If you read my cousin Cat’s blog, you know that they’re doing a massive house renovation and expansion to make room for baby #2 (arriving in February!). So to keep themselves from having their daily routines disrupted – and to keep e-baby from trampling through construction dust every day – they’ve moved into an apartment for the next three months.

Today was moving day, so Dave, Cate and I headed over to help. In the middle of a tropical storm. I’m not kidding; Hanna blew through here this morning, and we had some really crazy winds and pouring rain. The good news is that it cleared up by early afternoon, so we didn’t get too terribly soggy.

Cat hired a baby-sitter who took both girls to the children’s museum for a few hours. (The original plan had been a playground, but the rain sort of ruled that out.) Poor thing, she’s a teenager and after trying to wrangle two toddlers in a very crowded public place, we’ve probably put her off the idea of ever having kids. If I had half a brain, I would’ve just brought the sitter and e-baby over here to our house; they could’ve been indoors with easy access to snacks, TV, and whatever else they needed. Unfortunately I didn’t think of it until after the fact, but I guess we’ll know next time. In any case, it was nice to have a break so the grown-ups could get the moving done. I think they’re mostly settled at the new place now, and we got a little unpacking done too.

So it was a fun, although pretty tiring, day. And I still get such a kick out of watching Cate and Elizabeth play together. They seem to be noticing each other more and more – I wouldn’t exactly call it interacting at this point, but there’s definitely some interest there. And Cate’s picking up on more words and signs from being around another kid who talks and signs so much, which is pretty neat.

That reminds me: Cate now seems to understand threats. Last night I was sitting next to her crib waiting for her her to fall asleep (still doing the sleep-training thing), and she was squirming and chatting and not settling down. Finally, I said, “Catie, you need to go night-night right now or mama is gonna go bye-bye.” She said “noooo!”, but almost immediately lay down and went to sleep. I know it’s kind of mean to threaten abandonment, but it’s really a nice trick to have in my arsenal.