Hello Gourd-Geous!

 We are having a ridiculously lovely fall here in Boulder County. On Wednesdays, I can pull Lucy and Cooper to school in the bike cart. No, they don’t really fit anymore but it’s chilly enough in the mornings that they just snuggle in. Snow must have fallen in the mountains last night and as the sun was rising today, it showered the snowy caps with a pink glaze that looked as close to heaven as one can get on Earth. It’s certainly not the Bay Area here but we are outside playing almost every day.

When I look back on summer, I find that I have no idea where the time went! We spent almost 3 weeks on the East Coast and most days in our neighborhood pool. Our family barely made it to the mountains to play at all, though. It was a very hot summer and that definitely deterred us. This fall we have gotten out to hike or climb every weekend but one. During the one missed weekend, we hosted a Fall Fest at our home for neighbors and friends. It was very fun and I had a great time preparing for our first real party at our new house. Otherwise, we have been going around hiking at state parks in the area, of which there seem to be endless options.

Lucy and Cooper did their longest and hardest ever hike two weeks ago, Mt. Sanitas in Boulder. It is 2 miles up up up and 2 miles down down down. We stopped for three nice long picnics on a blanket along the way. Jim and I were both amazed at how well they did. There was lots of rock climbing and bouldering around along the trail which always makes a huge difference. Jim swears that walking Cooper to school every day helps him prepare for all of this hiking. Works for me!

 

Last weekend we were invited to climb at Table Mountain with a couple folksJim met at the climbing gym. We also had a 3:00 birthday party with our neighbors, so I was pretty stressed out about timing. Then Jim convinced me that we should try out a partial day of climbing at such a close-by crag. The hike up to Table Mountain is pretty intense. It’s up. That’s all there is to it. 400 feet in .75 miles. And we didn’t have a third climber who was committed to either helping with kids or belaying a ton. The last time we were out climbing in the spring, though, Lucy and Cooper were incredibly independent. I packed up a bag of coloring pages and markers, some buckets, and small shovels, and off we went!

The hike was slooooowwwww. It’s a single-wide trail with no shade and no resting points. Lucy and Cooper did great…and it was a very annoying hike 😊. We made it up to the top in 50 minutes and then Jim and I both climbed two routes. The kids played in the dirt, ate snacks, and colored. We definitely leveled up in parenting this climbing season! We no longer require a third adult to climb!!! I mean, it’s nice to have someone not tethered to a rope. It’s just no longer a requirement!

Lucy lost another tooth this past weekend right before trick or treat. That’s two teeth gone for her! We had our first parent-teacher conference at Ryan Elementary with Mrs. Asher, who had glowing remarks about Lucy. Mrs. Asher reports that Lucy’s social-emotional skills are off the charts. Good thing after many very expensive years of Montessori education! Her academic skills are about average and are expected to skyrocket throughout the year based on her level of focus and self-control. Lucy is suddenly very interested in math skills and plays Dreambox math on her school computer for hours (given the opportunity). I love sitting down with her and working through the purpose of each math game. I wish she would read to us more, but she’s just not into it yet. She comes home with all sorts of clever rules, like “glued sounds” (-all) and digraphs (sh, ch,…), which Jim calls “dead-graphs.” She is motivated by literally every positive behavior reinforcement system at the school, though she hates missing math if it gets replaced with a fun activity 😊. She had a just-in-case-because-COVID sick day last week and was so sad because “I won’t get to learn today!” She is also currently obsessed with monkey bars. She is crazy strong right now and it’s part of what makes outdoor adventures with her so fun. She’s a little ninja warrior!

Cooper is working extraordinarily hard at controlling his impulses right now. He is a very physical kid, and his current love language seems to be physical touch. His love often boils over, and he becomes physical aggression in spite of his intent. He had a couple of hard days at school, but we have been working hard with him and being extra diligent about stopping him before he has a chance to hurt someone at home. We are mostly focusing on positive behavior reinforcement, and he responds so well to those tactics. Because he is so physical, he isn’t yet able to decipher the right time for horseplay and the wrong time. Most of the time is the wrong time for horseplay and I could honestly live without it 100% of the time. If someone he really loves shows their love through horseplay, we immediately see an uptick in physical aggression toward his friends. Jim is also working on doing less horseplay and showing his need for physical touch through loving gestures, like hugs and snuggles and high fives. Or, giving and getting attention in productive ways, like reading or playing together.

