Better late than never - update from Raleigh

Well, obviously I didn't get too impressively far in chronicling our move, but I figured I would pick it up here. Many folks have asked for updates on how things are going, how Nina is, etc., so I am just going to pick up in the middle of things and start posting little entries.

We like it here quite a bit so far. Our house (a small rental, but a palace compared to our 1BR in NYC), is comfy, although we have had some encounters with insects both big and small, as well as a Baby Bunny Tragedy, which I will not detail here. But suffice to say that the bug encounters have involved Steve smacking large flying insects with shoes, magazines and other implements, while I cower in the background yelling "GET IT" and cracking up, and trying not to wake the baby.

Raleigh is a friendly, comfortable town (I find it so hard to call it a city), with lots and lots of kid friendly accoutrements. We have hit the Children's Museum (many times), the various pizza joints, many cool playgrounds (or scorchingly hot ones, depending on the time of day), the malls (Raleigh loves its malls!), not to mention lunch dates at Costco. We are slowly meeting some neighbors - on both sides of our house are families with small children, so that has provided nice spontaneous playdates. The yard next door also houses a friendly dog named Zoe, who likes to play fetch and lick Nina and eat her Cheerios. Nina desperately wants Zoe to talk to her - "Zoe, Hi Nina! Hi Nina!" but so far hasn't met with success.

Nina is changing in leaps and bounds, even in the 6 or so weeks since our move. She is talking up a storm - has many more words than we can count. She speaks in little sentences: "Change Nina poopy diaper," being a favorite. "Bye bye red car daddy work," as we send Steve off on his day, and "No pick up Nina Mama!" if I have to grab her up to avert some mishap.

This evening we went for a walk with our neighbors (a family with three little boys), and one had his shirt off, and so Nina insisted on being entirely naked for part of the walk - she wanted her diaper off, which I didn't let her do in the middle of the street. So she walked down the road in her diaper & shoes yelling "Nina naked!!" A special sight for the neighbors.

Ok, more updates to come, e.g. on Steve's job, other Raleigh adventures (Gun show!! Hog festival!!), etc. Betcha can't wait!