Personal
This is where you will find posts about all things personal to me. This section includes posts about interesting things I do or make, reflections on everyday life, and everything in between.
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Kid-free for a few days – and a new roof!
Both of my kids are visiting family in Maine right now. They are staying for a few days and I don’t even know what to do with myself. This is the first time I have really been away from Saoirse since she was born 2.5 years ago. When I asked her if she wanted to have a sleepover with Ryan and grandma, she was really excited. I know that she will be totally fine, especially with her big brother there to help her. I was still a little nervous about dropping her off though. I am really looking forward to having a few days where I can do what I…
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Refocusing – Projects, Places and Personal
My blogging has taken a lot of different forms over the years (most of which I believe I have deleted now). I have blogged about being a college student, being a young mom, raising a child on the spectrum etc. My most recent iteration of my blog was intended to focus on learning to deal with anxiety and looking at motherhood through the lens of anxiety. At the time when I chose to focus my blog on that, anxiety was consuming my life and I hoped that blogging would be a good coping mechanism. Now I seem to have my anxiety under control and writing about anxiety isn’t particularly helpful…
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Rusty, our rescue pup
Meet our newest family member – Rusty! I have missed living with dogs since I first moved away for college at 18. When Ryan came along, and as he got older, I desperately wanted him to get to experience growing up with pets. I also didn’t want to get a dog if we wouldn’t be home most of the day, and I didn’t want to risk dog ownership while renting. I worried with a dog that changing pet agreements could potentially put me in a position where I would have to choose behind Ryan’s well-being and stability of living environment and keeping a dog. So I held off. I waited…
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Finding Stability and Home – Part Three, My Dream House
In early March, after losing out on a property that Cal really liked, he pointed out another new property that had come on the market. I had already shown him the listing for the property before our last trip up north to look at houses, but he had immediately told me it was old and overpriced, so he wasn’t interested in seeing it. Apparently he hadn’t paid much attention the first time I showed it to him beyond the age of the home and the price. Now he was excited about the house. It was a beautiful, well-maintained home in an absolutely perfect location. There is not another property anywhere…
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Finding Stability and Home – Part Two, Our House Hunting Journey
Cal and I have been house hunting off and on for about three years now. Circumstances changed at different times, so we weren’t able to be seriously looking for that entire three year period. We initially looked to buy right when we were first moving to New Hampshire. We looked at houses and made offers. Our initial location criteria were the best school districts in the state and being centrally located for jobs. After a few months of looking we decided to get a rental before the new school year started so that we could all be together. Our rental was in a small town in the Sunapee/Kearsarge area of…
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Finding Stability and Home – Part One
I have moved around a lot (not as much as some, but still far more than I would have liked). During those ice breaker activities in college, I never knew where to say I was from. The main places I have lived were all in New England, so I usually just said New England. Once someone called me out on that and said I must be too embarrassed of whatever state I was from, so I was being intentionally vague. I had to explain that I was born in New Hampshire, lived in Connecticut through most of elementary school, lived in Rhode Island for grades 4-8, and then lived in…
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Moving Forward
I have big, exciting news. We are moving! We are about to close on our new house. There are a lot of great changes coming, a new house, new neighborhood, new town and new school for Ryan. I am pretty confident that this is going to be a great move all around, but I also know that it will bring a lot of tough changes for Ryan. I have moved around a lot in my life. In college, I never knew where to say I was from. I was born in New Hampshire and spent equal amounts of time living in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I longed for a…
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Welcome 2018!
Okay, so it isn’t exactly a “new” year, we are already one month in, but 2017 is over and 2018 is here! The New Year always seems to bring with it plenty of reflection on the past year and a slew of New Year’s resolutions. However, for many people, those reflections and resolutions are soon forgotten. It becomes so easy to slip back into the daily grind and old habits and routines are just so much easier to fall back on. Personally, I find that goals are useful all year long and goals with a smaller scope are much more attainable than goals for an entire year. Goals are also…
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Back to School – A Journey of Beginnings
Back to school brings with it a flurry of paperwork, school supplies and brand new expectations. It also seems to serve as a marker of our kids’ growth. Ryan hasn’t changed that much over the last couple of months and yet I now look at him as a third grader. Somehow, third grade feels so much bigger than second. I still remember Ryan’s first day of preschool. First, we tried a preschool/childcare center which was a very bad fit for him. A few months later, he started a language based preschool program through the public school that was the perfect fit for him. He was so small and vulnerable at…
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A Messy House and a Vicious Cycle
Right now I am sitting in a room that is sweltering hot next to a sleeping baby who will wake up if she feels my leg move away from her foot. We haven’t had many hot days this summer, but when we do, the lack of air conditioning makes them unbearable. A few minutes ago, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, not because of the heat, but because my anxiety has been overwhelming me. Why? I don’t have any looming deadlines or anything that I am dreading coming up. Why then, do I feel like I am in the grips of anxiety today? The days when I can’t figure out…
