Elisa and I found an apartment within 10 minutes of my office. I have to work kind of long hours, so we didn’t want for me to spend much time on my commute. It’s a nice place in a good neighborhood. The one bedroom is plenty of room for us while we scope out the area. Eden has taken up lodgings in the generous walk-in closet. Our biggest complaint is that tons of residents own dogs and they don’t clean up after them. YUCK! We’ve been in the apartment for almost a month now. It doesn’t really feel like home. The problem is that we don’t have lamps or tables or a dresser yet. We’re still living out of our suitcases. It took us awhile to get Internet too, and that was painful! We are still waiting for the shipment of furniture and silverware and stuff like that from our last apartment. It was supposed to arrive weeks ago, but it is super late. Instead of getting driven here from New York City like we were told, the shipment got put on a slow boat to L.A. That’s our punishment for going with a discount vendor. We have been going crazy because we have to eat out so often. Finally we bought a knife and a bowl and a can opener, we borrowed saucepans, and we’ll use plastic utensils for the next month. We have our desk that was in storage in Seattle, and our piano that was at a friend’s house. I drove those down from Seattle in a big U-Haul the day before I started work in Salt Lake City. And we bought comfortable couches for the family room that we already love. I think it will be more difficult for me to adjust here than I thought. I miss the green of  Switzerland and Seattle so much.  I am not very tolerant of direct sunlight. 🙂

Elisa and I tried since early on to get Eden to communicate with hand signals. Lots of babies are able to say simple things with signs long before they know how to speak. Eden just never got it though. For example, we would hold our hands in front of us and spin them while we said, “ALL DONE???” From the 6 month mark until now she never would do the sign back to us when she was done eating. She would just whine until we got her down. Then finally a couple weeks ago she did the sign to us. She shook her hands around really frenetically. We asked “All done?” and she did it even harder. I think she was pleased that we understood her. Ever since then she has been using the sign more often. Within about two days, communication broke down again. She was having so much success with the sign that she started using it for “more” and “I’m hungry” and “I want to move.” We pretty much don’t understand her anymore when she makes the sign. It was almost the beginning of better communication with her, but it ended up being just a near miss. We aren’t giving up quite yet. We are still trying to help her communicate. Babbling to us seems to be her method of choice still.

In the last week she has started to give us a one-handed wave for “hello” and “goodbye” and “good night.” It’s really cute. It’s easier on her if Elisa and she wave goodbye before Elisa leaves for night classes.

Eden wants to sit with me at the laptop. Here’s another one of her attempts to communicate.

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