HKG018: A Couch!

testing out the playground in our new apartment complex

the skyline view from our living room and all of our bedrooms in the new place

the playground is right underneath all of our windows

kids looking out the window

kids playing around on our new-to-us couch. it's tiny. i joked with josh that we have to lose weight and/or become smaller people ;-p

livie's self portrait for today

quinn enjoys making the the aiyahs at the playground cringe. he outdid himself today by rubbing the dirt into and around his eye. pieces of it were surfacing all evening, and his eye stayed red and watery until i got the last bit out.

tonight's dinner was sorta-stroganoff. i was missing some key ingredients (sour cream and beef broth), and i took the shortcut of using cream of mushroom soup rather than making a cream base from scratch, but it was pretty darn good. i added fresh mushrooms with the soup, and though they taste different here than in texas, it was still pretty yummy. yes, the green stuff is choy sum...i tell ya, it's my new favorite veggie!

today, the kids and i headed over to the new apartment to take delivery of a 2nd-hand couch we bought. fortunately, i budgeted 1.5 hours to get there. it should take about 30 minutes with one bus transfer, but considering my recent track record, i wasn't taking any chances. it's good i didn't. i am just plain bus challenged. in my own defense, i am trying to manage two wiggly kids, one stroller, and myself while also watching for a recognizable stop in a very busy place that i've lived in for 18 days. still. it shouldn't be this FREAKIN' hard...i seem to be making bus transportation much more difficult than it is meant to be.

anyhoo, we did eventually get to the apartment. the kids had a fabulous time turning on lights and shutting doors. the couch was delivered on time, and we got some time to check out the playground that belongs to our apartment complex. b/c we do not yet have the key cards we need to access parts of the complex (or get out of the playground), we had a little detour but eventually got back to the bus stop.

in a strange turn of events, quinn passed out cold in the stroller while we were stopped to get lunch (i had at least 3 people stop me on the sidewalk to point at quinn and laugh), and he let me transfer him to his bed while he was sleeping. and he stayed asleep. for over an hour. this NEVER happens (he usually pops up in less than a minute and refuses to go back to sleep). he even slept with his shoes and jacket on. for more than an hour. he got up as happy as a drowsy little clam, ate the lunch he'd slept through, and then kept on truckin'.

the evening was a whirlwind of playground, groceries, laundry pickup, cooking dinner, eating it, showering, and going to bed. the whole kid + groceries + laundry going uphill...still sucks. i would think i'd be acclimated to this by now, but i am not. it is freaking hard. i guesstimate that i am pushing about 65 pounds up the hill when it's laundry pick-up day, which doesn't sound like that much, but man it feels like it!!