Happy Halloween!

We got into the spirit on Sunday afternoon - carving the pumpkin, making pumpkin bread and roasting pumpkin seeds.  Why can't pumpkins have more seeds?  It's a pain to clean them but the seeds are so good and the ones from TJs are a little too salty.

I love Grace's face in these next two.  The picture of concentration.  And thank you, Aunt Joan, for the pumpkin carving kit. Grace had so much fun participating!

The finished masterpiece. Grace likes friendly jack-o-lanterns.

Tonight we headed out with an assortment of neighbors and schoolmates.  Sadly, one of our neighbor girls couldn't go because she spent all day home sick.  Grace was so bummed, but I can only imagine how hard it was for Mia's mom to tell her she couldn't go trick-or-treating.  The other neighbors bailed when it started to rain, but Grace and Finn were dedicated, despite the rain and crowds.

Ready, set, go!  Your parents want candy.

They just loved this house - dancing characters from Pixar (apparently a Pixar person lives there and gets the costumes... who knows if it's true or just a good rumor).  The big bonus of starting before dark this year was that we actually recognized the other neighbors and classmates we bumped into.  It's so nice to be part of a community.

They were serious... about eating candy along the way.  I guess the only good thing about the family that couldn't come is that the dad is a pedi dentist... he might have judged us for how much candy we let them eat!

Aftermath

The pictures and stories in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy are pretty terrible.  Not like the horror of Hurricane Katrina, but still so very sad.  To my knowledge, all our friends and family are safe, thank God.

I cannot get this picture from the New York Times out of my head (I wish I could get the image to paste here but I cannot).  Of course, the fact that she's a three year old girl making the kind of terrified, angry, overwhelmed face my three year old makes causes the picture to really strike my heart.  I cried when I saw it because it illustrates so completely the thread by which our lives can hang.  My three year old can't swim.  Could this girl?  How bad was the flood?  How close was it before she was rescued?  

When I was pregnant with Grace that plane made its emergency landing into the Hudson River.  I recall being riveted because 1) finally a plane crash with a happy ending (maybe I should pay attention to the safety videos and learn about flotation devices after all) and 2) I couldn't get out of my head the mental image of trying to keep my head above water while also trying to keep an infant or young child's head above water in such a situation.  It's amazing everyone survived that incident but I couldn't stop thinking what if I was onboard with a baby?  Would it be possible to get a baby out before the water level got too high?  

We are all at the mercy of so many twists of fate, and I read all the horror stories with my heart in my throat and "there but for the grace of God" on my lips.  Picturing all these scenarios with one's child in mind makes the vulnerability all too palpable.  

Hug your loved ones extra tight tonight.  I'm thinking of you all. 

Blog of the midnight flyer

What a week!

First of all, thanks for all the congratulations here and byemail and in person since we shared the news of our coming baby! 

I have so much to catch up on – we’ve been busy, and I have around a millioncute pictures plus memories I want to document. But for now, I’m just reeling from quite a wild week.  Picture this: 52 hour trip to Boston in the middle of an almost full work-week.  Thanks to in-flight Internet,  I telecommuted on my way out to Boston andafter an exhausting day today, I’m trying to get caught up on all my work onthe return flight.  I guess that’s thebeauty of the time change and the grueling 7 hour westbound trip – I can get almosta full day’s work after a full day of so-called vacation. 

Anyway, I headed out for an Advisory Board meeting for thefellowship program I work with/am part of and tacked on a little extra time todo some move planning.  I toured threepreschools and four apartment buildings, did some professional networking, andsome personal catch up with family and friends.

It was a great to stay with Emily and Adam and see their notreally new anymore but new to me place in Teele Square.  It should be known that Adam is also pullingfor the Tigers.   One of my friendsjoined me for one of the school tours – her daughter is the same age as Grace,and then we ran into one of Steve’s residency friends who was looking at theschool for her daughter.  It’s nice to bereminded that we still have a community. It was also gorgeous Boston – fall colors, warm days, bright blue skies,the kind of days that make you forget about January, February, and March. 

I think we’ve narrowed down where we want to live.  Now we just have to cross our fingers, andtoes, that something in the right building becomes available at the right timeand is not astronomically expensive.  Wewill settle for just outrageously expensive, I think. 

I also registered Grace for school!  We now just wait for them to review thematerials and send us a confirmation. Hurray, right?  Kind of…Scheduling-wise, I had to visit the first-come first-serve school beforetouring the last one on my list.  Soafter paying the non-trivial registration fee, I fell in love with the finalschool.  I knew I would and knew wecouldn’t afford it so was really just going for futureinformation/kicks/torture.  Well, turnsout they have pretty good financial aid so it might be an option afterall!  So I had two hours of feeling likewe had a decision and I could move on to new worries, and now we’re back to puzzlingover the situation.  At least now we haveher registered for a school we will be happy with, and if the other one worksout, great!

