
Another part of the exhibit focuses on the Situ Panchen. This is where my knowledge gaps come into play. I don't know much about Buddhism, but viewing the objects purely for their artistic merits was worth it.
I highly recommend both exhibits. And because the Sackler is one of the less-visited musuems on the National Mall, you won't have to crowd around tiny objects with hundreds of other people like you might at Natural History or Air and Space. Well, at least we didn't.

Oh, look! Someone's done with third grade

She got off the bus yesterday and immediately had to start saying goodbye to friends, as some were leaving that very minute for various points around the globe. Such is life for the Foreign Service kid.

Reaching for the ceiling

I don't think this pile of stuff is quite going to make it. Well, unless I decide to buy a few more pillows. (It's been so long since I've seen our household effects from Port of Spain that I can't remember how many decent pillows -- if any -- we have.)

Tom Petty got it wrong. Sort of.

The waiting isn't the hardest part. The leaving is harder.
OK, so this probably is a situational thing. I mean, if I'd been waiting for almost two years to go to some less pleasant place, maybe the waiting would have been painful. But when you're waiting to go to Italy, there are a lot of things you can do to fill the time.
Things such as planning short trips and watching Rick Steves videos and wondering whether you'll be able to find avocados (but knowing that even if you can't, there will be all kinds of other great things to eat).
So, although the waiting has been a chore at times, I've survived it fine. I'd like the leaving to hurry along, though.
I'm going to miss some things about our current situation. We have a lot of friends here -- Foreign Service and otherwise -- and are meeting new people all the time. I like knowing how to get places without really having to think about it. I like knowing which stores I need to go to to buy certain things.
A selection of relatives is coming tomorrow and will be here a few days. Laura's last day at school is Friday. Sunday will be our last at church. The movers come Monday, and then it'll be relatively calm until we leave Friday.
Can we get the waiting over with and start the leaving already? I have stuff to do. That stuff won't include seeing our apartment right away -- we found out today it won't be ready for a few days after we get there -- but I can deal with that.
And yes, Foreign Service friends, I know I'll soon be waiting for something else. That's just the way it goes.

Farewell, Green Car

We sold our Jeep Liberty today. I highly recommend Auto Buying Service in Fairfax, Va., which also bought our Mazda 6 in 2007 before we left for Port of Spain.
I snapped this photo in the parking lot as we got into the rental car to leave Green Car there. I felt a little like my grandmother -- who generally was probably the least sentimental person I've ever known -- who once told us about having teared up as one of their long-driven but eventually broken-down cars was being towed from their yard.
I didn't cry, and I know the car isn't capable of caring who drives it. But I'll still miss it a little, especially the next time I'm in need of four-wheel drive and don't have it.

More on Laura's room-to-be

Yesterday at Target I found this rug on clearance. (That made it less than $14.) You can't really tell from the photo I pilfered from target.com, but the colors are pretty close to the polka-dot comforter set. I'm envisioning it going at the foot of her bed. That vision could change based on how everything fits once we get there.
I also got a cute robot-themed comforter set for Owen's toddler bed. I will spare you a discourse on my irritation with the disparities in choices for boys vs. girls in this area.

Foreign Service life: Fulfilling my chaos-related needs since 2007

Our pre-packout survey is today. This is when someone from the moving company comes to your house to see what you're planning to ship and to estimate how much it weighs. It'll be more helpful for their packing-material-related purposes; because we're going to an unfurnished post and are way below the State Department's overall weight limit, there isn't a chance of us having more than we can ship. The actual packing and hauling away of our belongings is two weeks from today.
We'll probably sell the car this week. It's amazing it has less than 22,000 miles on it (it's a 2007) when we've done so many things with it. Gotta love living in places where you don't have to drive long distances.
Laura's room is a cesspool of insanity, part of it her doing and part of it mine. Over the weekend I started shoving stuffed animals into bags to get them out of the way. There are two kitchen-trash-can-size bags of them, and there are more to be bagged. (And the ones we have here are a minor subset of the "collection.") There's still no sign of either her Nintendo DSi or her key to our apartment, both of which I've been convinced are in her room somewhere. I've disassembled her globe puzzle and will be sending it as unaccompanied air baggage. Perhaps it will provide some entertainment over the summer.
Luckily Laura had had a physical within the past year, so the pediatrician's office was willing to fill out the American School of Milan's form without me having to bring her in. How I was going to cram an appointment in during the last two weeks of school (possibly without a car) was a big concern.
There still are tons of things that need to be bought and a few more things that need to be given away. And there's a dresser we have to get to our apartment from the Norbergs' house. And there are the usual caring-for-a-toddler activities.
I'm oddly calm about it all.

