rivka

I am packed for our vacation, yay!

...Well, my clothes are packed. I still need to assemble trifling things like entertainment and medicine and directions and plans. But how much could that all matter? The important thing is that I'm almost ready to blow on out of here and not come back for several days.

Great midwife visit this afternoon. All's well on every front: my 28-week labs were "absolutely perfect," my blood pressure (116/74) is "beautiful," my weight gain (a pound a week since the last visit) is "ideal," my fundal measurement (30 cm from the pubic bone to the top of the uterus) "shows the baby's been reading the pregnancy books," and the Niblet's heartbeat "sounds great."

But! That's not all! I saw the senior midwife today, Kathy, the one who's had her midwifery license since the year I was born. For various reasons, it's the first time I've seen her for a prenatal appointment since the first one, although we've had several phone consults. I took the opportunity to ask her the question that's been burning in my mind.

Those of you who have been reading my LJ since my first pregnancy may remember that, given the pelvic abnormalities I have from my birth defect and various well-meaning attempts to correct it, Kathy was pretty discouraging about my chances of having a natural delivery. She put my C-section risk at "greater than 50%," and was so unsure that my weird pelvis would let a baby pass through that she suggested we consider inducing before dates to make sure the baby stayed small. And this is a very non-interventionist midwife, mind you, so those are probably the best odds we would've been quoted by anyone. But then, of course, I went on and had a beautiful, unmedicated, natural delivery of a 8.25-pound baby (almost a pound over average size) at 41 weeks and 1 day.

So as I prepare to give birth again, I've been wondering: did I just get lucky last time? Did I have the world's best midwife, who heroically worked the baby around the weirdness in my pelvis with positioning and so forth and won me a natural delivery I would not otherwise have had? Or was my situation not as messed-up as both a pelvic exam and my X-rays made it appear?

So tonight I gathered my courage and asked. And her answer was surprisingly optimistic. She said that Alex's birth demonstrates that a baby is able to get through my pelvis, and that with a second birth we would expect more pelvic widening and an easier passage than the first time around. Of course she warned that if the baby is large or if the head doesn't tuck right to get past the pelvic obstruction, I might still run into problems. But she doesn't see why I should expect that I won't be able to have a similar birth to my first. What about Julie's unbelievably phenomenal baby-maneuvering skills? Don't worry, we all do that, she said.

I am so happy. I haven't been feeling as awful about the prospect of a C-section as I did the first time around - I certainly don't want one, but I've already gotten to have the experience of a natural labor and delivery, and I don't think I'd feel totally bereft if I didn't get to do it again. But I'm so, so happy that Kathy doesn't think I'm especially high-risk. I was hesitant to ask because I figured she'd tell me there was no way of knowing, it could've just been luck, et cetera. The answer she gave me instead feels like such great news.

I will be thankful tomorrow, indeed.

Michael came to pick me up from work, yay. The car thermometer said 39 degrees. Before I went to get Alex from nursery school, Michael got my long wool coat and scarf from the attic, and I brought Alex's winter coat with me to school as well. It really was much, much colder today than I expected it to be.

I used some of my cancelled-meeting time to book the mini vacation we've been planning. We're going to Williamsburg VA, a.k.a. Colonial Williamsburg, for Thanksgiving. Michael and I have never been there before. We recognize that we're not going to see all that much of it with a three-year-old, but I think it will be fun regardless.

For those who are unfamiliar, Colonial Williamsburg is a massive recreation of the town as it was in the 18th century, with hundreds of houses, stores, and other buildings rebuilt on their original foundations, furnished appropriately, and populated by costumed historical interpreters. You can watch blacksmiths and weavers at work, visit a plantation and talk to both the slaves and the "family," go into a coffeehouse or tavern and be swept into a debate about whether the Colonies should revolt. The farms have 18th century breeds of livestock and grow 18th century crops.

