Our SLC Home Away From Home

Whew, close call. I almost spent Jack's entire nap cleaning and photographing our SLC basement apartment for this blog post. Then I remembered that the house we're staying in is actually listed on Zillow right now, so I was able to just go and screenshot the professional photos instead. Now I can spend part of Jack's nap making a meal plan and grocery list. Fuuuuuun.

Ok so I think I mentioned this last week, but Jared is doing a month-long pediatrics rotation at Primary Children's Hospital in SLC. There are 8 interns in Jared's residency program at Casper, and they each take turns coming here for a month. We are so happy that we ended up coming in March right after daylight savings, because there is still an hour or two of sunlight after Jared gets off of work where we can go exploring before we put Jack to bed. Also the weather isn't terrible right now in Utah! I usually drop Jared off at work at 5:45 in the morning, and we've only had to scrape ice off the windshield once. 

Jared's residency program rents out this nice basement apartment for us to stay in. It's just a one-bedroom little thing and the ceilings are SO low (like, Jared has to duck to walk under the lighting), but it's pretty modern and in a great part of town surrounded by fancy houses. And it's only a 10-minute walk to the hospital. I've been dropping Jared off in the mornings, but he walks home after work. Here's our home for the month:

^^Living area. It's got a pretty obvious U of U color palette going on.

^^Kitchen and tiny dining room. We usually eat our meals at the coffee table in the living room because Jack can stand up next to it and grab food off of it on his own.

^^Bedroom, complete with King-size bed! This feels very fancy to us. I don't have a picture of this, but Jack sleeps in the closet. It's just barely big enough that my parents' crib they lent us fits in it. He naps with the door open to the bedroom during the day, but at night after he falls asleep we close the closet door most of the way so he won't hear/see us and wake up early. We've had one or two really terrible nights on the Jack front (mostly due to teething), but otherwise it's been ok considering that he's not in his own crib in his own room. Traveling with babies can be so tough.

 ^^Bathroom looking into the laundry room we share with the family who lives in the house.

And that's it! Here's the house from the outside. Although it's easy to get really cooped up being in a basement with low ceilings (Jack's constantly reaching for the front doorknob because he wants to go outside), the living situation is better than I expected it to be. We're close to everything and in a nice neighborhood. It's also really nice to be just a 45-minute drive from my family this month, especially since Jared's work schedule is pretty terrible. He likes the work, but he's always there, and he only gets 0-1 day off each week. The 6-7 days he works, he's putting in 12-13 hours. He's had rotations this busy in Casper, but for some reason it feels harder here. It was so needed to be able to go home to Orem and have dinner with family when Jared had to work all day yesterday.

One night last week, Jack woke up screaming at midnight. We kept giving him milk and trying to soothe him and put him back down, but he'd just end up screaming again minutes later. This went on for 2 HOURS before everyone started having a mental breakdown (especially Jared, who has to wake up at 5:00 to get ready for work) (also me, because I was so worried that the family upstairs wouldn't be able to sleep through Jack's screaming). At this point it was pretty clear that Jack thought he was up for the day. I gave him tylenol just in case the issue was teething pain (it was--he had a new tooth the next morning), and then Jared went out and slept on the couch while I entertained Jack for 2 more hours in the bedroom as though it was the middle of the afternoon. Woof. Finally he started rubbing his eyes at 4:00 a.m. and I was able to put him down and he slept until 9:00. It was a lifesaver to be close to family the next day so I could drive Jack home to get help and sleep over at my parents to let Jared get a full night's sleep the next night.

Whelp, I really should get to that grocery list now. At the end of our month here I'll do a post on our SLC explorations. We love Utah and have spent plenty of time here, but mostly we've just explored Utah Valley. I'm glad we have this excuse to live in SLC for a month (at no cost to us! Thanks Casper residency!) and see what we can discover. We are pretty bland, suburb-loving peeps, so so far our favorite "adventure" has been just grabbing some Chik-fil-a and walking around Daybreak for an afternoon haha. We're just not city people, so although we're happy to explore for a month, we wouldn't want to be here much longer than that. If Jared ends up finding a job in the Salt Lake Valley someday, we for sure will end up with a house in Daybreak.