One day's worth (a thousand) of images

Here you go, a visual summary of our last big day with the movers:

boxes all over but still smiling

Things are slowly getting cleared up

and loaded.

Loading up our lives in a truck. And a minimum of 2 1/2 months special tour before we see our stuff again in Beijing. (Unless the ship sinks, of course.  Ah! I am thinkin of all those important papers that got loaded in there by mistake!)

After the movers' passage. All a sudden our place feels larger.

At the end of the day, at the hotel. 

We were trying to get Noam to sleep so we headed in the only place left in our hotel room, the bathroom, were had a take out dinner... romantic!

A little bit of stress today

Today was the first day of a set of three. REAL packing. with real professional packers, and their tools. papers, boxes, bubble wrap, tape. Speedy they wrap everything they touch. DO NOT leave anything you want to keep with you around, unless you have put a RED sticker on it. You get the idea - some of our stuff we were going to use in our trip got pack!

And then in the middle of that, my nanny, Melinda, called with a strange voice. "Ça ne va pas." Right away I thought Noam was not going well, as he just had recovered from a bad stomac bug and I was not sure it was completely over... NO... Melinda's mom had just past away. What a terrible news. It took me a few seconds to be able to feel compasionate to her, my mind was struggling trying to figure an emergency option for Noam's care in those next few days, or hours... I managed to say the appropriate things and Melinda came back home quickly to rush home and organize her departure to Ivory Coast.

Even before she returned, I enlisted my group of best friends, all moms from the neighborhood, to help me find some alternate care for Noam. In within hours, I was able to figure something for both days. Thank you so much girls!

So as Noam is sleeping now, I am going to do the same. I need to be ready tomorrow...

In the mist of packing, a moment to remember

Today my son Noam stood between me and my husband as we were both sitting on the edge of the tub. He was but naked (my son, not my husband), fresh out of the bath, and while tapping my lap, he started saying "Ma ma ma ma", as he does a lot these days. Then he proceeded to turn around, looked at Paul, and laughed and then said "Ba ba ba"!  It was such a cute moment! To be remembered!  And it is the proof that in the middle of chaos there can be a flower rising...

Preparing the last bits before the big day

Trying to sort out things and to prepare my suitcase, my mind is racing. I am preparing a bag of important stuff to leave in DC, and to take along when we are heading for our final destination. And sorting out papers, bills and closing accounts. Not sure to be able to be done on time.

Boxes boxes boxes

This weekend are the pre-packing days. In order to facilitate our task and help our focus, our nanny has taken Noam with her for the whole day today. A very strange feeling for me, as in the last 10 months, I never being separated from him more than a few hours at the time! 

We have to sort out everything for the movers. We are creating four piles. The easy one: Throw. Then there is the Store pile; stuff we are not going to take in Beijing and is heading to a storage unit here in DC. Then the Container pile; things that will meet us in Beijing. Then last but most important: the Luggage one, the things we will live with for the next 2 months (or three depending on our shipment delivery).  

Our place is now full of boxes lying around, drawers are pulled opens and things are scatered around in every room. Our suitcases are getting pregnant... The diapers arrived, so we have a wall full of diaper boxes. (By the way, I wisely asked my nanny to advise on this, so we ordered lots of pull ups, foreseeing diaper training. Maybe I will have to do a post about diaper training the chinese way at some point.) We have little stickers - red for things to go in the Storage pile, green to go with the Container. Once we finish with those, and our place will look like a sale floor with tags on every item, except that there was a tornado in the shop. 

I am trying to get my head around all our stuff and make priority of our things. Not easy. I would take everything and land there tomrorrow it would be simpler. I am also having this endless running list of to-do before we go, and I keep adding to the list or start doing 5 other things at the same time but can't complete any. In fact I stand around gazing at the mess most of the time. 

I hope most of the sorting will be done by tomorrow lunch. Then Monday, the REAL thing will happen... The movers will be there! 

