Monday Morning Mia--Sunday Night Edition

I'm sitting in the kitchen surrounded by semi-packed boxes and a month's worth of newspapers for packing. Mia is sound asleep, as is the Hound. Ben is over at the new place, still painting. He has tackled, almost entirely by himself, all of the painting. A friend helped him--thank goodness--for two nights, but other than that he's been practically living over there. His efforts have certainly paid off. The place looks incredible. We only made one color error that necessitated buying a new can of paint, but all in all that's not bad for a whole new house. The house is almost entirely muted tones with the exception of Mia's room, which is bright purple.

We've only got a few more nights living here in our treetop apartment. I'm not that sad, really--something about all of the furniture being gone and the weather warming has brought back our mouse friends and I won't miss them. I will miss the bakery down the street, although it's really only a 15 minute walk from the new place, which I should take anyway if I'm going to continue to purchase baked goods there. I thought I'd miss the park where we walk Walter more, but two things have made that less likely. First, whenever we take Walter up to the park, we rarely see more than a dog or two. Walter is most likely perfectly happy to just be free for that 45 minutes, but at this point it's just 45 minutes of sniffing and not much else. Second, Ben has been urging me to take Walter on his new walk at the Arnold Arboretum, which is less than 5 minutes from our new house. He swore that it was really much better. I didn't really believe him until this morning. Walter and I braved the chilly morning air at 7:15 to drive over to the Arboretum. At 7:15 in our old park we'd definitely be the only folks there. At the Arboretum, though, there must have seriously been at least 20 dogs. And we only stayed about 30 minutes because Walter tired himself out running. It was spectacular. I'm really looking forward to the change of scenery. The only problem with the Arboretum is that Walter has to pee on every tree, and that just gets awfully problematic in an arboretum.

Mia is doing fabulously. She's finally recovered from her stomach bug and is eating again, which is a huge relief. She was starting to feel very thin after not eating for close to a week. We all enjoyed a tortelini supper tonight.

Her vocabulary is growing--she knows "star" and "sock" and Ben says she can identify a horse and an airplane in a picture although I haven't seen her do it. She has just started to hug a little, too, although she needs a lot of encouragement to do it. I think she's teething more, as the last few nights have been pretty poor in the sleep department, but teething is going to be par for the course for the next few years, I fear.

Mia is also walking a lot more than she used to. She's getting really sturdy on her feet, and can even turn around and switch directions. She'll be running before we know it.

So, next week's Monday Morning Mia will be brought to you from the new place. Let's hope we weather the move well and that all goes smoothly. See you there!