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mmcirvinThere's not much to say about 2007 as a whole that you don't already know. We did have some adventures toward the end of the year...
Sam and I started the year with a little baby who was just starting to show faint signs of a human personality, and watched her turn into a walking, talking toddler capable of arguing with us and making up her own little running jokes. I love her dearly, though around the 1-year mark and the nutrition worries in August and September, I think there was a period that felt kind of like bonking on a distance run—she hadn't gotten harder to deal with, really, but it felt like we didn't have much patience or energy left, and just when we had started to think we had the baby figured out, we had this renewed crisis of confidence over whether we were doing anything right. I'm not sure it gets easier exactly, but the challenges change over time; taking care of Jorie now is less like tending some sort of exotic fragile creature and more like having a sometimes unruly little person in the house. Truth be told, she's a really good kid, smart as a whip and not too ornery; I don't know how we would deal with a truly difficult one.
At the start of the year, we'd also moved into a new house, and I'd just changed jobs. Fortunately, no further changes of that magnitude have intervened; we did have to replace a car, but I haven't even had to travel on business again. The house is in much better shape than we found it in, though it'll be many years before we get it just how we want it—living with a baby makes it hard even to keep the place tidy. In hindsight it amazes me that we waited as long as we did to replace the furnace/fan/coil unit, though we dumped a lot of money on that.
There was some weirdness with the cats. Nestor's inappropriate peeing and pooping drove us to make him an outdoor/basement cat for a while; they all started going outdoors part of the time, and they all got ticks (which I stupidly misinterpreted as the spectacularly gross cuterebra grubs, but the vet set me straight), and once we'd gotten that cleared up, Nestor got a urinary tract infection. He's still on some pills for that, and one of the ingredients is an anti-anxiety drug which, curiously, seems to have helped somewhat with the litterbox issues. So that might actually lead to a long-term strategy! I'm still feeling guilty that I can't give them the level of attention that they got pre-Jorie. On the other hand, Jorie is herself giving them some attention that they don't yet find entirely welcome. Maybe that will develop into something better.
I still like my job, though I'm also still getting used to the fact that with a little kid I just can't work crazy hours on demand, at least without a lot of advance planning. That's probably for the best.
The end of the year was a bit trying. All three of us got that horrible gluey hacking chest cold that was going around, and once we'd all gotten over that, the Time of Snowstorms began (there's apparently another one on the menu for tomorrow). Usually, Massachusetts gets its big snow late in the season—February, March, even April sometimes—but this year the storms came early. This, I think, knocked the Christmas preparations and celebrations of everyone in the Boston area for a loop, and we were no exception.
We had an elaborate schedule planned in which we'd be celebrating with various Sam's family members up here, then flying down to Virginia on Christmas Eve to meet my folks, then coming back here Dec. 29th for a few days of decompression before I went back to work. It all pretty much went off as planned in the broad outlines; but leading up to it, most of my days off work were spent in a scheme where Sam and I took turns watching the baby and shoveling us out of snowbanks, and there were precious few clear days to go shopping (on which the stores and streets were all mobbed). On the final weekend before Christmas, our New England-side family visits were cut short because ice dams had built up on the roof, which was consequently leaking into the house in a couple of places, and the roofers (who were undoubtedly doing spectacular business) took their time to return our calls while we scrambled to control the damage.
So it all ended up being somewhat more ad hoc and low-key than we'd wanted to do it. We didn't even get cards out. Sam even wanted to put up our own Christmas tree here, but we never got close to doing that. Next year, we'd like to actually have at least a little celebration here, in our own house—Jorie will be two, and it seems like it's time.
Still, the weather cooperated for the length of our trip down to Virginia, and it was even warmer there. It was a lot of fun visiting Megan, Paul, and Greta in Richmond, and my parents (in the house they're almost done renovating at Colonial Beach), who don't get to see their younger grandchild that many times a year; and the low-key, underscheduled visit was a nice change from all the worry and fuss of December. Jorie did, unfortunately, catch a cold again on the plane ride down, but this germ seems to have been a mercifully short-lived one and she's already much better.
For 2008, I have the usual hopes that I can get better organized and catch up on all the stuff I made excuses to put off from 2007. I'm sure we'll also have some stuff to deal with that I don't know about yet (cue Terrible Twos). But I think we'll be all right.
