Here's Daniel's seven-month picture, which was taken on Sunday (8/10) but for reasons noted below was delayed in posting. We got to celebrate his birthday along with Great-Grandpa's--he turned 88 on 8/8/08 so we all got together on Sunday for a nice lunch and some time together.

So apparently today our buyer asked his agent to ask our agent if we could possibly shift our closing date two days earlier. Oh, to be a 30-year-old single guy with no one but yourself to think about and plan for! He's not being pushy or problematic about it. He asked. We said No. End of story. For him, two days means nothing. For us, it's critical time. Hard to imagine how we will even get done by the established closing.

We've run into a bit of a snag with our own purchase in that there are some significant repairs needed that we did not foresee. Thank goodness for that home inspection! We think some of it is due to the house being unoccupied during our long hard winter and some is probably just the kind of thing you don't notice until you pay someone to look. We're waiting to see if the seller will participate in the repairs. We're asking for about a third of the total costs--not unreasonable, but not a slam dunk either as he apparently is not happy to sell to us at this year's price remembering what we offered last year. Oh well.

So in the meantime, the packing has begun. When Edward wakes from his nap to see yet another empty set of bookshelves, he points and says, "Hey look! What happened?" I'm trying to explain without making him panic about whether all of his stuff will come with him to the new house. Don't want him to think "teenie and paci" need to be boxed immediately!

This video is a bit long, but no time to edit. I won't be offended if you don't watch the whole thing (about a minute and a half.)