"What happened??"

We're making steady progress on our move -- faster than I thought, honestly. Andy's been enlisting various people to help him load and run stuff out to his mom's, and I've been here packing things up. Yesterday Heather, Sara (with baby Lorelei) and Amy (with Max) were all here helping me pack up the kitchen, which we managed to get completely done (aside from food, fridge, cleaning products and a handful of dishes still in use). In fact, we were too efficient -- we had to run out to Target last night to get a food container for the leftovers from yesterday's crockpot dinner!

Ben has been alternately excited and somewhat traumatized by the move. For the most part he's taken it quite well, but we've had some funny moments at his expense the last few days (and some exasperated moments, as well). Monday Andy and Ron moved his toy box to Ginny's, and as they walked past Ben cried out, "No, its mines!!" I explained that they were talking it to "Grammy's" and Ben immediately started asking to go to Grammy's. That lasted for most of the day.

Monday was also one of those, "Take a nap? No way!" kind of days for Ben. We had removed all his furniture (which prompted the "What happened?" exclamation when he noticed it), so we had a huge wardrobe packing box in his room to put his lamp and cd player on. When I went in to check on him at one point, I found him lamenting, "What's wrong with the box!?!" and looking like this: Not really sure how it happened. He never did have a story to tell about it. All he was concerned about was what was wrong with the box! I tried pointing out that there are handles on it (which I thought he might have been bothered by since they're holes) and explained it was taking place of his changing table. We gave up on a nap. Later that night when we were getting him ready for bed, I heard a very pathetic meow. From the box. Yeah, Shadow got herself packed into it. She was in there for at least 9 hours. Thank goodness she didn't do any damage to my clothes!!!

Yesterday Ben actually did take a nap. Like this:


Then when he got up, he looked like this:


I think Ben could sleep just about in any position and still be comfortable. What an enviable ability.

PART II

Later this evening, we came home and found this (photo is a reenactment):

She is apparently determined to live in this box. We hadn't sealed it, but as you can see we had pinned the flaps down with stuff from Ben's room. That apparently was not enough to stop her.

Rest assured, the box is now securely taped (sans Shadow -- or the rest of our felines, for that matter).