I think the historical aspects of it (the Revolutionary War debates, the opportunity to speak to Thomas Jefferson) will be utterly uninteresting to Alex, which means that Michael and I will probably miss out on those aspects as well. But I know she'll enjoy visiting the farms and watching the artisans work, and we will too. And I know it will be lovely just to have several days to relax together as a family.

I've reserved us a room - well, sort of a cross between a room and a suite - at the Springhill Suites Hotel. It has an indoor pool and a hot tub, which I think all three of us will enjoy, and serves a free hot breakfast every day. We'll have Thanksgiving dinner at the Williamsburg Hospitality House, and we're planning to go to a seafood feast on Friday night. (Key phrases: "featuring sushi of the moment" and "children 5 and under are free." Little do they know what they're getting into.) Saturday night we may try a tavern in the historical area featuring period singing and games.

We have a whole series of contingency plans, depending on the weather. If it's cold and rainy we may not even wind up touring the historical area, but there are plenty of other attractions locally: the Mariner's Museum, for example, and the Virginia Living Museum, which seems to be a sort of a Biodome. If the weather is great, we may try to find an ocean beach so we can take a walk and look for shells. Alex has never seen the ocean, not for real. (She's seen the harbor, obviously.) If we love the historical area, we may spend two days there and not see any other attractions.

I think it will be wonderful.

I spent twelve hours yesterday driving to Harrisburg PA, getting out the vote for Obama, and driving home. It was a much better use of those twelve hours than the fretting which I would have inevitably done if I'd had time. ( Read more... )

I've signed up with the Obama campaign to go to Pennsylvania on Election Day, to help get out the vote. They've asked me to go to Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, which is a small conservative city in the southern part of the state. It's about 80 miles north of Baltimore.

The form e-mail I got assigning me to Harrisburg says that I'll either be canvassing or working the phones; I assume that on Election Day itself I'm more likely to be asked to work the phones, but it's possible that they'll still be going door to door even then.

So far I'm very impressed with their organization. They have a webpage aimed at "border state volunteers," people who live in safe blue or safe red states who want to travel someplace where the election will be close. They encouraged me to come for a four-day trip (and I wanted to!), but I was also free to sign up for whichever days I could actually travel. My field office match came complete with a link to a 16-page PDF booklet called the "PA Border States Volunteer Welcome Packet," which provided everything from the phone numbers and addresses of every field office in the state to a list of hotels offering discounted stays to a suggested packing list with wardrobe suggestions. The booklet also had a brief guide to the PA political scene and the parameters of the race in PA.

I was particularly struck by this:

Thanks to our hard work registering voters, there are currently 438,536 more registered Democrats in Pennsylvania than there were at the time of the election in 2004. Meanwhile, there are 175,472 fewer registered Republicans than in 2004. Democrats have nearly doubled their registration advantage of 580,208 voters in 2004 to 1,194,216 voters
through October 2008. The Obama campaign registered over 350,000 of these new Democrats.

I don't know how necessary I really am to the get-out-the-vote effort. Recent polls in Pennsylvania haven't been particularly close, for all that the McCain campaign has been insisting that they can win there. I guess I just want to feel like I've done my part, and there's not much I can do toward that end as a Maryland resident. Plus, I think it will be fun.

How about you, or at least, the Americans among you? Do you have Election Day plans? Do you live in a state where your vote might make a difference?

This weekend I left my home and my family and went off into the wilds of Virginia to hang out with my friends, completely and utterly without responsibilities. It was AWESOME.

The six of us have been planning this since SUUSI.

bosssio, Brenna, Daria, Molly, Lo, and me, all Unitarian-Universalists, all mothers of kids ranging in age from -4 months (i.e., the Niblet) to eight. We love spending time together at SUUSI, but we also wanted to carve out some all-women, all-adult space. So the Wild Woman Weekend was born.

When I say "wild," you have to understand that we are all mothers and Sunday School teachers (present or former) who are fast approaching middle age. We tooled around in a minivan and gave serious consideration to going to church on Sunday morning. Theology was discussed. A recommended-reading list was compiled. But for me, at least, it felt a little wild just to go away for my own enjoyment, rather than for something improving like a work conference or OWL training. Just for grownup fun.

