As I have stated in several other recent blog posts, we had to move again because our ShoreView apartment was bought out by a new company and a new management team (such a shame because the first people were so sweet) and hiked up the rent by $530/month "to match the going rates"!! And more recently they tried to scam us out of our $260 security deposit, saying we left the apartment unclean when we all spent hours vacuuming and scrubbing the bathrooms. They also charged us pro-rated fees for being there extra days after our lease ended and Michael turned in the keys. Come on! Michael had to call the manager several times before she finally agreed to send us a refund for all those things.
There was a two week gap between the ShoreView lease ending and the new one starting, so we booked an Extended Stay to live in for those two weeks. Emma settled in really easily as long as she had toys to keep her distracted while Michael and his mom brought in our hotel boxes, Emma's medical supply cases and our suitcases of clothes, as well as our dog, Sasha Renee. His mom was down for a few days to help us get things packed and moved since a lot of stuff in our old apartment was staying in storage until we move into our new house in August. // I never got a picture of this, but we always did trach care on the bed. At home we do it on the floor with her on a propped up folding table.
A lot of things have changed since I got a phone call from Caitie in the office of our new apartment complex two Thursdays ago (April 7th). We were scheduled to move in on Friday, April 15th, but I was told that the current tenant was refusing to move out! Who does that? So they had to push back our move in date by a week and she asked if we had somewhere to stay until then. I told her we were staying in a hotel, but that it was really expensive (not the prices I thought an Extended Stay charged) and asked if we would be reimbursed by the complex for staying an extra week. She said she would ask the apartment manager and call me back. Two hours later she had found an open apartment for us and said we could move in as early as the next day!! (I'm so glad this worked out because so many workers are still cleaning that original apartment. I think that tenant had issues and left the place a giant mess. Cleaning people were scrubbing the floors, I've seen painters, and the carpets had to get ripped up!)
After a bunch of phone calls to see if the movers were available that Saturday instead of the following weekend which we had booked them for, Michael had me call back to tell the complex he could pick up the keys after work! Living at the hotel for 10 nights wasn't terrible and it was interesting to see how easily I got along with what we had there. It was fascinating to see how little we really need and use in our day to day lives. I like how much I blogged when I wasn't watching so much TV without our Roku, and there is almost nothing good to watch on cable until the evening, especially with so many commercials. The week we were in the hotel I wrote eight blog posts, while all of last year I wrote nine!
Emma stays occupied pretty easily, so with her three "100 Word" books, snooping around the hotel room, and taking a few naps, she stayed content. I went to the movies one weekend- saw The Lost City, walked to the grocery store a few times, and drove to pick up food for dinner when we didn't want what was in the fridge/freezer! Because Michael has such a long commute to and from work right now, he took a nap most days when getting home.
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| I adore pictures like this where you can see her eyes looking at me with such love. |
I also have several photos of Emma being her silly self and causing trouble, day and night. During this week at the Extended Stay, Emma learned how to start pushing her self up out of her Bumbo chair! // She was constantly crawling to the edge of the bed and sometimes I only had pillows on the sides and I kept telling her that if she got too close to the end that she could fall off and get hurt.. so one night I let her find out (with me sitting right there to catch her). She seemed surprised that it happened. She "fell" onto my lap and then I let her body slide ever so slowly to the floor, securely between my legs. // One night while we were sleeping she kept clicking buttons and figured out how to change the settings on her monitor so it switched the blood oxygen setting to something else that made it keep alarming until Michael figured out how to switch it back. He then attached her monitor to the ventilator strap for the rest of the days. // Emma earned herself her very first time out after taking off her leg splint and forcefully throwing it directly at my face/eye and when Michael picked her up and told her that was wrong, she slapped him hard in the face/eye! Geez! She has been in a bad throwing faze lately, but she has not hit us in the face before. She got a 20 minute time out and was not happy about it. // Lastly, Michael had to use Coban to secure her feeding port into her Mini button on the last night because it kept popping out even though it kind of has a locking mechanism on it, so there were a few milk (formula) spots that had leaked onto the sheets. This wasn't Emma's fault, but it was still an issue.
I have loved tiny houses for many years now. I have been lucky to stay in a couple so far (both last year- but no blog posts on that either!), and have watched a lot of YouTube videos of tours of tiny houses that other people live in. I watch the tiny house shows I can find on HGTV. I always wondered if we could live in one, but Michael said Emma's equipment wouldn't fit and that seems correct with the tight layout. A quick Google search tells me that the average hotel is 330 square feet and that was a good size for us! If we were living there, I would have wanted a little more space for a washer and dryer. They had one down the hall that was $2.50 per load, for the washer and another $2.50 for the dryer, but we were able to hold out until we got to the apartment since we moved a week early. If we had not, laundry would have cost us at least 10 dollars to do. Michael said he would need a garage because he really likes having a work space for projects. Our apartment that we had for almost two years (August 2014-July 2016), before we had our first house where Emma was brought home to, had a garage with the living space over that. The washer and dryer was in the garage. But stairs would be too difficult every day with Emma. No point in continuing to think tiny though when we have one large Dream-house in the works!! I just feel like America (and myself) has a very "have more/ want more" mindset that is hard to get away from, so being at the hotel with a "have less/need less" mindset was super refreshing. I'm hoping being in this small apartment for the summer will be that way too.
