I started casually looking around for something, but nothing seemed right. In November, I posted about some “potentially exciting developments,” which was a job I’d been interviewing for that fell through shortly after I posted that, which is why I never mentioned it again. I had two or three other opportunities cross my path during December and early January, all of which fell through, too. It was extremely frustrating. With all of these, we’d gotten to the point of discussing when I could start when suddenly something happened that made it not work out.

Meanwhile, things were really stressful at work for Brett. Details aside, due to some changes in his role at work, we started talking about what in the heck we’re supposed to actually do with our lives, long-term. This conversation began at the end of November, and quickly came around to him wanting — again — to apply to grad school. We talked about how if he were to get his MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree, he would be able to apply for teaching jobs, since it’s the terminal degree in his field. He’s talked about wanting to teach for years, as long as I’ve known him, really, and due to these changes at work, all of this came to a head and it suddenly seemed like applying to grad school might make sense.

I’ve resisted for a long time the idea of him going to grad school. Honestly, the way that Maine went, I was in no way eager to have him be in school again. Maine was extremely difficult on me, especially, and it was hard on our relationship and our finances in ways that still affect us, four years after leaving.

So after thinking and praying about it, I laid down some guidelines for him. He could investigate grad school, on these conditions:

1. We canNOT go deeper into debt for him to do this. His school loans from undergrad alone will take us a lifetime to repay, not to mention the consumer debt we incurred during that time, which we are still working on; we cannot do anymore. And that immediately ruled out private schools, which cost almost double his annual salary for only one year of schooling, and most programs are two or three years. Yikes.
2. He has to maintain his hours at work so as to keep our health benefits, and so I won’t have to go back to work full-time. Due to my heart stuff, I *have* to have group health coverage, and we need to be able to pay our bills (and I already worked and supported him through one degree) so he has to keep working.
3. I need a support network in place for day-t0-day life, and we need to lay out clear expectations of what our lives and our limited time together and our responsibilities surrounding our home and Elanor will look like if/when he attends school.

So, with that in mind, and with private schools excluded due to cost, we started investigating public schools, and realized that the application deadlines were about two weeks away at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University.

He quickly scrambled and filled out an application for each, and sent them off within hours of the deadlines.

And then we waited.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to find work. Finances were growing ever-tighter (with Brett’s changing role at work also came a salary change…great…just what we needed. I thought things couldn’t get any tighter, but then — hey! they did!), and my anxiety was through the roof. In desperation, in mid-January I posted an ad on Craigslist that I was willing to do childcare.

I had a couple of bites that didn’t work out, and then, just as I was getting ready to, I don’t know, sell some stuff at a pawn shop or donate plasma, I heard back from a family looking for care for their infant girl.

Within two weeks, the deal was struck, and I’m now looking after her four days a week. Obviously, I won’t blog much about her here, but there you have it.

We’re entering our third week now, and everyone is slowly adjusting to the new normal. It’s been rough on Elanor (and of course she was sick the first week, which did NOT help matters) but we’re managing. More about that in a later post.

In that same span of time, Brett’s heard back from both schools — and he was accepted to both UC Berkeley and SFSU! I’m so proud of him. SO proud!! Berkeley is a very, very big deal…he was one of seven students accepted to the MFA program out of over 200 applicants. Wow! Just…wow. I’m so excited for him.

He’s actually at an orientation there today, so I’m excited to hear more tonight when he gets home. But it looks, so far, like the practical elements of my conditions will work out: he’ll still be able to work, the cost of schooling will be manageable, there are lots of benefits available for students with families (grants, fellowships, reduced-cost preschool, health insurance, etc) at a school as large as Berkeley, and he will have the opportunity to even teach an undergrad course (for pay!) in his second year.

With Brett finally taking steps to act upon his long-term goals and dreams, it’s spurred me to do the same, and I’m going to start pursuing becoming an IBCLC-certified lactation consultant! I realized, a while back, that I would be really good at it, and that I’m passionate about breastfeeding and helping women breastfeed successfully. I’ve been involved in our local La Leche League group here in San Francisco since shortly after we moved here, and I love it. It’s going to take me a few years to do this (the process is very rigorous, especially for someone with no nursing degree) but I’m hoping that I can sit for the exam in a few years. By the time Elanor is a bit older (say, elementary school-age), I’d love to be practicing.

So there you have it. Lots of changes. I’m working, Brett’s going back to school, and we finally feel like we have a viable, longer-term plan for our lives. We feel a little strange that we’re nearly 30 and only just now figuring all of this out, but better late than never, right?