( things we did: talking, eating, book buying, eating, talking. )It was an amazing weekend. Obviously I can't write about the intensest parts here, because they involved the sharing of pain and secrets and the loving response of friends. But the atmosphere of trust, cameraderie, and shared values was so good, and filled a deep hunger I barely knew I had. It was such a long, extended period of uninterrupted communication and connection. No kids' needs, no mundane responsibilities, no pull of other friends or activities.

Just six women, and love, and plenty of time.

Michael and I talked a little bit about going to Wiscon tonight. We are still thinking.

The big conference in my field is being held in Montreal this year, at the end of April. I would like to go, and if I go, my grant will pay for my plane ticket and hotel room and other expenses. The rest of the family would come along too, at our personal expense.

I don't think it makes economic or practical sense to do two family trips by airplane in two months, with a very young baby.

An issue with Montreal is that, traveling by air, we would all have to have passports. Even the Niblet, who should be about ten weeks old at the time. Which would mean trying to get usable passport pictures for a newborn (the rules about what constitutes an acceptable photo are stringent), and scrambling to get the official birth certificate from the state and the passport application pushed through. That sounds complicated.

Once in Montreal, the Niblet would probably attend SBM with me, nursing and sleeping in the sling, while Michael and Alex hung out with

papersky. We could all hang out with

papersky in the evenings. If I were scheduled to give a talk (hopefully I would be, about my new research), Michael would take the Niblet while I was speaking. I would be able to network.

If we go to Wiscon, we wouldn't need passports. More of our friends would be there. The Niblet would be a month older, and I seem to recall that there can be a big sanity difference between a 10-week-old and a 14-week-old. We'd have to pay for everything - no billing the grant - and obviously, there would be no professional advantages. It would probably be a hell of a lot of fun.

I am tentatively leaning towards making a Wiscon hotel reservation now, just in case, and making the final decision about where to go after I find out if SBM would want me to give a talk, or not. If they just want me to present my research as a poster, it would have a lot less appeal.

Questions about Wiscon:

1. Are you going?
2. If we wait to buy memberships until January, are they likely to be sold out?
3. How hard is it to sell or transfer memberships in the late winter or early spring?
4. Is it at all possible to arrange for adjoining hotel rooms in case, say, you want to share after-the-kids-are-asleep monitoring duty with another family?
5. If (4) is possible, would you be interested?
6. Would you look askance at someone who brought a sleeping baby in a sling to a room party?

Questions about Montreal:

7. Has anyone here ever gotten a passport for an infant? How hard was it to arrange?
8. Is it insane to think about bringing an infant to a professional conference? I've seen other people do it, but I don't know how good of a conference experience they had. Obviously I wouldn't let the Niblet cry in a lecture room, or anything.

Questions about both:

9. Is it insane to think about traveling 600-1000 miles with a preschooler and a small infant and all staying together in one hotel room?

Everything changes so fast.

I put Michael on an airplane to Memphis this afternoon. Bought his plane ticket at 1pm for a 3pm flight. He started a load of laundry that he didn't have time to finish. Now Alex and I are alone and waiting for news.

His father has been sick for a while. He had a blockage in an artery in his leg. They tried to go in with a minimally invasive procedure - no luck. They scheduled him for surgery a week and a half ago. When they went in, they were able to clean out the artery and place a stent, but they found another blockage in an artery to his kidney, which they couldn't fix properly. He lost a lot of blood and needed transfusions. Last Sunday, he went home.

Thursday we got a call that he was back in the hospital, throwing up blood. They found that he had an abdominal obstruction, and the hernia he's had for a while had also started impinging on something serious. Plus a raging infection requiring IV antibiotics. Friday he had surgery again.

Yesterday the hospital phones weren't working properly all day, and we couldn't be connected to his room. No one answered his cell phone. No one called us.

