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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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…
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The Chaotic Life
Life is chaotic. It is unavoidable. Even if you tried to keep every moment of life planned and scheduled, chaos is going to happen. It is part of what makes life great and fun. It can also be overwhelming at times. As a mom to two very busy kids, chaos is an unmistakeable part of my life. When I was in grad school, my anxiety reached crippling levels. There was so much to juggle in such a short time period, I felt like I could never meet all of the demands placed on me and if I did, I felt like I could never do a good enough job. I…
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Grad School Completed
Graduation is this week (not that I will be attending) and I can finally consider my grad school journey complete. I feel like I am finally closing the door on a very stressful chapter in my life. Hopefully I will find it easier to keep my sanity in tact for the next chapter. I should have graduated three years ago, but I went into post-residency instead. That was the right decision for me at the time. I was dealing with an overwhelming amount of stress and pressure and knew I wasn’t in the right place to add a thesis to my load at that point. It would have been nice…
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Getting back to me
For the past six years, I have been overwhelmed by this shroud of anxiety. Now that my thesis and grad school are behind me, I feel like I can finally breathe a bit more. I want to exist as person beyond my anxieties and being a mom. I feel like I have forgotten who I am under the weight of my anxieties and I need to work on getting back to that. So how am I going to do that? 1. I am recommitting myself to writing everyday. When I write, I feel like I am really alive and more than a mom. In addition to writing on this blog…
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Writing
Today, I just want to write. Writing has always been a passion of mine. Unfortunately, lately Saoirse does not make it easy to get that writing done. She is a velcro baby (well, toddler now I suppose) and the instant she sees me computer she has to be right there poking at the screen and banging on the keys. So, I avoid pulling out my computer when she is around. The thing about being a stay at home mom is, she is always around. Pretty much my main opportunity to write is if I wake up early enough in the morning and have time to write before she wakes up.…
