Our Year

Recently I've been writing more on Xander's caringbridge site. So I thought I'd include a kind of highlights of our year here. Looking back, it really has been an eventful year. Every year we don't move seems kind of uneventful to me . . . and thankfully we've stayed put for quite some time now.

Our year started off with Dennis' sister Alisha's wedding. She was just starting chemo for breast cancer and wanted to get married before. This year she has been battling through surgeries, chemo, and radiation. A year later . . . the cancer has spread and is not responding as well to the treatments as hoped. All prayers, good thoughts, vibes etc. would be greatly appreciated for her and her family.

Dennis has had a good scholarly year. In February he was invited to Harvard to give a talk about his then manuscript. I was able to come, the boys stayed with Nanna and Gramps. We had a fabulous weekend in Cambridge. Most of the drama was kept quiet until we were back--the first night my mom hurt her knee and ended up in the ER. She spent the weekend immobilized while my dad, brother, and sister-in-law had a crash course on cathing and child-care. We also found out that Daniel and Stacey were pregnant :) My mom had knee surgery in the beginning of the summer and was back to gardening soon after.

Soon after our return Dennis got a call and his manuscript was accepted for publication by the Harvard University Asian Center. Hooray!

In May Xander and I were out for a walk and we ended up with three abandoned kittens in our bathroom. Charlotte joined our family and we found homes for the other two. She's a beautiful cat, but so much trouble! She bolts for the door anytime its opened. Kumo has recently taken to perching himself on the couch as a way to prevent her from using it as a launching pad for escape. The cat fights continue but we think they do love each other. When Charlotte was away for her girl surgery Kumo cried and wandered aimlessly about the house.

In June we took our first ever family vacation. We drove to upstate NY to visit with Dennis' family and Dominick's godmother from NYC. Dennis did some research on his next book at Cornell University and we all enjoyed the sites of Ithaca. We then drove over to Lake Magician in Michigan for a family lake cottage retreat. We met up with my parents and Daniel and Stacy. Great fun. Discovered Dominick loves fishing--as do I!

Dominick started school as a kindergartner. He returned to his same teacher and school as he had in preschool but was now going all day. The best part about school are the "specials" especially gym. He has been organizing "gangs" on the playground and there has been a lot of chinchilla hunting.

Xander has had a pretty amazing year as well. He went from a crawler to walking with a walker, walking with our hands, to most recently walking independently. It is just amazing to watch him walk across rooms, walk across gymnasiums. I've had to ramp up my parenting skills because now I have a fearless independent walker--and he just goes. In the library I left him in the kids room and I was looking at children's books. Suddenly I looked up and didn't hear him --then he and the librarian came walking up to me. He didn't know where I was so he walked to the front of the library and asked for help. Lesson learned! And I'm very grateful we have a good local library.

My work, at Cincinnati State Community College library continues to go well. Work is mostly my escape from mom life. It is wonderful to use other skills and deal with adults for a few hours each day. This is also a great time to be at a community college--our enrollment is up almost 50%. My escape has been filled with more and more work, but it feels, mostly, like good important helpful work so I feel satisfied.