My Dad Is Home!

It Takes a Village

For the last 9 days I have been solo-parenting as Rocky is away for work. It's been hard. Really hard. And for the first time since moving here I felt every single one of the miles stretching between me and the support system my family provides. But into the void left by far-distant parents and siblings, a grand party of friends stepped in. They took The Squidd to school and picked him up. They invited us over for dinner. They came by to play with The Squidd and hold The Minnow. They hosted slumber parties and dropped food off.

It's said that it takes a village to raise a child, and these friends have shown themselves to be true villagers living alongside our young family. So while I still do miss the proximity of my blood relations, it was such a gift to realize how terrific our little community of friends is and to feel so well looked after. I am ever so grateful to them for helping me make it through these long days with my sanity and good spirits mostly intact.

Tomorrow Rocky returns. Hallelujah!

Brownies!!

By Request . . .

 . . . from the g-parents.

And here's a funny. Yesterday was my first day on my own with both urchins as Rocky was at work all day. The Squidd has swim lessons in the morning, and Rocky was champion enough to pack the swim bag with towel, dry clothes, etc. But in my haste to feed The Minnow, change her diaper, make sure The Squidd went to the bathroom, and get them both packed into the car and to the pool by the start of the lesson, the swim bag got left by the garage door.

With no dry pants to wear after swimming, and with The Squidd unwilling to wear the damp trunks for the 5-minute drive home, I put The Squidd in an extra tshirt I found in the car. It was a stellar parenting moment. Yes, his legs are poked out through the armholes. But better that than have him go commando buckled into his 5-point harness.

Here's hoping I pull this two-child parenting thing together a bit more with practice.

Big Planes

For quite a while now (a year or more), The Squidd has been taken with airplanes. Every morning, he comes downstairs and before he does anything else, he sets up an airport with his toy planes. He loves watching You Tube videos of anything related to Boeing or airline commercials or plane spotting at various international airports. We hang out at the airport just for fun to see the planes take off and land, and of course he was thrilled with our flight to the U.S. earlier this year.

Apparently, October is the beginning of the Antarctic "season," when research and activities ramp up down south, so the beginning of October also sees the first flights by the huge transport planes (think C-5s, C-17s, and C-130s) to Antarctica. Christchurch is the headquarters of the U.S. and N.Z. Antarctic operations, so our modest little airport is also where these big planes take off and land. So when I saw in the paper that several of these transporters would be parked on the tarmac and open for the public to tour, I had to take The Squidd.

Of course he was thrilled, and as it turned out, the C-17 we toured is stationed at McChord AFB (check out the tail of the plane in the photo). Practically a visitor from home. Cool!

2 Months

 We made it through the first two months as a foursome . . .

Spring

It's spring here in the southern hemisphere.  Warmer weather, longer days, blooming flowers, lambs (or drawings of lambs at our house), and more exciting outdoor pursuits--huzzah!