Skip to main content

Settling In

We are in Kansas now and are making adjustments.  It took a long time to get into our house, much longer than we thought.  There were all kinds of hang ups, but I can't believe we are finally in.  This generated a lot of stress. Some of the stress came from the mere fact of having to stay in hotels and temporary on campus house when we weren't planning to.  Then there was the stress of having to pay for said accommodations, which ate up precious money set aside to make our house nice and to have some contingency savings.  And finally there was stress because when we did finally get in, it was already the first week of class and so we were out in the cold and snow with the baby strapped into the car seat, loading a truck from our storage unit trying to get all of our stuff out in and into our house when we needed to be doing our reading and writing our papers for class--or at the very least, helping Hannah settle in. 

Brian was able to round up some good church men to help with the piano and the mattresses for our bed, but other than those things, we hauled all the boxes.  Brian many more than me, but I unpacked every single one. 

Classes are going well.  We are teaching classes and taking them.  The students at KU are nice.  My classmates for my own classes are good. I am able to keep up with the reading and do the work.

Hannah has been going to my friend Mary Lynn's house for a couple of hours a week when Brian and my classes overlap.  She likes Mary Lynn.  They sing Baby Beluga and play with her cats.  I tried to take her to another baby sitter but when I would go to pick up Hannah, she was red-eyed and sad.  It took a long time to be playful again and it scared the crap out of the me that she was forlorn like that and so I stopped taking her there.  I still need to find another long term arrangement for Hannah, but I am so glad Mary Lynn has been willing to help. 

Hannah is also talking.  She says short sentences now like "Me wannee up" (her first) and "Help me." She is starting to have those little fits that toddlers have because they can't communicate and they realize they don't have much control over their lives. Brian and I have really tried hard to think about what she might need or want and be accommodating before we get mad at her acting out.  I hope we are able to make it with patience for the next little while. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Year-Long January

The joke is that January is the longest month of the year. I thought it went quickly. Classes started and winter cold set in. We went to the eye doctor and Hannah waited for the doctor so long, she grew a beard.  Ultimately she decided on glasses that would make her look like Supergirl. I think she really pulled it off. All month I was on pins and needles about the government shutdown trying to decide if it was safe to fly to a conference. Luckily for me, the poor TSA workers and federal folks were able to get back to work. However, the planes I took (4 in all) were mostly empty and I got a row to myself. There was also a polar vortex that didn't help air travel looks appealing. I got there late at night and the room they had left was a large hotel suite. I took it. My colleague Michael Dunn and I divided our presentation up. We both did well. I also found a few good folks from Kansas. Then, I left Indy. When I wasn't worki...
1 comment
Read more

Wrapping up the Year (and Decade)

Christmas was nice. The weather was good and I was able to run like I usually do. I served a Thanksgiving Dinner because I spent Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania with my sister. It has been a busy decade. I only have two years where something major didn't happen. On to 2020. My list of Big stuff for the last decade. 2010—Finished Master’s degree 2011—Published Master’s degree as book 2011—Daughter born 2012—Book won award 2013—Moved to KS for PhD program (January) 2014— 2015—Published second book 2016—Finished PhD program (August) 2017—Moved to Albuquerque for faculty position 2018— 2019—Submitted mid-probationary dossier
Post a Comment
Read more

A Golden Afternoon ...

You can learn a lot of things from the flowers. Especially in the month of June. The Powell Botanical Gardens are about an hour away from where we live. About a week ago, I found them on the Internet and decided to take a Friday off of work and head out to see stuff since I was done with my PhD. There were lots of pretty flowers. It was hot, but not awful outside and there were lots of shaded areas. My favorite spot was a place mostly enclosed with greenery where there was a rushing brook moving through. We took a picture on the bridge. Here is part of the brook. I also liked the waterfall at the end of the trail. As a bonus, a local paleontological artist had made about dozen life-life sculptures of dinosaurs that were set up around the gardens. Hannah really enjoyed these. Here we are in front of the tyrannosaurus rex. He is about to eat us, but we don't seem too concerned. I was much more scared of this baby brontosaurus. Look at that...
2 comments
Read more