Welcome to teenhood (a few years early)

Recently Laura has outgrown many of her clothes. This was a good time for it to happen since I'd rather buy her things while we're still in the U.S. than to pay European prices or have to guess about how things will fit while shopping online. But the reality that my little girl now wears a size 12 of some things in certain brands was a bit of a shock.
Because of our furniture-arrangement plan for Milan -- she'll now have a full-size bed in her room, not a twin -- I told her she could pick out a comforter set. After much discussion and shopping both in person and online, she settled on this set from the teen line at Kohl's. It wasn't my favorite, but it's not going to be my room. (It will be the room of whichever of you come to visit us in Italy, though, so start acclimating yourselves now.)

27 pounds, 4 ounces of pure cuteness

Yesterday Owen had his 12-month checkup. Today he's laughing every time I speak Italian. It's a good thing he's cute.

Looking for a big pile of random stuff? It might be in my closet

I just was collecting a box of things to ship to my sister Amanda and realized "Wow! There are lots of random things sitting around here!"
Amanda's having a baby this summer -- her first -- and I'm sending her some pregnancy-related items. And some infant toys and books. And a few other things I found sitting around that she might find a use for.
Meanwhile, I've got two boxes of baby clothes ready to send to my friend Deirdre, whose son, Nate, just turned 2. Owen has been inheriting Nate's outgrown clothes, and I'm sending them all back in case Nate ends up with a sibling. I suspect the days of Owen getting Nate's hand-me-downs are over, however, because Owen now weighs more. And no, Nate's not miniature or anything, Owen just weighs 27 pounds, 4 ounces (as of yesterday).
I've talked about the conglomeration of Ikea boxes we've accumulated. It's a good thing Laura's old enough to know better than to try to play King of the Mountain on them. (Owen's not old enough, but we try to keep him out of Laura's room where the boxes reside.) On top of the boxes are some rubber mats we got from our friends the Norbergs and on top of those are pillows we bought at Target. (There's a great sale on cheap pillows this week for anyone who's interested.)
That big pile also contains the ice chest I can't get back into Laura's closet -- our luggage has been reproducing -- and folding barstools.
At the barstools' previous perch -- where else, at the bar -- you'll now find the grocery items I've begun to collect for shipment. Italy has the best food in the world, of course, but we'll still need taco seasoning, Cheerios and baby Goldfish crackers. I still need to buy Minute Rice, and there's always room for more randomness in this area.
My closet contains multiple plastic bins, one of which contains toiletry items. Soon it will be making its way to the bar area as well, where it will join dental floss and Listerine. The doctor Owen saw yesterday also suggested a specific kind of baby wash, which I need to stock up on, too. I haven't decided yet how many diapers to ship; they're available there, of course, and we can order them. But there's something to be said for not having to worry about it later.
The migration of the toiletries will leave more space in the closet for sorting clothes. Amanda is ending up with the remnants of my maternity items, but there still are a few other things I need to purge. And the box of Laura's books needs to be sorted into luggage, UAB and HHE stacks. Same goes for all the other books we've got sitting around various rooms. We've decided to buy a Kindle -- the decision was made ages ago, in fact, just not the actual purchase -- but we'll still have tons of books.
Don't even get me started on the stuffed animals. Where do they all come from? Why is it that they never get lost like the Nintendo DSi and key to our apartment? How is it that the 9-year-old who rarely remembers what she did THAT VERY DAY at school can tell you EXACTLY where each and every stuffed animal came from?
This is only a portion of what we're dealing with at the moment. Just imagine if we were going to a hardship post and had to ship consumables. Ugh. Don't want to think about it.