Michael called the hospital after church today. Someone else answered the phone in his patient room. The hospital switchboard told us that he was in the ICU. We called and talked to Michael's stepmother's son, who told us that my father-in-law had spiked a high fever which didn't come down even when they packed him in ice. He was in surgery again. They'd call when they knew something. (They still haven't called.)

I bought Michael a one-way ticket on Southwest, to Nashville. While I was online trying to book the 5:30pm flight, it sold out. So we had to rush to get Michael on the 3:05pm flight instead, which is what led to the abandoned laundry. He'll need to make do with whatever he had that was clean. He'll rent a car in Nashville and drive to Memphis. Who knows what he'll find when he gets there.

In the car on the way to the airport, after a little silence, Michael said, "I didn't pack a suit, because."

"If it comes to that, Alex and I will be coming down anyway," I said. "We'll bring you a suit."

I kept focusing, in the dumb way that you do, on making all the practical arrangements. "Call me when you get to Nashville, and I'll tell you where I was able to reserve a car. Do you have your boss's number? Did you pack your toothbrush? If you get there after the last ICU visiting hour, go ahead and try to get them to let you see him anyway. The worst they can do is say no. Here's a slip of paper with all your flight arrangements on it."

I know Michael knows me well enough to be able to translate all of that: I love you so much. I am really worried. I wish I could go with you and take care of you. I love you.

I'm waiting for him to call and tell me that he's landed in Nashville. In the meantime? I am fretting. And in the midst of all of this heavy planning/organization/arrangement work, our fucking internet connection keeps going down without warning. And Alex is behaving in the classic manner of a preschooler whose world has been suddenly disrupted - alternately clingy, whiny, and incredibly poorly behaved.

I need to try to figure out contact resources for spiritual support for Michael. Our ministers retired in June, and were explicit about the fact that they don't make exceptions for counseling or special events for former parishioners. I understand that they have to do that, because it could prevent the church from moving on and bonding with new ministers. But our new minister doesn't start until Sep. 7th. I don't have her number, but I can get it. And, uh, we've met a UU minister from Memphis once before, at SUUSI. I could dig up his number. And, um, maybe the number of our old ministerial intern. She and Michael had a really great bond.

See what I mean? My mind is running in circles like a mouse in the bottom of a jar, trying to find something that I can do that will be useful. Because I love you so much and I'm so worried and I wish I could go with you to take care of you. And I can't. I have to stay here and take care of Alex and go to work and hold down the fort at home.

It's actually a good thing I'm posting this morning instead of last night. I went to bed thinking, "Was SUUSI really a good idea?" This morning I remembered: Yeah. It totally is. ( Read more... )

This afternoon I gave Lydia a bunch of information and Steve (our Right Hand Man) a bunch of instructions. I made sure that I uploaded any files that Steve might need to our network drive. I got some things in motion to be ready for me to do them when I get back. I gave Steve my key to the cashbox, just in case. I put "away" messages on my phone and e-mail. I don't have to be back at work until July 28.

I did stay late at work, but that was okay because I was waiting for the IT guys to finish configuring my new laptop, a very lovely and well-equipped Dell Precision. Okay, so they shouldn't have taken this long to get it to me, given that I ordered it long long ago. But I know from last year that it drives me crazy not to have computer access at SUUSI, so, yay for them getting it to me in the nick of time.

Tomorrow we will do laundry and pack and make some pretense at cleaning the house and pick up a banner from church. I will bake some kind of delicious treat for the neighbors who will be watering our garden while we're gone. It will be 97 degrees outside, and God help us, Alex has an outdoor T-ball-themed birthday party to attend.

At 6:45 tomorrow evening, I'll pick my father up at the bus station.

Sunday morning, bright and early, we leave for SUUSI. Alex has been sleeping in her sleeping bag every night to get ready.

I'm on vacaaaaaaation!

Via AckB, a little something to lift your spirits this morning.

Watch on YouTube

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I just registered us for this year's SUUSI. Their online system is probably the most user-friendly registration setup I've ever seen. We still have to mail in a big packet of waivers and permissions, but at least we've all made it into the queue for our various trips and workshops.

