michaelandbetsey.com : News about the family. Pictures of stuff.

Doldrums and Gales

It seems that things either aren’t happening at all, or they’re all happening at once. My inner cynic believes that the Creator is something of a jester, and must have decided to structure the universe this way: when things are going really well, you’re busy, and you have no time to enjoy life. When things aren’t going well, you’ve got the time to enjoy life but don’t have the inclination. That’s at least the way it seems right now. My inner Eeyore thinks this only happens to me.

What’s the occassion? We’re moving, for one. Technically we’re homeless at the minute, but the new owners of our old house (which is still going to be “Home” for some time to come, five years of emotional attachment to a place won’t disappear with a move) are letting us squat rent-free for the time being. We should be back in the proud land of propriety after tomorrow. So there’s work there, and gut-wrenching emotion because we’re so attached to where we were. Where we’re going is only a mile away, an easy drive, or bike, or even a pleasant walk away; but still, it feels like change, and that feels big.

And business is going well, or at least there’s gas in the tank now, which after months of subsisting on nothing and loans, feels really, really good. The ride itself is up and down, frequently occurring within hours of each other. There’s some excitement for the future, and a lot of trepidation because of the risk. But in the end, what would I rather be doing, really?

Of course this comes on the heels of vacation (see photos under the June page), which leaves all sorts of things dangling. At least I made the smart decision to read through GTD by David Allen while at the beach, which has immensely improved my organization and stress level. Highly recommended to anyone who feels like they’re juggling too much.

The rain in Maine falls mainly…

On us, so there will be no sea kayaking excursion for us today. But no complaints, really because up until this point the weather has been near-perfect: Scattered clouds, high 60’s to low 70’s. Also, no complaints because after 3 days in the saddle, we can use a day of just sitting and relaxing, though we do need to drive to Camden at some point. The cycling has been great, nice rolling hills with a few steep bits to keep things challenging.

Despite the gorgeous scenery, I haven’t been taking many pictures, as that beautiful clear weather usually results in images with too much contrast, and landscape photography isn’t really my strength anyway.

The food’s been good as well, but after days of lobster, lobster, lobster, I think we’re ready for a steak.

The vagaries of life…

I’ve been getting near exhausted lately. Some bad news for the business (our newest grant was triaged by the NIH), followed by a lot of work stress because another grant was due to be submitted. But the process is getting easier every time I do it, so maybe this won’t be so bad in the future; or maybe we’ll actually have a real business at some time and won’t be constantly writing and worrying about grants.

Of course, all this work stress gets piled on in one month that contains basically everything else. Lots of traveling, Elliott’s 1st birthday, my 30th birthday. Reviewing the pictures, the end of June seems like a long, long way away, yet I can’t seem to remember much of what came between. If Betsey hadn’t been “blissfully unemployed” starting at the beginning of the month, I don’t think I would have made it through. August is looking to be wonderful, if I can manage to wrangle through a bunch of sticky or annoying issues at work.

Hey, look, a self-pitying blog entry! I must still be young at heart (or a surly teenager at heart).

2007 08 08 michaela Family News Comments (0) Permalink

New look, new galleries.

The website has once again changed around. The growing number of family photos, and some perverse desire of mine to post older stuff as well, led me to abandon the old system, which wasn’t really scaling very well. So, here we are, the brand-spanking new Wordpress/Gallery2 version of the family website. Have fun with the slideshows. Read descriptions of the photos. Enjoy.

2007 06 07 michaela Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Long time, no update.

So we’ve been busy. And sick. Busy and sick basically describes the last 2 or 3 months. Other than bringing home three diseases from day care, a lot has happened with The Boy in that time, so I guess some words should be writeen to go with the pictures. He’s sitting unassisted for long periods now, that happend the last week of December. Around the beginning of December he began making a lot of “proto-crawling”-type movement, and Michael thought “crawlin’ by Christmas”, though this was more due to his love of the sound of the phrase “crawlin’ by Christmas” than any actual knowledge about infant development, etc. So no crawling, yet, although Elliott has learned to propel himself backwards through an ill-coordinated crawling motion.

We’ve started into the solid food: rice, barley, carrotts, apples, peas, beans, squash, and sweet potatoes. All seem to go down modestly well, and all things considered, the mess is a lot less than it could be. The boy grows, but seems to be going more longitudinal than latitudinal; we’ll be interested to see how he measures up at his six month appointment next week.

