Birthday, deck, sick, garden

Birthday: Maren officially turned 3 years old. We brought oatmeal m&m cookies to daycare, along with the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game that didn’t make it at her party. She had ice cream and presents at home. There were balloons to play with. I think she had a pretty great 3rd birthday. 

Deck: When we bought this house, our deck posed many accessibility challenges. It had four different sections at different levels, no railings or handrails (so getting safely from one area to another required some really careful maneuvering), and cut the yard in two.  This meant that the faucet for the hose and the garden tool shed were separated from the garden and main yard area by the deck, so that it was necessary to go up over the deck and down a handrail-less set of steps and then back again if I wanted to water the garden. So basically totally not functional for me. 

Starting the week of the 17th we had our deck totally redone, and it was finished last Wednesday. We also had a weird section of our fence replaced. The results are amazing. Our deck and yard both feel hugely bigger, because there is so much more usable space. The deck is smaller, but it’s all at one level and there are railings all around, so the entire footprint is usable space, not having to worry about step-down areas or falling off the side. We now have two sets of steps, both with handrails. There is still a lot of work to do to make all of the yard space usable, but just having it all connected as one yard makes it feel about twice as big. And now I can garden independently, which I am pretty thrilled about. 

Sick: I found out on Tuesday that I have iron deficiency, and started supplements on Wednesday. This explains some bouts of extreme fatigue I have been having, and hopefully the problem will resolve quickly. On Wednesday night I started to lose my voice, by Thursday it was pretty bad, and Thursday night I had all kinds of trouble sleeping. Then Friday morning I could barely speak, my throat was extremely sore, and apparently I had also contracted some kind of stomach virus. I was pretty miserable all day Friday, but after a good sleep felt immensely better by Saturday. I still sound bad, but feel almost normal. 

Garden: Saturday morning was for spending in the new backyard. We harvested all the carrots and potatoes from the garden, and Jeff raked leaves. The carrots and potatoes were the only things spared by the rabbit who used our garden as a salad bar, and I was quite happy with our yield, given how neglected the garden was this summer. 

It has been colder than normal, and it was chilly and very fall-like this morning, but sunny and a lovely day to be outside. I am happy to be less sick. Overall, I would say this has been a good week 😊

Almost 3!

Maren is almost 3! Today we had a birthday party for her even though her birthday is actually this coming Wednesday. We were going to have it next weekend but another kid is going to have a birthday party that weekend so we went with the earlier weekend. I think we are entering the period in childhood where we have birthday parties to go to a lot.

In any case, we had a super fun time with a cake, ice cream, and piñata. We had pin the tail on the donkey available, but after the piñata it seemed like the kids had had about enough. Also, they all got kazoos, which it turns out can be extremely loud but also lots of fun.

As part of being a big girl now, Maren has started preschool – just two mornings a week, but an exciting step for her. We had registered her for preschool months ago, and then we withdrew her because she did not meet all of the potty training requirements. But the preschool teacher contacted us and said that if potty training was the only concern we had about her readiness, then we should just give preschool a try. So far so good, and Maren seems to really like it.

At Maren’s birthday party today were a seven week old baby and three kids who had just started kindergarten. It really doesn’t seem that long ago that Maren was as little as the baby, and it really won’t be long before she is as big as the kindergartners. It’s fun to see her growing up, and I’m also glad that we will be doing the baby thing again soon :-)

Visit

Over the weekend we had a visit from Jeff’s sister and her daughter. It was a quick visit, but we had a nice time visiting, and Maren had a lot of fun spending time with her older (5-year-old) cousin.

This photo is courtesy of Jeff’s sister. One thing I have noticed is that most of the photos we are able to get with visitors are reading pictures. It seems like the combination of Maren sitting still and an adult having the freedom to take a photo occur more when books are being read than any other time.  This was definitely true a couple of weeks ago when Jeff’s dad visited – almost all of the photos I have of that visit are reading photos.

This last one has the bonus of also showing off Maren’s pig nose (which she insisted we make after seeing something in a book where cats make craft projects including pig noses).

Semester start

Last week was the first week of classes at University of Regina. I am teaching two graduate classes – one first year masters, and one first and second year PhD. Teaching graduate students is easier and harder – harder because the material is more complicated and I have to be thinking more deeply, but easier because they do a lot more of the work. I feel kind of unprepared, but I’m sure it will go fine. The first week went fine. 

However, it is difficult to focus on classes when I am personally more interested in the fact that I am growing a little baby. The whole first trimester I was super tired and had a lot of nausea on and off. Now that I am solidly in the second trimester, I feel like I’ve gotten a bit of my energy back. Thank goodness I have, or I don’t know if I would be able to teach at all. 

It is a busy semester with my two classes, plus three PhD students, one MA student, and one honours student, all heavily involved in their thesis and dissertation research projects at the moment. Plus a number of students asking for reference letters already, and that number likely to increase dramatically as the weeks go on. Plus I’m doing this whole thing serving as our faculty association “equity officer,” which means lots of meetings, and lots of behind the scenes work. Plus all the rest of the stuff, all the little things that go along with having an academic job. Oh yeah, and I’m supposed to submit a grant by November 1, which I haven’t started working on at all. 

And it all seems important, but at the same time not that important. It seems more important to spend time with Maren while she is still an only child and there is time for that. It seems more important to focus on my health, and not being overly stressed. I will do a good job within the time that I have allotted for work, but I won’t work extra. I’ll do what I can, and if I do a crappy job, the bonus is that maybe people won’t ask me to do some of those things in the future. But it seems like lately that when I have more to do than I have time to do it in, I end up working more efficiently, doing enough but not more than enough, and finding that everyone else is reasonably satisfied with my performance. And prioritizing. Maybe I won’t submit that grant proposal. But regardless, I will keep in mind that my family is more important to me than my work. Always :-)

Monster Mash?

Maren likes to dance to kids music (or really any music). In her new tutu. With her friends Chatterbox and Pumpkinhead.