 

Other than having too much love sometimes, Cooper is a total joy. He is curious and inquisitive. Lately, his mind has been observing mechanical processes and it’s so cool to watch his little wheels turn. He still loves reading 200-page non-fiction encyclopedia-type books from front to back. He loves digging and building above anything else right now. Give him a pile of dirt and a shovel and he is content for hours! He can’t wait for his teeth to “unloose” like his Roo-Roo’s. He has all sorts of really cute little sayings, like “do I look fansome?” (a mix of handsome and fancy). And every.single.day. when I get home from work, he announces my presence and declares “I missed you, mama! I love you so much!”

I’m grateful every day for all that our family has…each other, our home, our town, our friends and family, delicious high-quality food, unlimited access to books and education, outdoor adventures. As grateful as I am, it is equally challenging for me to internalize that the life we have built is my real life. Sometimes it feels as though I’m floating through a dream, looking down at a different family’s life. We have an innumerous amount to be grateful for and on this lovely fall day I am especially filled with gratitude. 

Two years, a doctorate, and a new home

Dear self. It’s been a while. I can’t say that I have missed this practice; however, I can say I wish I would have done a bit more journaling in the past year and a half. I’ve been intending to sit down and write a new blog post for a while now. I haven’t felt inspired and I have less anxiety, which means I don’t feel the need to capture so many details of our lives. I hope someday Lucy and Cooper may at least glance through the photos in these posts. If nothing else, I would bet Jim and I will read them when we are old, sitting in a sunny, warm, dry climate eating pot chocolates. Until then, I woke up and decided today is the day to get some thoughts and updates into writing.

Since I last wrote our family has had some major life changes. For starters, we experienced a lock-down in March of 2020 for the COVID-19 pandemic, an ongoing and ever-changing saga. With one signature to go on my dissertation, and, therefore, my graduation from UC Berkeley with a doctorate, we were suddenly trapped in our two-bedroom Bay Area apartment. The population density became suffocating, and the walls of our apartment closed in on us in a way we had never experienced. Five weeks in and no end in sight, we got a Disney+ subscription, a small TV, and marital battles over whose work would take priority.

I managed to get all three signatures on my dissertation, and we signed a lease on a townhouse in Lafayette, Colorado. We had to leave our beloved community in California without so much as one hug. It was one of the saddest and most anti-climactic moments in my life. Jim and I were confident that Colorado was the right move for us. Leaving our close-knit network during a time of uncertainty and stress was so challenging. Our friends showed up for us in ways I could have never imagined. We were treated with food and coffee and airplane snacks and a bike/walk-by send-off in our parking lot. They gave us blankets to borrow as we emptied our apartment into a moving container and made us cards and art and pictures. It was moving and beautiful and so sad. I miss them all dearly and have endless gratitude for the five years we were lucky enough to spend in the Bay. It was definitely time for us to move on and we will always look back on those broke, sleepless, young family years in the UC Village with a warm heart and grateful mind.

    

When we arrived in Colorado, we settled into a three-bedroom townhouse with a garage and a basement and felt as though we had found a castle! The space was welcomed and needed. Lucy and Cooper were able to safely start at Adventure Montessori a few weeks after we got here and have been there since. Well, Lucy just started first grade at our neighborhood school, Ryan Elementary last week. It is a delightful medium-sized town school within biking distance. Her teacher is perfect and it is free! We are so relieved to only have tuition for one child. I miss Nia House in Berkeley so much it aches sometimes. I wonder how different Cooper’s experience in early childhood would be if we had stayed there. We couldn’t, though. We didn’t want to try anyway.

In December of 2020, we bought a (what feels like sprawling to us) 3,500 square foot ranch with a yard, gardens, three-car garage, and basement. Lucy has been wanting a rainbow room for as long as I can remember. I finally got to rainbow stripe both of their rooms…both kids have their own room! They have a place that they both retreat to, can make a mess in, and can feel safe and cozy in. I know somewhere in my brain that my kids feel safe without having a corner of the house to call their own. I wish I had a place where I felt safe and calm when I was a kid. I’m projecting on them for sure, but they also love their spots. The basement has a swing, hang bar, gymnastics bar, an entire lovely workout space for me, and a reading nook under the stairs. Jim is in the process of building a wood workshop in the backroom in the basement. I just painted the nook area in our master bedroom and set it up as a home office. Our bedroom is big enough that this space could be a whole separate room! 

