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!).