Back in the olden days...

I've been reading my old blog recently. Do you ever go back and read your old blog? I've been enraptured by it, remembering my "old life" back in Philly. It's a lovely trip down memory lane and it actually is nice to read, to remember. I hope I can blog more now. I like to see what was going on in my life, and I like having a record of it.
Because of this, I've decided to resurrect the "Numbers" post

Forthwith, you will find Tuesday Numbers

• D got a scholarship for daycare! We are getting about a 10% discount on his tuition. Hey, every penny counts, right?
• Because of the extra savings, I am getting a house cleaner, dammit. I got a local reference for a woman. She will come see our house on Friday at 8am, even though my boxes are not yet unpacked. I think that having cleaning taken care of for me will allow me to actually unpack boxes and organize things instead of being distracted by cleaning. Being a working mom is hard. 
• I am finding 8 hour days at work to be a challenge. I haven't slept well recently and I'm still fighting off the tail end of a cold. I would like a nap, please.
• D, however, is doing swimmingly well at daycare recently. He used to cry for about 2 minutes when I left. For the last 2 weeks, he hasn't cried at all when I leave. Thank god.
• Currently, I have 2 big boxes on my lab bench. I guess I need to do something about that. 
• This morning, I rescued 1 spider from the bathtub
• The last two nights have been clear. You can see lots and lots of stars from our house. It's really lovely and amazing.
• At daycare, D only sleeps for 1 hour or less. He should really sleep for 3.

ONE YEAR OLD!

This past weekend, we headed to Oxnard to hang out with my parents and celebrate little D's first birthday. This time, one year ago, I was heading to the hospital to check in for my induction. Crazy. We left late Wed night (like, nearly 9pm!) thinking that D would sleep in the car on the way down. We went thru the In N Out drive thru at 11:30 at night. Yeah. We hit some crazy fog for, like, 40 miles, and my poor husband was super diligent, but seriously falling asleep by the time we rolled into the 'Nard. Ugh. I'm not sure we will try that again. My parents were thrilled to see us, even at 2:30am. And, of course, little D thought it was time to get up. He finally went to sleep at 4:30am and slept until 8:30am (thank you, son). We are crazy.
Thursday night we went to my cousin Alison's house for dinner. It was a nice big family dinner, and D got a ukelele for his birthday. He also got to play the guitar with my amazingly talented cousin Adrian and he played the piano and danced around the room with my other cousin Lizzie. Dinner was amazing, and D ate more than I have ever seen him eat. Meat, potatoes, corn casserole (um, the best!) garlic bread, and chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches for dessert. Holy moly. So amazingly good. It's so nice to have him be older and see people. He's much more interested in what people are doing, he's much more engaged, and he's just plain fun. And it's so great to see him walking around (with help, of course) and interacting with people. He brings out smiles in people. He's just the best.
On Friday, I got to go get my hair cut. Thank you god. Alex and my Dad ran some errands with D to get things ready for the party on Saturday. And then Friday afternoon, we got some pictures taken of my little guy. I can't wait to see how they come out! Friday night, we headed to Rancho Viernes (how fitting) for some pizza and hanging out. D loved the kids. He couldn't get enough of 4 year old C. They were goofing off and having a blast. D also loved Brad. He followed him around all over the house. Like Brad said, us big guys - we have to stick together. D also earned the name "Little Bulldog" and it's kinda true. He's stubborn and determined and by far the most solid kid his age I've seen.
On Saturday, it was party day! We ran some errands, picked up a pretty cake and set things up around the house. People started arriving around 4pm and it was so fun to see everyone and have them see D again. It's been 10 months since we've been to Oxnard. Too long, in my opinion. We had dinner and cake. Watching D smash cake around (and finally discover that it was edible) was hilarious. As far as I can tell, he had a great time. He got lots of present - clothes, toys, books, money. It was so, so nice. And yesterday, we hung out and had a big breakfast with Grandma and Grandpa. D slept for 3 hours straight on the way home. The other three hours, I sat in the back with him and entertained him with books, singing, stories, toys and goofy faces. We stopped once at a rest stop and he walked all over the place - get the kinks out, you know. It was so cute.

And now, the stats (in case you want to know)
D had 6 teeth (4 top, 2 bottom) and is probably close to 24 lbs. I would say he's maybe 26 or 27 inches tall. Maybe a little more. He crawls like crazy and walks with assistance. He has lots of ideas and is really stubborn and persistent, even when you try to distract him from something you don't want him to do. He has the best smile and loves to be goofy. He's ticklish on his toes, his knees and his sides. He's starting to say some words, or at least try to. He can say "Mama(mamamama)" pretty well and I think he's saying it in reference to me. He tries to say Dad, but it comes out "Ah-da" or something like that. He met dogs for the first time ever this weekend. He also tried to say "dog", which is more like "Dah". And I realized that "Ducky" sounds like "Doggie", so he now thinks that the cats are dogs. Oh well. He can do some sign languange, like "All done", "Milk" and he can wave hello and goodbye. He also likes to clap and throw his hands in the air when you say "Hooray!". He is understanding more and more of the things I say and he's just an all around joy to be around. He is always trying to "figure stuff out" so he often has a furrowed brow when looking at things and seeing things. But he's quick to giggle, loves singing and music and is just the cutest kid in the world. I am so lucky to be his mom.

Oh, and pics will be forthcoming later today...

Some pictures

Moving out of the old place

Moving into this place

Exploring the front

Steps!