When we first decided to hit the road for CO, we thought we would buy a decent-sized townhouse with a tiny backyard and very little maintenance. The pandemic changed everything for us. Our priorities shifted completely. We wanted as much square footage as we could get within our price range with an outdoor living space where we could be safe during another quarantine (of which our family has had two, ten-day quarantines. Not terrible, unless you live in a tiny two-bedroom apartment). We also wanted spaces for Jim and me to be able to do hobby’s and activities, like working out, gardening, and building stuff. I am so grateful for our home. I unexpectedly lost my job in March and I have painted almost the entire house since then. I’m halfway through the master bedroom and I’ll leave the master bath and laundry room after we do two significant construction projects over the next couple of years. The more I personalize our home and the longer we live here, the more it feels like ours and less like an Air BnB. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for what life has afforded us. Yes, we both work hard and this life wasn’t free. It is all so calm and happy and wonderful. Most days I still don’t believe this is life we have built.

Of course, with homeownership comes lots of boring projects, like needing a new roof and insulating the basement. We do hope to slow down on the house projects soon and get out to play in the mountains this fall. It’s so hot here in the summer and we have found incredible enjoyment in our neighborhood pool. Lucy has become a strong swimmer and Cooper just started wearing goggles and swimming with his face in the water! Lucy can jump off a diving board, swim on her back, do all sorts of tricks, and just loves being in the pool. It is a great job and we are so glad to have the pool a block away. Between gardening and swimming, we are having a wonderful summer! I miss the ocean and the bay in Cali, but I do love the heat and warm evenings knowing that snow is just around the corner.

Overall, life has been very good to us. We are quite here in Colorado, Lucy’s first-grade year is off to a great start, Cooper is doing well at Adventure Montessori, Jim loves his new job, and I start a new job in September (after a five-month search). Besides minor inconveniences and not seeing family for over a year, the pandemic has not been too hard on us. We have all stayed healthy, which is most important

Lucy is a real little kid now. She rides the bus to school and has a new 20” real mountain bike. Lucy is such an interesting human. She loves Ninja Nation and also experiences about 300 feelings per minute. Her preference is to always be in a princess gown, but she also appreciates the concept of practicality. Lately, she has been into learning how to do different types and styles and braids, which is also fun for me. She is slooooowwww as a sloth most of the time and I’m learning to start everything 15 minutes sooner than I think we need. It’s just who she is. Her priorities are different than mine and I am learning to appreciate that. She comes home from first grade and tells me every. single. rule. in the classroom. She knows who follows the rules, who has to be asked more than once, and who doesn’t follow the rules at all. She loves the structure and consistency and predictability. I imagine I was similar at her age. Maybe I still am 😊. Lucy has really been into Legos lately and we just finished building her Elsa castle that she got for Christmas. A 10-day quarantine was the perfect time to get it started! Her mind is growing and her visual/spatial skills seemed to leap recently. She has taken to ice skating and is getting much more confident with more practice. She is our darling girl and we adore her. Most of the time 😉.

Cooper’s language has exploded, and I am no longer worried about his language development. He is a very loving, physical, kind, sometimes annoying little guy. He still loves to snuggle and requires his “coffee” (warm milk) the moment he wakes up. In many ways, he seems to have stayed little for longer than Lucy did. At this age, though, Lucy became a big sister. Hard to imagine how little and how grown-up she was. Coops loves Duplo construction trucks right now and will sit for an hour inventing different types of vehicles with all of the “attachments,” as he calls them. Lucy and Cooper have a very close relationship, although he is an excellent antagonizer of his big sister. He requires A LOT of gross motor input each day. He loves to wrestle with Jim and can turn literally anything into a “pew-er” and/or a bammer. He is so incredibly different from Lucy it is sometimes astounding. He is definitely his own little person with his own interests. Above and beyond all else, he loves to read. He was obsessed with non-fiction dinosaur encyclopedias for a while and seems to have moved on to superheroes more lately (hence all the pew-ers). We love him dearly. Little Dough Boy.

I start a new job on September 7^th, which I am excited about and looking forward to. However, I think I am experiencing some level of PTSD from my last job. It was bananas. Seriously. And then I was fired out of nowhere with four others in leadership positions. I have no closure, no understanding, and a lot of anger and regret. I was working 60-80 hours every week. 60 hours and only one early weekend day was a good week. I was so tired and was not the leader I needed or wanted to be. I am now gearing up for this new job as if my life will be stripped out from under me again. It won’t be because it can’t be. And I won’t be restraining this time, or ever again (barring emergencies). I have really enjoyed my “early retirement” and have done so much work on our house and yard, but I am ready to go back to work. There are many mornings feeling lost and directionless. Lucy is settled into her new routine, Cooper is doing well with is consistent routine, and Jim works from home. I am shocked at how anxious I am about getting everything just right at home before I start working again. I know in my rational mind I’ll be able to throw in a load of laundry on a weekday evening, but I can’t get my emotional mind to get on board with sanity. Time to go back to counseling! 

