Okay, so maybe I’ll try this one more time

I really shouldn’t be up right now.  After a string of several poor nights of sleep thanks to my little one battling a chest cold, and my husband being out of town today while I chased around my toddler while trying to feed his baby brother w/a dropper because he won’t take a bottle anymore, our new home is strangely quiet here at 9:40 pm.

I said awhile back in my “last post” that I had a lot to keep up with w/my little guys, and I still do, but I miss processing the little bits of my days and thoughts I have here.  So, it may not come as frequently as I like, but I’m going to take another stab at blogging here.

But for now, I’m going to get some sleep.  It’s been a long day that has included fingerpainting to Vivaldi, the aforementioned feeding formula painstakingly w/a dropper, homemade bread that needs some tweaking, and way too many Windex fumes inhaled as I try to spray every last pesky ant that has decided to join us here at our new place.  I used to live life in at least one or two day chunks of busyness and rest.  Now that cycle has been reduced to hours, and I never know when the next shift will occur, or what it will look like.  But that’s okay.

Last post

For awhile now I’ve had a hard time keeping up with this blog.  Part of it has to do with moving, another with going from one to two kids, but mostly, I feel like blogging really isn’t a good fit for either my writing style or the direction I’d like to take my writing skills.

I’ve enjoyed getting to know some of the readers who’ve followed this blog, and appreciate all of the comments over the year and a half I’ve been writing here.  Thanks for reading!

Surfacing for air

When I lived overseas in Uzbekistan, one of the things the government did there every year was proclaim the coming year as the year of a particular theme.  Hence, if it was the year of the elderly, they would have events all throughout the year to both honor as well as serve the elderly.  I liked the idea of theming a year before it even began – kind of like an indirect New Year’s Resolution that would steer your actions and give some focus to them.

I’ve thought to myself lately that it would be nice to have a year of not complaining, though I doubt I would ever make it through that year without uttering one word of discontent.  I don’t know why, but it always seems that life likes to bring us craziness in the midst of all of the sweet moments, and my personality has to work hard to not focus on the difficulty of the craziness sometimes.

We are now officially living in Alameda, CA, and I’m highly enjoying the completely renovated duplex we have.  However, I am also discovering that the two-year-old-running-around-among-all-the-moving-boxes-that-we-have-yet-to-unpack effect can kind of dampen the granite-countertops-and-washer-and-dryer effect.  Doesn’t Eli realize that he’s supposed to act calm when I have a window over my kitchen sink?  I found myself standing the other day reading the user guide to our new, environmentally sustainable linoleum.  “Try not to leave food or other debris on the floor for too long,” it advised as a Cheerio crunched under my foot.  I try to follow those directions, but the problem is, new Cheerios keep on replacing them.

On the move

When we signed our lease for our new duplex the day before I left for LA for a week, I knew that I would have a busy few weeks ahead of me.  With all that the holidays bring in terms of busyness, who in their right mind thinks it’s a good time to move right after Thanksgiving and before Christmas?  But that was the way it had to work for us in order to get into our new place.  When I returned from LA, my dad had just arrived and was waiting at the airport as well to be picked up by my husband.  As soon as we got home, I unloaded my things, and then turned around to go shopping for Thanksgiving.  My dad was a great help, though, and even in the midst of figuring out what to make for Thanksgiving and other meals (he doesn’t cook much on his own), we had time to go to Home Depot and stock up on moving boxes.  As soon as Thanksgiving was over, I started to tackle the toughest part for me:  packing.

I expected it to be chaotic, but for whatever reason, I’ve been getting through it by telling myself to just do a little at a time, and then I end up doing more than that once I get started.  Now, with a few days left until the movers arrive, most of our apartment is packed up, except for the things we need to use, like a few kitchen utensils and pans, the bathroom, etc.  Two things that have helped me a lot are 1)  to make a menu for this week so that I can pack everything that I’m not using, and 2) to have a master list of what I’m going to do on each day.  I thought it would be crazy too to try and get things done with two little guys around the house, but strangely enough, when I just try to take five minutes here and there to do parts of tasks, like cleaning the stove, for example, or washing the blinds, not only is it easier to do, but it gets done by the end of the day.

Even though we are surrounded by moving boxes, I kind of enjoy the simplicity of living without a lot of my normal stuff.  If we can get through a week without having access to most of it, it makes me wonder how much we have that we don’t really need anyway.

Our big move is this Saturday, and hopefully at some point after that I’ll start to put up some pictures of our new place!

I wanted you to grow, but not this fast . . .