Sam and I started the year with a little baby who was just starting to show faint signs of a human personality, and watched her turn into a walking, talking toddler capable of arguing with us and making up her own little running jokes. I love her dearly, though around the 1-year mark and the nutrition worries in August and September, I think there was a period that felt kind of like bonking on a distance run—she hadn't gotten harder to deal with, really, but it felt like we didn't have much patience or energy left, and just when we had started to think we had the baby figured out, we had this renewed crisis of confidence over whether we were doing anything right. I'm not sure it gets easier exactly, but the challenges change over time; taking care of Jorie now is less like tending some sort of exotic fragile creature and more like having a sometimes unruly little person in the house. Truth be told, she's a really good kid, smart as a whip and not too ornery; I don't know how we would deal with a truly difficult one.
At the start of the year, we'd also moved into a new house, and I'd just changed jobs. Fortunately, no further changes of that magnitude have intervened; we did have to replace a car, but I haven't even had to travel on business again. The house is in much better shape than we found it in, though it'll be many years before we get it just how we want it—living with a baby makes it hard even to keep the place tidy. In hindsight it amazes me that we waited as long as we did to replace the furnace/fan/coil unit, though we dumped a lot of money on that.
There was some weirdness with the cats. Nestor's inappropriate peeing and pooping drove us to make him an outdoor/basement cat for a while; they all started going outdoors part of the time, and they all got ticks (which I stupidly misinterpreted as the spectacularly gross cuterebra grubs, but the vet set me straight), and once we'd gotten that cleared up, Nestor got a urinary tract infection. He's still on some pills for that, and one of the ingredients is an anti-anxiety drug which, curiously, seems to have helped somewhat with the litterbox issues. So that might actually lead to a long-term strategy! I'm still feeling guilty that I can't give them the level of attention that they got pre-Jorie. On the other hand, Jorie is herself giving them some attention that they don't yet find entirely welcome. Maybe that will develop into something better.
I still like my job, though I'm also still getting used to the fact that with a little kid I just can't work crazy hours on demand, at least without a lot of advance planning. That's probably for the best.
The end of the year was a bit trying. All three of us got that horrible gluey hacking chest cold that was going around, and once we'd all gotten over that, the Time of Snowstorms began (there's apparently another one on the menu for tomorrow). Usually, Massachusetts gets its big snow late in the season—February, March, even April sometimes—but this year the storms came early. This, I think, knocked the Christmas preparations and celebrations of everyone in the Boston area for a loop, and we were no exception.
We had an elaborate schedule planned in which we'd be celebrating with various Sam's family members up here, then flying down to Virginia on Christmas Eve to meet my folks, then coming back here Dec. 29th for a few days of decompression before I went back to work. It all pretty much went off as planned in the broad outlines; but leading up to it, most of my days off work were spent in a scheme where Sam and I took turns watching the baby and shoveling us out of snowbanks, and there were precious few clear days to go shopping (on which the stores and streets were all mobbed). On the final weekend before Christmas, our New England-side family visits were cut short because ice dams had built up on the roof, which was consequently leaking into the house in a couple of places, and the roofers (who were undoubtedly doing spectacular business) took their time to return our calls while we scrambled to control the damage.
So it all ended up being somewhat more ad hoc and low-key than we'd wanted to do it. We didn't even get cards out. Sam even wanted to put up our own Christmas tree here, but we never got close to doing that. Next year, we'd like to actually have at least a little celebration here, in our own house—Jorie will be two, and it seems like it's time.
Still, the weather cooperated for the length of our trip down to Virginia, and it was even warmer there. It was a lot of fun visiting Megan, Paul, and Greta in Richmond, and my parents (in the house they're almost done renovating at Colonial Beach), who don't get to see their younger grandchild that many times a year; and the low-key, underscheduled visit was a nice change from all the worry and fuss of December. Jorie did, unfortunately, catch a cold again on the plane ride down, but this germ seems to have been a mercifully short-lived one and she's already much better.
For 2008, I have the usual hopes that I can get better organized and catch up on all the stuff I made excuses to put off from 2007. I'm sure we'll also have some stuff to deal with that I don't know about yet (cue Terrible Twos). But I think we'll be all right.