I am going to leave things here for now. Hopefully, I’ll be back sooner than two years from now, but who knows. Low expectations since the pandemic started. Signing off as my first time as Dr. Jenny Bisha, resident of Colorado, mom of two kids (not babies!). 

Big Trees

Last summer I had big plans to travel all around Northern California and Oregon. Cooper had other plans for our family. After his c-section, we pretty much stayed put for the summer. It seems like a lifetime ago now. Then my oral exam snuck up on us followed by my dissertation proposal while teaching two courses for the first time. It has been a long and tiring, deeply rewarding four years here in California. With the end of our time here in sight, I am determined to get a few trips and landmarks off of my family bucket list before we escape the HCOL and leave behind our darling Berkeley community. 

Our first trip of the summer was Denver, which is neither on my bucket list nor was an outdoor adventure trip. When I had the chance to reserve a campsite at Del Norte Coast Redwoods at Mill Creek Campground, I impulsively clicked reserved. It was a 6-hour drive, by far our longest one-day road trip ever, even as a family of three. I was nervous and anxious for the entire drive. We almost abandoned ship two hours before we got to our campsite to stay in the Redwoods in Humboldt. There were not major melt-downs, though. Overall, the car ride went amazingly well. It went even better on the way home. Lucy watched far too many shows, though, and I am already preparing for our next trip to Southern California in a couple of weeks to see Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. We did so well, though, I can't wait to keep taking camping trips all over. 

One of the best parts of this road trip is that traveling on 101 is a breeze. The road itself is beautiful with very little traffic. You are out of the Bay Area craziness and into the woods within two hours of leaving. There are picnic areas and accessible river beaches and state parks up and down the route. I wasn't attached to doing any one particular activity on the trip, but I was very excited that our first official stop in the Redwoods was to drive through a Redwood tree. I am going to keep capitalizing Redwood because these trees are majestic. They are tenacious and magnificent and awe-inspiring. Lucy kept commenting on "how beautiful they are, right mom?" and Cooper was always look up and around giving them his best "oooooohhhhh." It is terribly sad to see the old growth trees chopped down and carved through. As long as the hole was already in the tree, though, we paid our $10, posed in front of the tree, and had a delightful picnic. We all felt far, far away from the city and the fast pace of life we generally keep during the school year. 

One of the most amazing parts of California, besides the diversity of the population, is the diversity of the geography. One minute we are driving through a humungous Redwood tree and the next minute we are chasing waves on the Pacific Ocean. Hiking is a bit of a challenge at this point. Cooper is mostly happy to be in the blue back-pack, especially if he has an apple or a pear, but he is a walking machine these days and his body wants to move, move, move. Lucy is too big to be carried, so we are careful about choosing hikes that we feel she can complete round-trip. We stopped at Trees of Mystery just down the road from our campsite for about a 1-mile walk through various, typical examples of Redwood growth. We even got to ride a gondola up into the canopy. For some reason, our family really gets a kick out of gondola rides. We sat down for lunch at a cafe (the only one available :-) for a hot meal and a rest before hiking 1/2 a mile down to Hidden Beach. There was no need to hike to get to the beach, but it was spectacular. I liked mixing in some hiking with some play. And hiking to a destination is always more rewarding.

Lucy was the bravest, most daring we have ever seen her. As soon as her feet hit the sand she was swapping her clothing for her bathing suit. The water is freezing cold. Freezing. Cold. She was thrilled. Jim has been longing for her to run in the water with him and they had a blast. While Cooper napped in the backpack, I laid in the sun on the blanket and watched them move in and out of the water with every wave. They walked down the beach and explored the tidepools, even discovering a "huge" sea urchin and some tiny fish. When Cooper woke up, he could hardly believe his eyes. He is a maniac when it comes to water. Nothing like Lucy has been up to this point. He charged down the beach, 50 yards, straight into the frigid ocean over, and over, and over. He was shaking and shivering and his little jaw was chattering, but he just couldn't stop himself. This totally stresses me out and I swapped kids at this point for the one that actually has some self-control. Cooper woke up the next day with a runny nose and a cold. Wonder why? 