I could keep yammering on, but I’ll stop. That’s the big stuff. Hopefully I’ll get back to blogging about the little stuff soon!

I’m still working out the kinks and customizing things, so bear with me over the next few days. I’ll be back soon with updates about life — there are some big ones to share!

In the meantime, enjoy the new look!

Today, you are two years old!

I typed that and immediately got a little teary. I can’t believe it’s been two whole years since you were born and became a part of our family. What a wild and wonderful two years it’s been!

There are not words to describe the depth of my love for you. Papa and I agree that having you in our lives is a fantastic, incredible gift. I won’t lie, the past two years have been difficult for us in a lot of ways, but your presence throughout has been the one consistent source of joy and brightness for us.

Two years old seems to agree with you; these days, you are a happy, funny, exuberant, spirited little girl.

You seem to always be in motion: running, jumping, climbing, hugging, laughing, dancing. Just watching you is draining! You go go go until you simply crash from exhaustion. We’re working on finding ways to help you learn to calm down, which is challenging but something you definitely need.

We are so very thrilled that you’ve finally started talking to us! We know that you’ve understood practically every word we’ve said for months now, and just within the past three weeks or so, your language has completely exploded. You say a new word every day, sometimes more than one a day. It is so fun to hear your voice and to finally hear what’s going on in your little head!

Some of your favorite (and most useful!) new words and phrases include: help, I do it, come in, go, stop, switch, movie, watch, play, car, rain, wind, hot, sit, water, hold it…and on, and on, and on.

I’m sad that you seem to be slowly losing your signs, although you still sign I love you and please on occasion, and you are slowly losing your adorable mispronunciations of certain words. There are some mispronunciations remaining, though, since you put an –e sound at the end of words with –er. So water becomes “wah-wee,” butter is “butt-eee,” car is “car-eee,” and so on. I love it.

We’ve started playing with friends more often, which you can’t seem to get enough of. You have definitely inherited my extroverted characteristics. You love being with other people, and while you’re overwhelmed at first when there’s a crowd, you quickly warm up and become the center of attention and the life of the party. We had a party here in November, and there were 25 people here, and you just danced and played and had a blast. I barely saw you the whole night!

You have a keen understanding of how things work. If you see Papa or me do something, even a relatively complex multi-step process, you can usually replicate it. My favorite thing you do is that you drag a chair from the dining room table over to the shelf where the record player is, page through the records until you find one you like, pull it out, climb on the chair, take the record out of its sleeve, open the lid to the record player, put the record on, press play, and stand on the chair and dance. Watching you do this is hilarious and really fun.

Like your Papa, you love art and will contentedly color for quite a long time. The easel we got you for Christmas has already seen many hours of use. It’s really fun to see you and Papa put your heads together and create fantastic images.

You don’t seem to have a lot of favorite things. Most of your toys get equal play; your kitchen, your babies, your instruments, and your tea set are all things you play with on a regular basis. You don’t have a lovey or a special doll or blanket, either. (That role seems to be mine.) There are times I wish you did have one, and while you do show preference for one or two of your babies over others, you aren’t attached to them like many kids are.

Any Pixar movie will hold your attention, and you adore Curious George, Elmo, and Arthur. It’s strange for me to realize you’re at the point where you recognize characters and will respond to the way things are branded in the store.

Food is an area I’ve watched with bated breath over the past few months. Your tastes as a baby were so wide-ranging that I was nervous the pickiness of toddlerhood would be especially bad. I’m proud to say that unlike most toddlers, your palate remains as broad as it’s ever been. You enjoy moderately spicy food, ethnic food, and rather epicurean food. Avocado, cheese, hummus, pasta, anything with pesto, olives, yogurt, and tomatoes are some of your favorite things. Oh, and how could I forget? Butter! You still love it and I have to make a real effort to keep it out of your reach, or it tends to disappear!

You also love coffee, even black. You’ll drink an Americano, black coffee, or a cappuccino and beg for more sips. Funny enough, you don’t like juice. I guess you’re just an uncommon toddler.

On that note, you are still nursing at two years old, something I’m somewhat surprised but very happy to report. You love having milkies, or nums, as you call them, and our times nursing together are among the sweetest I can think of.

Another thing that surprises me (because I never thought I’d allow it this long…how naive I was, ha!) is that you still sleep with Papa and me. It’s getting harder these days, as you are a big toddler and take after your Papa’s habit of wild tossing and turning, but even though there are moments we wish we had more room, the benefits and closeness we derive from sleeping all together far outweigh the difficult times.