My father is going again this year. He and I are taking a workshop and a hike together. And

bosssio is going as well - yay, we didn't totally scare her off last year! We're going to be suitemates again. I'm crossing my fingers hoping that Dorian (our friend and Alex's ex-nanny) and her mother will decide to go too. I think they'd have a wonderful time, and it would be great to have extra time to hang out with Dorian.

We've got a pretty heavy schedule this year. I hope we don't regret it. I don't see anything that I'd want to cut out, but there's not quite as much relaxation time as we planned for last year.

Yaaaay, SUUSI!

( our schedule, for posterity )

Yay, they posted the SUUSI catalog!

They've made some good general changes to the schedule this year. Instead of scheduling adult-focused musicians to play at 5pm and calling that a "family concert hour," they've moved concert hour back to the 8-9pm slot and kept every late afternoon open for chaotic community play time. Evening concerts push worship earlier, which works better for us with Alex's bedtime. And this year they're offering the opportunity to be in Covenant Groups - small groups which meet daily during SUUSI for spiritual conversations, and which can continue throughout the year by e-mail. I think that's a great innovation.

SUUSI is moving from the Virginia Tech campus to the campus of Radford University, about twenty miles down the road. On balance, I think it will be great. Radford is much smaller, and we'll have it to ourselves. VA Tech was always jammed full of sports-camp kids and freshman orientation students - mealtimes especially were a nightmare, with huge crowds and a stressful, rushed atmosphere. SUUSI will still bring a thousand people to the dining hall, but I think the atmosphere will be much more relaxed with everyone from the same program, sharing the same living-in-community expectations.

Dorm rooms will be smaller, and instead of three-bedroom suites with living rooms we'll have two-bedroom suites with no living rooms. I know that the SUUSI Board thinks of this as a feature, not a bug; it will force people to congregate and socialize in open communal spaces rather than private gatherings in living rooms. It remains to be seen how well that will work. The one thing I wonder about is what parents will do between bedtime and the start of childcare co-op. Hang out in the halls, I guess.

I am in the happy position of finding waaay too many things in the catalog that I want to do. Although there is a distressing preponderance of woo-woo workshops, which I think says less about the interests of the average SUUSI attendee than it does about the enthusiasm of woo-woo people to give workshops. (Next year I really need to think about offering the kind of workshops I would want to take.) I have some hopes for "Science, Religion, and the Universe" ("What’s new in physics and how does this relate to our beliefs. The beginning and end of the universe (mostly dark matter and energy) and what happened in between. Also some fun experiments done by participants.") being relatively woo-woo free because it is being offered by a physicist. Although one never knows.

I always think about branching out and trying something completely different at SUUSI, like (particularly) "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain," or singing with the SUUSI Cantatori. But it would take up so much of my schedule. I'd have to commit to showing up to something every morning all week long. I don't necessarily want to nail myself down like that.

There are a lot of nature trips this year that are rated for ages 0+, which is nice. I want to do a couple of those with Alex, and a couple of good challenging hikes for myself. I am intrigued by the dawn canoe trip, but probably not enough to miss the chocolate-making workshop it's scheduled against. (The same one I tried to take last year, which was foiled by intense humidity. I see that this year it's been moved to the morning, which should help.)

Yay! SUUSI! I am so excited.

( possible schedule )

I'm a little embarrassed about how long this post is. But so much happened! Most of it good! ( Read more... )

We're leaving in the morning for Montreal, by way of a visit to

kcobweb in Williamstown MA. We're going to be spending New Year's with

papersky,

rysmiel and others. Yay!

We decided to rent a car for the trip. Our Corolla has been going through oil at a fairly alarming rate, and we figured that for a 1200-mile round trip, the peace of mind would be well worth the rental fees. Michael combed the internet for rental companies willing to let us take a car into Canada, and found us a nice deal at Alamo where they'd give us a full-sized car for the price of a mid-sized. When we got to the rental spot, the guy who showed me to the cars offered me a choice: they had two Chevy Malibus, or, although it wasn't technically in the class I had paid for, they could also put me in a Volvo. The Volvo in question turned out to be an S60, their "entry-level luxury" model. It's got everything from an electronic compass mounted in the rear-view mirror to heated seats. We're going to be riding in style.