If the car ride went well, camping itself went even better. I was pretty nervous about not sleeping and then everyone being miserable. Cooper slept in a tent in a tent and for some reason, although the way out was obvious, he never tried to escape. He slept his normal 12 hours a nap with an early morning waking for milk. He slept until 8:00 every morning, which is much later than he typically sleeps at home. This was the first camping trip that Lucy slept inside her sleeping bag. I am sure I'll look back at that memory and think what a silly thing to note, but previously she has woken up cold because she isn't under any blankets. She was cute as can be all snuggled up inside her bag. Lucy was obsessed with her solar-powered Luci light that Yamin and Erin got her when she was tiny and she looked a glow worm when she insisted on snuggling with it to sleep. 4-year-olds have very weird demands when they are exhausted. Now that we have super lush thermarests and I take my pillow, a leg pillow, and my stuffed pig, Bacon, I actually slept pretty well, too. I won't miss nursing sitting up with no back support in the tent, but other than that we are got great sleep. The campground had wonderful, hot showers, which always helps by the third night of sleep. I put a big, shallow tub in the shower with me for Coop and Luc to take a warm bath and they both seemed to enjoy that.

We borrowed a baby jail for Cooper and never ended up using it. We won't be taking it on the next trip. I was pretty sure he would just be a crazy mess bonking into and eating everything he could get his hands on. Having a campfire was pretty nerve-wracking, but other than that he was pretty mellow. I mean, mellow for a toddler. He had a great time chasing little chipmunks around the campsite. Luckily, we had a huge, quiet, dark campsite right next to a spigot and a bathroom. It was about as perfect as set-up as we could have hoped for. We need to make a few changes, like using Dawn soap instead of hippy Tom's soap and purchasing stainless steel plates and utensils. Washing plastic at a campsite is just too annoying. We could also use a new cooler that isn't cracked and actually keeps things cool. We have too more trips planned for this summer, and I am going to try to throw in another one. It was bucket filling for our entire family and Jim and I both love having our kids out in the woods. 

The last adventure we went on was to Fern Canyon, Prairie State Park, and, of course, another beach. I originally wanted to camp right on the beach, but the campsites were full. I am very glad we did not camp on the beach and also very glad we got to go visit it twice. The west coast, though incredible, is often foggy, cool/cold, and windy. Visiting for the day where we would have camped was just the right amount of sand and wind and fog. We got to see three herds of elk, including a mum nursing her calf. It was special to see so many elk, and incredibly special to see a mum and her babe. Cooper slept through it, but Lucy was enchanted. Fern Canyon, where parts of Jurassic Park 2 were filmed, was one of the most unique outdoor places we have ever visited. In addition to the 15-20 creek crossings we had to make with Lucy in rainy boots and me in wet boots, the scenery was incredible. Over zillions of years, the creek has carved 30-40 foot canyon walls that are covered in lush green ferms and mossy, drippy waterfalls. There are enormous trees above and fallen over. The climate is entirely different than it is ten feet outside the canyon. Jim loves a good athletic challenge and managed to keep dry feel the entire time while carrying Cooper in the backpack. 

We had a picnic lunch after we emerged from the canyon and then headed over to the beach. The air was quite cool and I kept the little maniac out of the water this time, but the sand was strangely warm. We all agreed that we felt like snuggling into the sand, which was a definite first for Jim and me. Cooper sat on my lap and watched the water while I sang him lullabies for almost 15-minutes. It was relaxing and calm and delightful. 

Like always, there are more pictures than words, although I work really hard to leave my family alone and take only a few pictures of each activity. I do love having memories recorded here, though, no matter how sparse my entries are these days. Summer has been a slower time, a time of sitting and stacking rings on a stick in the living room. The summer days are flying by with, of course, less writing than I imagined. I am enjoying leaving the house later, getting home earlier, and taking time to be grateful for what I have been given. I leave tomorrow afternoon for my first ever solo trip since Lucy was born. I am actually ready for it and am really only worried about Cooper missing his morning nursing. I really don't mind our one last milkers (as Lucy says) and this is the very end of my breastfeeding journey. Such a bittersweet journey it has been. We will see what happens when I get home. I hope he won't be too sad when I am not there. I am sure Lucy will miss me, and I will miss her, but she can at least understand what is happening. I just can't wait to sleep and read.