Elanor, I cannot tell you enough how much I love you. Having you in my life is such a blessing and a treasure.

Love,

Mama

I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Halfway through, Brett decided to join in. I think he’s referencing this video piece he recently did.

Oh, and about the title, I’ve been reading “Raising Your Spirited Child” lately, and this video seems to be a good encapsulation of just how spirited both Elanor and her papa are.

No matter how ridiculous this may seem, at least I can say that life around our house is almost never boring.

I got a tattoo.

I know, right? Me? A tattoo???

Believe it or not, the evidence is below.

Our friends Graham and Emily are friends with a guy named Chuck, who is a traveling tattoo artist and long-time friend of Graham’s. Chuck is in town visiting Graham, and he brought all of his gear. Graham and Emily and Chuck came over for dinner on Thursday night, and once we’d finished eating our potato soup and beer bread and put Elanor to bed, Chuck got out his kit.

A few hours before everyone arrived, Brett said — jokingly, I thought — that we should get matching tattoos.

I laughed him off at first, but then I realized he was serious. And a little part of me thought, “Okay…maybe we should.”

And before I knew it, Brett was getting the tattoo he’d planned on getting, followed by the one we’d both talked about getting.

And then it was my turn.

Yikes.

I was a little freaked out, but I kept telling myself that if I’d had almost 24 hours of unmedicated labor, I could stand 10 minutes of pain from a tattoo.

And I did it!

We both got little hearts on our left inner arms. They’re modeled after the hearts in Super Mario Brothers 2…cheesy, I know. It’s not that game has any kind of special significance for us; I always liked how those little hearts looked.

Cheesy though it may be, I really like how it turned out. I had a few OMG-what-did-I-just-do moments the next day, but I really am pleased with it and glad I got it.

And without further ado, here are the pics. (Pardon my hair. Ugh! It looks ridiculous. I had had it pulled back all day and took the clips out while I was putting Elanor to bed, so it looks…uh…not great.) And I don’t have a pic of Brett’s heart, but it’s the same as mine and in the same spot.

Brett getting his first tattoo of the night

Brett’s first tattoo of the evening: the outline of a medium-format film negative

Yikes!

Finished product!

While I know I’ll never have full tattoo sleeves or anything, I am already planning my next tattoo. If you’d have told me that a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. I guess it just goes to show how people change in unexpected ways over time.

Anyway, since it’s Thanksgiving as I’ve done in years past, I’m going to talk about a few things I’m thankful for. The past few weeks have been a little hard on me, just life catching up to me, I guess. So I suppose I need this exercise in counting my blessings.

Obviously, the first thing on my list is Elanor and Brett. I think that’s a given. Elanor is an amazing kid, and although being her mom is extremely challenging at times, she’s the most fantastic little person I know. And Brett…through hard times and good ones, he’s a great guy, a great dad to Elanor, and a great husband. He works so hard and I know he does it because he loves Elanor and me.

I’m thankful that we’ve seemed to have a calm, uneventful year since May. No near death experiences, no car accidents, no layoffs…I really hope this trend continues.

I’m glad we live here in San Francisco, in our cozy, wonderful home, finally able to relax and enjoy life after a few really hard years.

I’m also especially thankful for the friends we’ve made since we moved here. Emily W and Emily K, Laura, Sarah, the La Leche League ladies, our neighbors downstairs, the greater moped and FourBarrel communities — we really have a community here, only after 6 months. Our dinner party today is a great cross-section of those groups: my stepbrother Jason (who lives in Reno and came down for the weekend), Dan, Emily, and Jack, two of Brett’s co-workers, our downstairs neighbors, and our friends Claire and Isaac whom we know from SPU.

I’m thankful, too, for what I’m learning about grace of all kinds: God’s grace, experiencing grace from other people, having grace for those around me. It’s a big, lifelong lesson, obviously, but it seems that this year has been particularly focused on this theme.

We have so much to be thankful for. It’s good to type it all out and see it in list form; I should do this more often.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Tonight, we played Settlers of Catan with some friends. It’s been a recent obsession for Brett and me; I’d played it a few years ago with our friends Katie and Jon but Brett had never played it until a few weeks ago. The day after he played it for the first time, he insisted we go out and buy it for ourselves. We did, and now we’re hooked.

The only way to describe it is that it’s like a cross between Risk and Monopoly, and, in my opinion, a million times more interesting than either of those games.

There’s something so compelling about it: the logic, the strategy, the planning that’s required as you play…and yet, there’s the element of randomness in terms of what numbers are rolled that makes it truly interesting. I’ve played some really awesome rounds and some really terrible ones. Like tonight. I got hemmed in on all sides by other people and I couldn’t build anything else so I just gave up after a while.

