The Leen

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Well, I did it again. I went on another unintended blogging hiatus. *sigh* I know, I know. But, like I mentioned in this post, it’s hard for me to blog when I’m preoccupied with something else. And lately, that’s been a really rough Elanor phase. Y’all, it’s been brutal. This parenting thing just keeps getting harder as she gets older, much to my surprise. I mean, everyone always tells you how hard it is when they’re newborn, and you aren’t getting any sleep, and your whole world is turned upside down. I guess I was prepared for that, or that Elanor was an easy newborn, or something, because parenting really didn’t seem that hard at first.

Now, though. Wow. Every day is a challenge, it seems, a huge one, and I struggle some days to just keep my head above water in terms of making sure we are fed and clothed (although for Elanor these days, that often means wearing only pants, as shirts seem to have become a uniquely painful form of torture overnight) and that we are both relatively physically unscathed by the end of the day.

Other days are better, but I still find myself not blogging on those days because I’m just worn out from chasing a very spirited 30-pound toddler who likes to climb everything.

I don’t want to complain too much about it here, partly because I know that I have a tendency to go overboard with the whining if I let myself, and partly because I know the choices we’ve made in terms of how we’re parenting Elanor are a little different than many of my friends, and I don’t want to start that discussion in this forum, at least not yet. So I’ve been quiet for a while.

And then once I’m in a quiet cycle, it’s like anything else: not posting becomes habit, and it’s harder and harder to break that habit. And then Brett notices that I haven’t posted in a while and he starts bugging me about posting, and that makes me even less inclined to post…and it’s basically a vicious cycle that means it’s weeks between posts.

But okay! Enough justifications about why I didn’t blog for several weeks.

I HAVE NEWS! Exciting news! (NO, I AM NOT PREGNANT.)

To me, it’s more exciting than that, at least for the time being.

WE GOT A CAR!

Woo-hoo! My mom has been jokingly talking for years about how she may just get up one day and go buy a new car to replace her ’98 Acura, and when she did, she’d give that car to us. And then, a few weeks ago, out of the blue, at 9:30 on a Saturday night, I got a text from my sister: “You are now the owner of a ’98 Acura!”

Turns out my mom really did just get up and decide she was going to go look at cars, and she bought one. She had a visit here planned at the end of September, so she just drove the car down instead of flying. So for about 10 days now, I’ve had a car again.

I’m really excited about it. When we made the decision at the beginning of the year that we were going to try to get a car, it was very, very hard for me to reverse that thinking as things at Brett’s old job went south and it became apparent that adding any monthly expenses to our budget was a bad idea. I struggled a lot with having to get myself back into the no-car mindset. And then we moved here, and it was easier for a while, but it started to get hard again, especially as Elanor became impossible, er, difficult, to take on the bus or to confine to a stroller.

I won’t lie; despite how excited I am, I’ve felt a little guilty about actually using the car. We were on our way to a playgroup this week and I saw a mom waiting for the bus with a toddler in her arms, and I felt like if she could take the bus with her kid, I should be, too. I can’t become too reliant on the car; I need to keep riding my bike and I need to stay active. I feel good right now, healthy, fit, etc, and I don’t want to lose that.

Other than the car, we’ve had a very busy (but fun!) month filled with lots of friends and family in town. I’ll leave you with some pics from those visits, and a promise that I’ll try to blog more frequently in the next few weeks.

First up, our friends Josh and Crystal came to visit. We went on a bike ride through Golden Gate Park and out to the beach with them, which was one of the best parts of their visit.

Then, our friend Bree came to visit. She and Elanor had a fun time playing together.

We also took a trip to Sacramento for a moped rally. My friend Emily and I spent most of the weekend watching babies sleep, or trying to get them to sleep, or nursing babies. I think our total time spent at the actual rally totals around an hour. Haha. Times have changed.

Then, when we arrived home from Sacramento, my dad and stepmom were waiting for us. We had a fun visit with them, too!

Finally, we had my mom’s visit, which was wonderful, too. I haven’t gotten those pictures off the camera yet, but when I do I’ll post some here…soon!