I love the dishwasher

Bahahahaha!

Can I pet Ducky?

The view from our deck

Hanging out on the deck

I love cat toys!

The bay filled with fog on our morning commute.

3 year anniversary

We got married on October 1, 2011. Here are some things we have done since then:

• Alex successfully defended his PhD
• I completed one postdoc
• We both got jobs at Stanford
• We moved across the country, from Phildelphia, PA to Palo Alto, CA
• Said move involved 2 months of homelessness, living out of a tent or in friend's/family's houses.
• Our arrival in CA, we obtained a psychotic cat and moved into my parents' RV.
• We finally secured an apartment and settled in at Mountain View, CA. 
• We celebrated our first anniversary by driving to the beach in northern CA. 
• We drove back to CO for Christmas, 2012
• I got pregnant Feb 2013. 
• I applied for many, many grants to support my work. I got rejected a lot. I resubmitted a grant proposal to the NIH in less than a week turnaround and finally was funded. I heard about this when I had just come back from maternity leave in early 2014.  
• I got to be a part of a study on mindfulness, meditation and yoga on pregnant women. I took a class twice a week for 12 weeks during my second trimester.
• We celebrated our second anniversary by taking a trip to Monterey (literally the week before I was going to deliver). We staying in a hotel and hiked some of the peninsula. We also checked out the Aquarium. It was awesome.
• I was diagnosed with high blood pressure during my pregnancy and had to be induced at 39w.
• Our son was born Oct 15, 2013. 
• My best friend lost her dad. He was like my dad, too. Instead of bringing my newborn son to Thanksgiving and a celebration, I took him to his first memorial. I wish it could have been to meet the crazy Baisches instead of mourning with them.
• Our first Christmas with D was at my folks' house. 
• This first year parenting has been insane. We are constantly trying to figure out how to make a baby sleep, how to feed him, how much to feed him, bathtime, playtime, talking time, reading time. It's been a joy to watch him grow and learn and be who he is. It's also been unbelievably stressful. I wouldn't change it for the world.
• I took 4 months of maternity leave, even though I was only given three months. I just couldn't face going back.  Thankfully, I have the best boss ever.
• My mother in law stayed with us for 6 weeks to help me with the transition back to work. 
• My father in law showed up looking like a homeless person.
• We researched daycares and put D in one halfway between our home in Mountain View and Stanford. Two weeks into being there, we found out we had a half day spot at a daycare on campus. Needless to say, I was thrilled. Our current daycare is wonderful and I am almost thrilled to drop him off every day. I am also so thankful to have him close by.
• This past summer, we travelled to Seattle for a meeting. We also stopped at the Redwoods in northern CA, in parts of Oregon and Washington. It was D's first trip to another state. 
• Alex went to Michigan for a conference and I was a single parent for a week. 
• Alex and D came with me to Monterey for another conference for my work.
• Alex found out his boss was shutting down his lab. He would be losing his job.
• Alex scrambled and got another job in another department here at Stanford. I think he is much happier there. 
• Our rent got raised in our little apartment, so we decided to move. We've just completed a move to the mountains. We've lived in the city, we've lived in the suburbs, now we are trying to country. So far, so good. 

Hard to believe three years have passed, but when I look at all we've done it's all there. I can't imagine anyone I'd rather be on the journey with than Alex. Happy 3 years! Here's to many, many more. 

Wknd pics

My baby boy is 11 months old today!

Goofin'

Climbing

In motion

Crawling

Shopping

Playing with the ball

Let me out!

Packing

Creating chaos

Tiptoes

Big boy

Moving on up Haiku Friday

Moving on up to

the mountains, redwoods, clean air

I'm so excited!

***

A real house, little

community. Life in the

country, tiny town.

***

Apparently, Neil

Young lives there, too. Maybe I

will see him one day.

Dirty Laundry

There's been a wealth of dirty laundry airing recently. One of my facebook friends had, for some odd reason, two accounts. I was friends with both of "him". The other night, one of his accounts was "hacked" by his (apparently) scorned ex-wife, detailing how he left her and four kids with no money in TN while he went off to live in CA with his parents. How he had an affair with another women (weirdly who I also know) and how he stole the kids from her. It was awful. But train-wreck awful. I couldn't look away. It's rare to see the inner workings of a relationship - messy, ugly.  It was also terrible to think about a woman who lost her children. How utterly desperate she must have been to write the things she wrote. Or maybe how utterly stupid? Either way, the situation is really sad. After a couple hours, I "unfriended" the hacked account.
And then I got an email. A really, really weird email. From a guy I have met once or twice. About a person I know (but I'm not really that close to). It was a long, rambling, messy thing. At first I couldn't figure out why I would get this email, or what it was about. Then I figured out it was basically trying to discredit this person I know and say some awful things about them. I didn't really know what to do with the information (and I'm sure some of it is inflated) but it made a few puzzle pieces fit together. I, of course, contacted the person who the email was about to make sure they are OK. There are kids involved, and restraining orders, police, etc. It looks ugly. Obviously, I don't want to be involved. My friend is OK, and I can only be supportive.
It's things like these that make me appreciate my "boring" old life. Watching my baby discover new things every day. Learning how to be a wife when I have a kid. And figuring out just how the heck to keep my house clean, kid fed, job going, etc, etc, etc. I will take that boring old life any old day. I'll appreciate the little things in my life that are so nice. And I'll take one more day, mostly drama free.