Big big news

Marius took his first steps today! In the past week or so he's been finding himself standing without anything to hold on to and has been quite stable. But he'd always gently lower himself on to the ground and crawl away in the direction of his choice. So today it wasn't a huge shocker when we had him standing up in the middle of the living room and stepped back a few steps only to watch him follow after us on two feet. But it was totally exciting non-the-less, and especially because he looked so good at it. I'm sure I'll be kicking myself about it in a week when he's getting into more precarious situations much more quickly than before. We'll try to get a video of this mind-blowing feat shortly.
On another front... We're buying a flat and it's pretty much a done deal. We'll move in on May 16th, so we still have plenty of time to pack and get ready for the move. The good news is that it's a HUGE place, at least by UK standards. Meaning it's just over 1200 square feet. So that means that we'll have plenty of space for visitors, as it's a 3 bedroom flat. The bad news is that we're wiping our bank accounts clean with the purchase, so we won't be making any exciting trips to Spain like we had hoped this summer, and we will likely be carless too. We'll have to make due with the lovely avocado green bathroom until we can afford to totally gut it and start anew. The flat is on the second floor, meaning the third floor to all of you Americans (oh, and elevators are almost non existent in this country). But compared to most of the spiral staircases here that are accidents/deaths waiting to happen, ours is very gentle and has platform turns instead of winding turns, if that makes any sense. So, mom and dad, your knees should be able to handle the walk up and down with no problem! We also have a patch of private garden out back, which we're totally excited about. Simon is already planning the border plantings. We want to make it a little secret garden of sorts and put in a hedge or something to section it off from our neighbours’ uncared for portions. But we'll see. A new flat and a toddler running around will make us very busy, so gardening may not be our first priority like it was in Tallahassee. Anyhow we'll post photos of our new digs once we move in and get settled. Oh, I can't wait!