Anyway, you are supposed to have at least three people to play but Brett and I have been playing with just the two of us as we learn and become familiar with how to play. It’s led to some really fun evenings lately!

It seems like the kind of game that we’ll just keep playing over and over for years to come. I’d imagine there’s always something new to learn as one plays it. So if you’re looking for a new board game, or for something new to do with your family, and you enjoy strategy-based games, I highly recommend it!

Today, since we are victims of a cold at our house (even our houseguest Nate has caught it…I feel awful about that), I’m asking for your favorite natural cold remedies, especially ones to help kids who are too young to take OTC medication.

Here’s what we’ve been doing: Brett and I have been using slippery elm lozenges alternated with elderberry/zinc lozenges, drinking tons of tea with honey in it as well as other liquids (like elderberry juice), and eating lots of garlic. I’ve also done the apple cider vinegar mixed with honey drink, which seemed to help.

He and I are holding up okay (in fact I feel better today than I have all week) but poor Elanor is just not doing so great. She’s really congested, and now she’s coughing a ton. I just got her down for a nap and in the 30 minutes she’s been down she’s woken up twice because she’s coughed so hard she started to gag.

For her, I’m trying to push fluids, too (juice, tea with honey, water, nursing), give her warm baths in a very steamy bathroom, and try to prop her torso up while she sleeps. But other than that, I’m kind of at a loss. I’ve been trying to get her to just eat honey off a spoon but she won’t…I may try to have Brett do it later. Maybe if he tries she’ll do it.

I’ve heard that Eucalyptus Radiata oil, put into a bath, can help. I may run out and get some tonight. I’m also toying with getting (or borrowing, if I can find someone with one locally) a vaporizer.

Does anyone have a tried-and-true remedy that’s safe to use on little ones? I’d really appreciate it if you’ve got any ideas for how I can help her. I hate seeing her feel icky.

Here’s my defense: first, my keyboard stopped working, just before NaBloPoMo started. And if that wasn’t enough, then my computer charger died and the battery on my computer was so low that it died, too. Then, I tried posting from Brett’s iPhone but Wordpress did NOT like the iPhone so typing a one-sentence post took forever. Then I finally took my computer in to be fixed, but the lovely folks at Apple kept it for four days, so…I just gave up.

I guess there’s next year.

Not having a computer to use for about a week was strange. I would check my email occasionally on my phone and on Brett’s phone, but for the most part, I was cut off from Internet-land. It was kind of nice, albeit really, really weird. I missed Facebook and the message boards I’m on a lot less than I thought I would. I actually got a ton done around the house — it was soooo clean! — and I even had time to read a book.

My forced Internet sabbatical made me realize I’m online far too much on a daily basis. I don’t want to get sucked back in so completely, so I’m going to try to limit my Facebook/message board time to some extent from here on out.

Anyway, now that my computer’s fixed, I hope to be able to do some more of the writing I mentioned a while back, so I can share it here. I have made almost no progress since my keyboard wasn’t working, but that’s okay.

Let’s see, what else can I tell you?

We are having quite a group here for Thanksgiving. It’s a very diverse assortment of people from several different areas of our life, and it should be anything but dull. I’m excited to cook a big meal and have lots of friends here, for sure. My stepbrother Jason is coming from Reno for the whole weekend, which I’m looking forward to since we haven’t really hung out much with him in several years.

Our parade of out of town guests continues. I’ve realized we are probably going to have guests every month, pretty much, and that’s fine with me. We just hosted our friends Brendan and Arianna from Seattle, and now our friend Nate, who went to school with Brett in Maine, is here for a week or so. It’s been nice to see our friends from Seattle and elsewhere, for sure.

Elanor is amazing these days. I really need to write an update all about her, especially since I’ve slacked on the past few monthly letters. She’s just so funny and intense and wonderful; I feel all bursty sometimes when I think about her or see her doing something awesome, or when she hugs me and kisses me. Here’s a recent picture I took earlier this week with Brett’s phone. We were in his studio in the garage, and he had set up his medium-format camera to take a photograph of something that was just at Elanor’s height. She walked up to the camera and knew exactly what it was for, and loved the fact that it was right at her level.

Okay, I think that’s the update. I’m going to take advantage of the rest of today’s nap time to get some more writing done. Although I’ve failed miserably at NaBloPoMo, I’m going to try to post more frequently at least through the end of the month. We’ll see if that works out…I have my doubts but I’m going to at least make an effort!