Sun’s out, son’s out

Hudson’s birthday coincided with the epic Solar Eclipse 2017, a once-in-a-lifetime event that a two-year-old could never appreciate. In fact, I’m pretty sure he slept right through it (since the peak happened pretty close to nap time). Between eclipse viewing and birthday partying, it was a crazy, hectic, but very fun day that I’ll always remember.

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39 weeks: the homestretch

Well, baby is due on Sunday but theoretically could come any day now. Did you hear that, baby? Any day now. The second pregnancy has been relatively uneventful but definitely more tiring with a 15-month-old involved. I’m so thankful my parents have been here for almost two weeks now to help out as we await the arrival; while Bart has been super amazing as usual, we could never have managed this well on our own.

I could say a lot about pregnancy and all the thoughts and emotions associated with it or described the unique aspects of this one, but as we count down the final days I thought I would keep it relatively light by reflecting on some of the questions and comments I have received over the last few months. Most are pretty benign or guileless, even if they get annoying in their frequency or short-sightedness.

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This day in history: Asaph Hall and the moons of Mars

One year ago today, I was not in labor with Hudson (it was his due date, but you know how babies–and statistical distributions–are). But on this date 139 years ago, something very special happened right at the US Naval Observatory in Washington, DC.

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Five months: big transitions

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Month five has really been eventful in terms of both Hudson’s development and our lives in general. It’s pretty incredible to look back over the last month to see all the changes that have been happening, especially as our little guy has clearly moved from newborn status into full-on baby mode and our family has transitioned from “babymoon” into “back to reality…with a kid.”

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One giant leap

Today around midnight Greenwich Mean Time (evening for us in the US), something remarkable will happen. I’ve gotten tons of questions from friends about the Leap Second, which is coming to a clock near you today, so I thought I’d take a moment to discuss the topic and hopefully shed a little light on why it’s interesting and why you should (or shouldn’t) care.

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Twenty-eight weeks: coasting

At 28 weeks, I am officially in my third trimester. We have less than three months left until our little guy is due, and I’m equal parts ready for it to be here and content to have a little time left. The second trimester was crammed full of travel, visitors, projects, and general churn which only just wrapped up over Memorial Day weekend. It was great to be busy when I was feeling well, but now our schedule for the summer is looking more relaxed, and I am looking forward to coasting a bit to the finish line.

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Eπc

Happy Pi Day, everyone! As most of you have probably heard by now, 3-14-15 is a particularly epic (eπc?) Day, having two more inherent digits of the irrational number in the date. To celebrate the occasion, I organized “Pi Day Observed” at work on Friday…and of course it involved pie…

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Reflecting on two years

On the morning of November 10, 2012, Bart and I saw the sun rise one last time from our driveway in Erie, Colorado as we got in our cars and began the three day, 1700 mile trek to our new home in Washington, D.C. Two years used to seem like an eternity, but I still feel “new” to my job, our church, and the area in general even 24 months after our relocation. Nevertheless, a lot has happened for Bart and me since we began this new chapter in 2012.

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Interstellar

Bart and I are cheapskates when it comes to watching movies: very, very few films come out that inspire us enough to drop $30 just to watch it. Therefore, we often wait to catch something on DVD or streaming, or we catch crazy early matinees on Saturdays when we can go for almost half price. (Can I just interject here that movies, like everything else, are so ridiculously expensive here in Washington, DC?) This Saturday, we didn’t have a lot planned, and I was in a rare mood to actually cough up a little cash to go see something in the theater. After weeks of being uninspired by recent new releases, I finally decided I would be interested enough in seeing Interstellar to brave a Saturday morning matinee, so Bart and I headed to the theater to catch this brand new release.

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One year: looking back

Believe it or not, this weekend marks one full year that we’ve been in our new house. I guess that after a year, you can’t really call a 52-year-old house new, but it still feels like yesterday since we had boxes piled high everywhere. We’ve been pretty busy this year, ripping things out, putting new things in, and making our own personal mark on our space. We’ve also accomplished a lot out of the house, from regional travel to making friends, from getting involved at church to traveling out of the country a few times. Let’s take a look back at what all our first year as homeowners in the DC area has brought us.

Home sweet home

 

• Learned to wake up at oh-dark-thirty to get to work at 6:00 am.
• Renovated/updated a bedroom and a pantry closet.
• Traveled to Raleigh to visit family and friends.
• Went to a few baseball games.
• Made trips home for Christmas and during the summer.
• Almost finished logging two huge oak trees we had cut down.
• Bought a new car (and put 8,000 miles on it in just over three months…seriously???).
• Organized the garage.
• Went into DC to see the zoo, cherry blossoms, and the National Portrait Gallery.
• Took a driving tour of Gettysburg.
• Perfected my waffle recipe.
• Survived a few polar vortices, including one with a broken boiler.
• Pulled through horrible allergies and a bout of stomach bug, bleh.
• Made two international trips (three for Jennifer).
• Made peace with high humidity (just kidding, I still hate it).
• Watched our once paralyzed dog chase squirrels across the yard again.
• Uprooted gigantic azaleas with a pickup truck.
• Successfully grew basil–though it sadly died when the weather turned just a little cool–and an avocado.
• Decked out our front porch.
• Toured New England during the fall, including a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
• Crushed some candies and started doing fun, creative stuff again.
• Observed birds, squirrels, deer, chipmunks, foxes, raccoons, snakes, and golden-doodles in our yard.
• Swept every known kind of outdoor debris off the deck all year long.
• Hosted fewer visitors than we did while we rented our first year here (though we’re making up for it in October).
• Gotten involved and met more people at our new church.
• Generally felt like we finally belong here.

Not that Washington, DC is “Home” yet, but it’s our home for now. We’ve learned to appreciate the opportunities here in DC and how to deal with the crummy parts, like traffic and overcrowding. Being settled in our own house and finally having friends and being involved in a church has helped us reorient and figure out what our new chapter of life looks like. It’s ever changing still, but that keeps life interesting, right? It will be interesting to reflect on the coming year next October to see what year two in our house and year three of Washington, DC, look like.

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