Here are the things that made me happy about being back inBoston:  my people, the energy of thecity, walking most places, convenient subway, all the good memories of our lifethere, the politics and activism of living in the capitol, brick buildings andsidewalks, and the sparking Charles River on a sunny day, the fact that whenyou order coffee not at Starbucks, they ask how many sugars and how much milkyou want.

Here are the things I realized I will really miss aboutCalifornia:  relative lack of cigarettesmoke, tremendous ethnic diversity (e.g., living in a majority minority state),recycling bins everywhere, compost bins many places, toilet seat covers in mostbathrooms (they are a luxury in Boston). The people, of course, but that goes without saying. 

Here’s to quick and exhausting trips and hopefully getting the move stuffsorted out ahead of time so we can spend the spring packing and not sleepingwith a newborn in the house!

I haven’t proofread this… and I guess I won’t.  It’s well past midnight east coast time,there’s a ton of turbulence and I need to get back to the quantitative impactof propose technology projects.  

The post I feared I'd never write...

For a long time, it was looking like Grace was going to be an only child... but we are happy to share the good news that we are expecting a baby in April.  We are so so happy, especially because of our brush with secondary infertility.  It is no joking matter, and when we got some test results suggesting it wasn't going to happen the old fashioned way, I was pretty floored.  I think that if it's easy the first time, you just don't expect it be hard the second time.  But, I'm really surprised at how many of my friends are having similar issues the second time around.  I was also stunned at how off-handedly my doctor said "oh, I'll just write you a prescription for clomid" without even asking if I was interested in "options."  In fact, one of my friends said her NP said she'd write a clomid scrip, looked up to find my friend silently crying and didn't even acknowledge her tears.  We weren't planning to pursue the clomid route but to take our chances instead, and it's probably good we didn't since I'm not sure we could manage multiples... I'm still worried about two kids four years apart, one of whom is potty-trained and can talk.  

Anyway, back to the good news!  Introducing baby...  

Can you believe how cute he is?  And how much he looks like his sister?!  Yes, I'm saying he because I asked the tech to take a peak at my last ultrasound, and though it's technically to soon to say definitively, the evidence certainly favored a boy.  We should know for sure (as for sure as can be anyway) by Thanksgiving.

Grace is so excited.  She had been asking for a baby forever, and it was so hard to explain to her why she didn't have one and that we didn't know if we would ever get one.  She was a little miffed at the news of a brother rather than sister (for about 2 minutes) but she is now delighted.  She constantly tells us things she's going to do for and teach the baby.  She is eager to share her room, and even called it "our" room.  She also says she will get the baby from his crib and take him to her bed when he cries at night.  If only!

The first trimester was very tough... I was so much more nauseous than with Grace and utterly exhausted.  I never had that constant exhaustion with Grace, despite being in a full-time masters program, working two jobs, and commuting two hours a day (uphill in the snow only one way and I did have shoes).  But this time, I wanted to go to bed before Grace every night.  It was all I could do to stay awake at work.  Since about 11 weeks (I'm about 15 now), I have felt so much better.  Not 100% all the time, but at least like myself.  I don't yawn all day and I'm not that dreadful combo of hungry and nauseous all the time.  I'm even able to eat a vegetable now and then!  

I haven't been up to posting so much lately, and partly it's because I haven't known where to begin.  In addition to the baby news, we are starting to plan for our move.  Baby will be here in about six months, and we move two months after that.  My rose-colored glasses tell me I can pack with a newborn (aren't they supposed to sleep all the time?  Oh yea, Grace did not).  Fortunately, Steve's glasses are the opposite of rose-colored and he has a game-plan.  We are also trying to figure out where to live (well, not really - we're trying to figure out how to afford where we want to live).  And, we're trying to find a school for Grace.  Her schools here is so great, the teachers so warm, and the families form such a nice community that I dread to leave it.  It seems the Boston preschools scene is pretty intense (I guess we got lucky and dodged that here, though I'm sure it could be equally bad).  I'm headed out to Boston next week for some meetings and I will do some school visits as well.  

We've been fitting in lots of fun stuff lately.  Many playdates and enjoying the fabulous fall weather (it took its time and drew the fog out even longer this year but now that it's here it's so so good).  We took a fun trip to Apple Hill last weekend.  I'm renewing my commitment to blog catch up!  

  

Will sing for ice cream

I was going through my phone and found this video from Bjorn's visit.  We made them sing for their ice cream.  There were not hard to convince.  In fact, they were quite the musical duo, sometimes with recorder, ukulele, and songs going at once.  Perhaps if the betrothal doesn't work out, they can form a band.  Or both?