I think we're going to be glad for the extra vehicle weight, too. It looks as though upstate New York and southern Quebec are expecting 3-5 inches of snow tomorrow night, which means we'll be driving through the Adirondacks on recently plowed roads. Given that we're taking the Interstate all the way to the border, through regions accustomed to dealing with snow, I don't think we'll have too much trouble as long as we don't try to get an early start leaving Williamstown on Saturday. But driving a larger, heavier car will probably be more comfortable than driving our lightweight little Toyota.

I'm really looking forward to the trip. I was so sorry to miss the Farthing parties this year and last year. Jo was absolutely wonderful to invite us for New Year's! And Alex has been making up stories about her visit to

kcobweb's daughter Elena for days.

We have arrived home safely from my parents' house, only 24 hours late. Yesterday the weather really was miserable. We didn't get the foot-plus of snow that had been forecast, but the two lesser snowfalls we did get were sandwiched around a lengthy episode of freezing rain.

Today the driving wasn't bad, except for a substantial amount of glare that made it hard to tell whether the road ahead was icy or just wet. So it was a little tense at times, but we made it home just fine.

Yay, home.

We decided to go ahead and make the trip. It seems clear that we won't get out of here on Sunday - the storm is supposed to start tonight and last through the day tomorrow. My only remaining question is whether the roads will be okay on Monday. This is supposed to be a pretty slow storm. We'll see.

It's a nice visit so far. We've only had one brief opportunity to visit with my sister Judy and her family, because it's such a crazy booked-up time of year. But the brief visit was nice. We exchanged Christmas presents. The almost-11-year-old immediately spread her Sculpey kit across the restaurant table to examine all the pieces, giving a running commentary on what she was going to make and how far away her siblings would need to stay. The 13-year-old kept lovingly fondling his new Scott Westerfeld books. Alex got promptly and deeply to work with the wooden sushi set they gave her. And my sister delighted me with a reprint of the American Girls' Handy Book, a sort of a craft-adventure-advice book for 19th century girls.

It was very, very cold this morning (17 degrees F), but we went out to play in the snow anyway. It was Alex's first encounter with deep-ish snow (we've got about 6 inches on the ground), and she loved it. Climbed, crawled, rolled (!), got Grandpa to pull her all around the yard (which my poor urban child calls "the park") on a sled, and finally took several sled runs down an extremely gentle hill. It was wonderful.

I introduced my father to the singer-songwriter Peter Meyer, and also (I may at some point regret this) to Jonathan Coulton's "Mandelbrot Set." He's listening to it again and again, trying to figure out all the words. (He doesn't see well enough to use lyrics sites.)

For Christmas, along with some smaller things, my folks gave me the most amazing picnic set. It's a backpack. The front compartment holds a complete set of picnic tableware: dishes, polycarbonate glasses, metal silverware, mini salt and pepper shakers, a cheese board and cheese knife, a corkscrew. The rear compartment is heavily insulated to keep food hot or cold, and has a completely removable liner for easy washing. There's a separate small front compartment that's insulated as well, so you could have a hot-food section and a cold-food section. And strapped to the sides: an insulated sleeve for a wine or water bottle, and a large picnic blanket that's flannel on one side and waterproof nylon on the other. O. M. G. This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

So all is well, even if we may be a tiny bit marooned for the next couple of days. At least we have plenty of goodies to play with.

I'm supposed to go visit my parents this weekend in upstate New York, with Alex. I took Friday off from work. Because of family drama which I won't go into here, we won't be seeing my family at Christmas - this was going to be my opportunity to spend time with them.

They got hit with seven inches of snow today. We went out and bought Alex a pair of snow boots so she could frolic in the snow at Grandma's house. I worried a little bit about the drive, but figured if I took the long way around and stuck to the Interstates I would probably be fine.