On the Monday after we got to the hotel we had to have a guy from one of Emma's medical supply companies (Brownings) come out because, during the move, a piece of the hose broke which connects the air concentrator to the oxygen fill device, so neither of them were working. (The air concentrator converts room air into oxygen and the fill device on top was to refill the empty oxygen tanks. It takes about two and a half hours to fill it.) We had a half full oxygen tank with us, but didn't use it at night like we normally do, giving Emma one liter while she is sleeping. The others were in storage. She did just fine without it those four nights (Thursday-Sunday). Instead of bringing a replacement for everything, since they didn't have another one in stock, we got a different/ smaller air concentrator and he brought four large full oxygen tanks for us to use when needed. The guy was really nice and when Sasha realized he was in our hotel room (at 14 & 1/2 years old she's mostly deaf) she went over to sniff him. He leaned over to pet her a bunch and let her lick his ears. She liked him a lot.
Michael and the movers were at the new apartment on Saturday, April 9th from 1:30-3:30, and since it is also a small place, I stayed at the hotel, out of the way, with Emma and Sasha. I gave Michael the list of everything that I wanted the movers to get out of storage, specifically our two tall dressers and Emma's dresser which would be used as the TV stand and to put things in the drawers. At the ShoreView apartment we used an older table that we planned on getting rid of. No useful drawers in there! My parents and nieces (Peyton and Helena) came down and played with Emma at the hotel until Michael came back once the movers were finished. Then we all went over to to see the new apartment, but this is a "hotel only" post, so I'm only showing those pictures for now. It was great to see Peyton and Helena playing and laughing with Emma more this time. Although the last time they saw her, at the beginning of December, she was still in her hip spica cast and couldn't move around much.
I believe this was their third time seeing Emma. The very first time was finally at the beginning of July last year at a pool resort where we visited for a few hours, but I didn't blog about that either. They were supposed to meet in March 2020, but that trip got canceled because we all know what happened to the world at that point..!
Michael had the bed put together and made that Saturday, but all of Emma's trach care supplies and our clothes were still at the hotel, so we spent that night at the hotel too. The next morning we enjoyed a nice family breakfast out at Cracker Barrel. Michael did Emma's hair up so cute in those long pig tails! It was our first time in a restaurant in two months since we had celebrated early Valentine's Day at Outback Steakhouse and had our meal paid for by an anonymous, super sweet couple who had seen us with Emma. We have plans to take Emma out for our 11 year anniversary next month too, but we'll go on a week night so it's less busy. We still worry about Covid. Emma gets a lot of attention and one woman commented, "Oh my GOODNESS! She is BEAUTIFUL!!" And when she saw us again later because we were paying for our meals in the gift shop at the same time, she said, "She looks just like you! I kept thinking, She looks just like her mama." I always love when people tell me that.
After a less than quick country cooking food-coma nap for both Michael and I, while Emma played on the bed next to me (always surrounded by pillows under the sheets to keep her "closed in"), we packed up the rest of our things while watching the Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts reunion special, which we were only able to watch because of the cable at the hotel! Brilliant!
>> Update from the new apartment, while sitting on the patio, listening to the calm rusting of the trees, as well as the constant two pulses of Emma's air concentrator and her Linkamal toys singing to her. It seems hard to "find the time" to update the blog when I have a handful of chores to do each day, between diaper changes and nebulizer treatments, and this is all in a perfectly sized little place. I can't imagine what it will be like in our big house later this year. I'm hoping not too different. I'm able to update now at 10am because Emma fell back asleep after getting water/condensation down her trach at 7:40 and that always wears her out because we have to do a bunch of quick suctions and she coughs and cries a lot. We are trying to teach her about not hitting, but I didn't do any scolding when she was hitting my shoulders this morning during her slight "lung drowning" trauma which sadly happens far too often, still being a trached/ vented kid at almost five years old, who now only has one working lung. So she definitely will take (and deserves) a big early morning nap after that fiasco. I also tend to procrastinate on blogging when I have so many pictures to add. I have 68 just from our week at the hotel- a lot to remember! I love writing, but adding the pictures takes a long time too. It's hard to narrow them down further, and I have to put them in one at a time or for some reason Blogger won't put them in the order that I upload them and that bothers me. // Fun fact: it took me two hours to update this post with pictures, add more paragraphs to go with all the pictures, resize the photos, and then proof-read it again. My eyes feel very tired now. I hope you loved it!