How Much is Too Much?

In preparation for our shipping, I am ordering large quantities of things that are difficult , if not impossible to find there, as well of articles that are overpriced. My scouting around in Beijing, in Wal Mart and in Carefour, indicated that diapers are a luxury item. They are priced at about 2$ a piece. So either it will help us get Noam potty trained earlier, chinese way or not. It could also get me to move to the cloth diaper... Which I am considering, but it is a little late to start on this as I have to try a few before investing. So alternatively I can MASS ORDER diapers for us to have when we are there. Not that I am sure where we are going to store those thought ! (there is no storage unit in our building). So currently I have an open order at diapers.com, and I am meditating on quantities... Should I order 5 ultra large boxes of size 4, size 5 and size 6? That is about 1000 units per size, and we, I estimated, go through about 6 a day. It means a supply for 155 days per size. Or a year and half supply. We are supposed to be there for 3 years. I could order more, but what sizes? At the same time, does it make sense to order so many of each size?  Should I rather order less and imagine I will move towards cloths?

I can imagine the delivery man droping 15 large boxes at our door!

Two Months Of Homelessness Or How To Beat The Container...

Today we received an email that still requires clarifications. We are planning, as you saw in my previous post, to evacuate our appartment August 6th and to arrive in Beijing October 7th. It is allowing 2 months for our container to travel, go through customs and be delivered to us upon our arrival. 

So we thought! Today, we were informed, in a rather casual way, that our container, who needs 6 weeks to arrive to Beijing, will only leave early September!!! If you make the math, it means that our stuff would be arriving after us!!! OMG! It means not only that we will be camping in our new (huge) flat, with a one year old baby, but also that we will need to make special luggages to ship by air in order to be able to function in the appartment until we receive our container. I am currently having enought trouble trying to determine what to take for our 2 months tour! It also means that the wait between our container's arrival in Beijing and its release might leave us camping in our place for a few weeks, estimating that the chinese custom might take its time. There is already a backlog because of additional restrictions due to the Olympics. 

Those possible scenarios are reminding me of my arrival in Washington last summer. Fully pregnant, I lived in our place, without furniture, alone (Paul was back in Africa), sleeping on an inflatable mattress FOR A MONTH!!! (you can call that torture). 

So I hope they made a mistake!

Préparatifs de départ

Je viens de compléter une liste de choses à faire avant notre départ. Il semble que tous les jours j'ajoute plus d'items que je n'en rature! (soupir!!) Je suis un peu une maniaque des post-it et des listes... Elles sont des petits espaces de mon cerveau que je peux libérer pour autres choses. Mais préparer un déménagement comme le notre - nous serons en transit pour les prochaines 8 semaines!!! - est un peu difficile logistiquement. Les bagages doivent être préparés avant les boîtes, et doivent inclure des items pour des températures chaudes (NYC), fraîches (Connecticut et Montréal), à plus fraîches (Rivière-du-Loup et Pohonégamook) à très chaude (Israël). 

J'imagine tout de suite que nous seront chargés! 

Notre itinéraire est le suivant:

AOUT

8 août: DÉPART DE WASHINGTON

du 8 au 12: NYC

du 12 au 15: a friend's cabin in Connecticut

du 15 au 19: la nouvelle maison d'été de Boaz - upstate NY

du 20 au 24: Montréal

du 24 au 28: Rivière-du-Loup, chez les parents

du 28 au 30: Pohonégamook

SEPTEMBRE

du 30 août au 2 septembre: Rivière-du-Loup - départ de Paul pour DC

du 2 au 12: Rivière-du-Loup - encore

du 12 au 20: Montréal

du 20 au 27: Washington DC - anniversaire de Noam - aux revoirs aux amis

OCTOBRE

du 27 septembre au 7 octobre: Tel Aviv - Roshashana

7 octobre: ARRIVÉE à PÉKIN