My mother just e-mailed me this: ...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM SATURDAY EVENING THROUGH MONDAY MORNING... [...] THIS NOR'EASTER IS EXPECTED TO SPREAD SNOW ACROSS THE REGION ON SATURDAY NIGHT, AND THE SNOW COULD BECOME HEAVY ON SUNDAY. [...] SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 1 FOOT OR GREATER WILL BE POSSIBLE [...] A WINTER STORM WATCH IS IN EFFECT BECAUSE HEAVY SNOW IS A POSSIBILITY, BUT NOT A CERTAINTY. AT THIS TIME, THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 7 INCHES OR MORE.

Sunday, the day we were expecting to drive back. Shit. And yet it's just a watch, not a winter storm warning. It could turn into anything, or nothing.

Do I go, and just figure that we might get snowed in and have to stay an extra day? If I don't go, the trip can't be switched to another weekend (due to the aforementioned drama issues). The visit would have to be postponed until God knows when.

I don't want to cancel, but a five-hour drive through potentially bad winter weather is nothing to just shrug off. Shit.

Tomorrow afternoon I leave for OWL training. It's being held at a Swedenborgian retreat center outside of Philadelphia. (I just like to say "Swedenborgian.") The place looks beautiful, but that probably doesn't matter, because the training schedule is crazy intense: on Saturday, for example, we're in training from 9am to 9:30pm. Still, I'm looking forward to it. I've heard that it's fun.

I'm really hoping that I come home feeling competent to teach this course! Parent orientation is just in a couple of weeks. I keep reminding myself that this has been a very successful curriculum nationwide, which must mean that the teachers don't have to be able to walk on water in order to make it work.

Michael and Alex are going to be solo for the weekend. We've done this once before, last January, but Alex was a lot younger. I'm not sure how it's going to go. We've explained to her a couple of times that I'm going away to a special school, and that I'm going to have dinner there and sleep there, and she will stay just with Papa until I come home. And I made her a little calendar to map out how long it will be until I come home, and what she'll do in the meantime. She's still pretty unclear on time concepts, so I don't know if the calendar will be helpful or not.

Any recommendations from the other parents out there? Also, I'm putting the calendar below the cut, and would appreciate advice on making it clearer.

( picture below )

The only good thing about having a child who gets carsick is that you can use Dramamine for long car trips without feeling like a child abuser. It certainly made the drive to SUUSI easy - Alex only slept for about an hour, but she spent the rest of the trip in a drug-induced mellow, staring out the window and listening to music. The trip was absolutely uneventful - just what you want a five-hour drive to be, and certainly a nice change from last year.
( Read more... )

We registered for SUUSI this weekend, and this morning I mailed out the required waivers and permission forms and the deposit. Now we're really going. (We've set aside our tax refund to pay for it, so we'll be able to afford it regardless of Michael's work situation.)

We'll be sharing a suite with

bosssio and her boys, currently aged 18mos and 3 1/2. The kids play together really well - they came up to visit on Saturday, and it was sweet to watch Alex and Ant walking around holding hands. I think they'll be able to entertain each other a lot of the time, giving us adults more time to relax.

I am so excited. I need a vacation badly, and I haven't had a real one since... well, I guess since last year's SUUSI. (Spending Christmas with my in-laws? Not a vacation.) I've got a great schedule planned out for myself, a mix of family and independent activities with plenty of unscheduled time - including, most notably, a whole morning when Alex will be in the children's program and I won't be signed up for anything.

( our schedule, for posterity )

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Entries tagged with travel

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What I did in Pennsylvania.

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Blissful weekend.

Wiscon or Society of Behavioral Medicine?

In the blink of an eye...

SUUSI, Day 1.

I'm on vacaaaaaaaation!

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SUUSI!

SUUSI 2008

Ridiculously long Montreal trip report.

Heading north.

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OWL training approaches.

SUUSI report: Day 1

SUUSI!

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April 2017

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