That’s the major developmental news, there was a “Da… Da” a week ago while Michael was changing a diaper, but given the lack of a repeat, we’ll have to say it was just Brownian Babbling, and not any real attempt to talk.

2007 01 17 michaela Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Photos moving around

I’ve split the “More Elliott” page into two pages. “More Elliott” covers everything from two weeks up to three months, and “Even More Elliott” covers everything from three months up until now (or six months, which ever comes first).

2006 11 18 michaela Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Hiking and Halloween

Gnome It may be hard to see in the new pictures, but Elliott was a garden gnome (think travelocity) for Halloween. Michael was a gardener, because we didn’t have time to make a costume for him. Betsey was supposed to be a garden - putting flowers in her hair & clothing, etc. - but didn’t have the time to get dressed. Theresa Truxillo threw a “little ones” party, which was wonderful.

And in the belated news category, we took our first “real” hike with Elliott two weeks ago, making the 3 hour or so (used to be 2) trip up & down John Rock. No good family pictures unfortunately, as Betsey was afraid to take the boy near the edge of the cliff, but some nice landscape shots showing the fall color. Those should make their way into the photos section eventually.

2006 11 01 michaela Elliott
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Pffffttttt!

Pfffftttt! As you can tell from the most recent photos, the boy has learned to stick his tongue out. Betsey informs me that he is stretching out his phrenulum (spelling?), that bit of flesh that connects your tongue to the bottom of your mouth. Along with this movement, there have been lots of gummy smiles, and ever more sophisticated gurgles and coos, strings of babble that seem almost phrase-like in their structure. And he’s become responsive,too, so we regularly engage in little conversations that go something like:

Us: “And what did you do today?

Him: “Braaah. Pffff. Aaaaa! Ghhghhheh.”

To top it all off, he slept 9 hours in a row last night, without a single peep or mew to hear of. Of course, Betsey did have to get up at 2 AM just to make sure nothing was wrong.

2006 10 17 michaela Elliott
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Spit up, Shots, Schedule Slips

Its been over a month now since we updated the blog, so there’s a lot to cover. There have been few “events”, other than Betsey returning to work full-time, and feeling somewhat guilty for doing so. As I have pointed out to her, this is bunk, and she is far from the stereotypical “too busy” working mom. At any rate, Elliott’s not missing her too much, since he’s asleep at least 50% of the time that she’s gone. This would be bad, but he had (until recently) been sleeping 6-8 hours every night, lulling us into a false sense of security about how easy it is to be parents. Though he’s far from being a nuisance, he’s now dropped down to 4 hours or so at a time at night (for the last couple of days at least), breaking up our sleep enough to give us back that good ‘ole tired to the bone feeling.

Maybe its due to his shots, which he received last week, though he hasn’t had any noticeable ill effects (fevers, etc.) from them. We skipped giving him a hepatitis B vaccine because an infant contracting an STD is just too damn weird to contemplate, too and too rare by our estimating to necessitate an additional burden on his immune system.

As far as “stories” go, only one stands out. We were at the Wednesday night volleyball gathering at Betsey’s clininc, and Michael was lifting Elliott up above his (Michael’s) head and making kissy-happy faces at him. And Elliott decided that would be a good time to spit up his most recent meal. Right into Michael’s open mouth. Of course, about a half dozen of our friends witnessed the occurrance, ensuring much laughter then and afterwards.

And that’s about all the news for now.

2006 10 02 michaela Elliott
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Entertaining

We had a group of our friends over last night for labor day. Jesse remarked to Stephanie that when they started dating (almost two years ago by my remembering), these gatherings of MAHEC-related friends contained essentially no children. These parties typically run 20 people or so, so we’ll say that the adult to child ratio was something like 20 to 1. Last night there were, by my count, six kids for 16 adults and one bewildered dog.

Obviously, this is a serious problem, something like a 750% increase in the proportion of children over just two years. At his rate, by 2010, a gathering 20 adults will have to include accomodations for 421.8 children (one of them may be missing a foot or something, I guess that’s where the 0.8 comes in). I don’t know why either of the major political parties is making an issue out of this, it really represents an existential threat to our adult culture and way of life. Of course, we could always sell the kids on ebayby.com (damn domain squatters have already taken it) and make a boatload of money, so maybe this isn’t such a problem after all.

At any rate, the important thing here is that two of our friends brought kids that I haven’t seen in five months or so, which is a lot considering they’re something like seven or eight months old, and so they’re HUGE in comparison to my memory. At that makes me realize that Elliott will be there before we know it, and that kinda breaks my heart.

2006 09 05 michaela Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

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