Retirement

I realized recently that I have neglected to blog about this important upcoming change in my life, so here it is. As of February 27th, I will be retiring from my post at MIT and will become a full-time stay-at-home mom.

I'm excited about this transition and the upcoming time I'll have with Frankie while we get ready for the new little man to enter our lives. I'd been working 2-3 days/week for the last 9 months, and have found it increasingly difficult to want to leave Frankie, and to keep up with my job in a way that makes me feel I'm being effective and productive. I feel that it can be really hard trying to do both roles (work part time and be a stay-at-home mom part time) - I would end up feeling that I wasn't accomplishing either role in my life well. It seemed like in both roles I would have enough time to catch up, but not enough time to spend on the "extras" that I enjoyed.

I know that being home with Frankie (and little baby brother) is going to be challenging and exhausting in different ways, but I feel ready to embrace those challenges. I wasn't ready right after I had Frankie - I still wanted to work part time, and my program office at MIT has been wonderful in helping me accomplish that goal.

I know she's going to miss getting to go to Heather and Elizabeth's twice a week, and to Sarah and Hannah's once a week, but I'm happy to get her all to myself 5 days a week.

Happy Birthday, Frankie!

Frankie is one today! We love our little girl so much, and are so thankful for her loving, deliberate spirit. We had a birthday party for her on Saturday, and it was a delight to see her light up and smile when everyone gathered around her to sing.

She was not so sure about her cupcake though:




Daddy was able to convince her later that cupcakes weren't so bad

Um, yes, Frankie does look a lot like Chris

She loves her new stroller and dolly

My big 1-year-old


Today we had two playdates (!) with Nathanael. We first saw him at Together in Motion, where Nonnie helped Frankie play with the fun balls and gym mats:

Here's what happened when Nathanael tried to join her on the pony at his house later that afternoon: (it's her birthday and she'll cry if she wants to)

Nonnie took us out to dinner at the All Star Sandwich bar, where Frankie ate french fries, steamed carrots, and some grilled cheese with avocado. Then she discovered the free oreos at the counter:


It's been an amazing year watching her grow and develop from a helpless infant to a toddler with opinions of her own that she is able to communicate to us. We thank God for her, and our prayer for her is that she will know the Lord Jesus Christ as her savior.

Here is a slide show of Frankie's past year. It's a little long, but I couldn't pick just one per month after I got started. We love you, Frankie!

Reverse Psychology

Matthew (my brother-in-law) sent me a hilarious talking card for my birthday that Frankie loves to play with. Every time you open it, Steve Carrell from the Office starts to talk about Reverse Psychology. Thanks for the toy for Frankie, Matthew!



In other newsy news, My mom's here! She got in yesterday, and will be here for the next 10 days for Frankie's birthday, and to give Chris and I a baby-free vacation next weekend. We're heading to Burlington, VT (home of the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream factory) for a weekend of doing what we want when we want instead of having to wait for brief periods between naps and meals to go out. And sleeping in if we want! It's so great to have to help here at home.

The fat lip

Walker

I think we can officially give Frankie the label of "Walker" now. She been walking up a storm for the past few days. She still likes to hold on to something when it's convenient, but it's fun to watch her gain confidence. She usually walks with both her hands out in front of her, like she's sneaking up on Boo Radley.

Unfortunately this morning she miscalculated the distance to the toilet she was trying to walk to, and ended up doing her first official face plant that resulted in a fat lip. There was lots of blood for about 5 minutes, and then stopped as quickly as it began. No gash, her teeth are intact, but still terrifying for me. Sigh, we haven't even had you a year Frankie and already with the busted lip. Just in time for her Nonnie to come tomorrow, and her birthday party on Saturday!

Frankie gets the Led out, or Ode to Tyler Duffy

The demolition continues and reconstruction begins

Chris invited a few friends over on Saturday to help him work on the closets. They frames out two closets, took out the door and frame on the living room side, and put up some drywall. Chris will still need to install a few small pieces of drywall, and we need to mud and sand the drywall, but we're making progress. On Sunday we went to the Container Store and bought their elfa system, which is a modular closet organizer system to help us make the most of this new space. Everything was 30% until February 4th, so we got a good deal on the system.

Frankie and I had to vacate the premises, and we had a rather unsuccessful outing that involved a ticket on my car (my Cambridge sticker expired the day before, argh!), a closed Kids in Motion, a 10-minute trip through the Market Basket parking lot (the Saturday before the Super Bowl? What was I thinking?! We didn't even attempt to find a spot - people were waiting two cars deep for spots that might become available soon), an unsuccessful trip to the closed RMV (did I mention my license also expired at the end of January?), and finally to Old Navy for some retail therapy so I could at least come home with something accomplished.

Some of the wonderful women in my life rallied around me during the afternoon hours, and we had a nice outing to the toy store, and a local coffee shop. That is until Frankie decided to stuff a large handful of potting soil in her mouth at the coffee shop while none of us were looking for all of 5 seconds. I really wish I had a picture of this for y'all, it was quite humerous to see her with a beard of dirt. Humerous in an "of course you would try soil today of all days" kind of way.

The clean up from Saturday's work wasn't nearly as bad as last week, so Chris and I were able to get the house cleaned up in about 2 hours. Thanks again to Topher, Jeff, Patrick, Dain, and Matthew for helping Chris!


The living room (used to be a door to the closet, now a wall).