We’ve hit the 6-month mark of our California adventure! We’re enjoying low utilities, beautiful weather, less poisonous spiders, birds singing all the day long, and blossoming flowers. We’ve visited the Redwoods of Henry Cowell State Park, Pier 39 in San Francisco, Myrtle Beach, and the Children’s Discovery Museum. Oh, and the Googleplex, which was mostly sorta interesting.
There’s lots more to see, and we’ll get there--eventually! Right now we spend most of our Saturdays recuperating from the week. That’s what raising three young humans will do to you.
How’s Clayton doing?
Clayton is happy working on his mini-team of the Google Translate team. The sheer size of Google presents programmers with quite the learning curve, so he has spent most of the recent months learning, learning, learning. But he likes learning and being a part of it all. (I also want to add that out of the four other people on his mini-team, three are women! Including his boss! So cool.)
When at home, Clayton is either playing with our children or working on his latest nerdy project--in this case, the robot I bought for his birthday! As in, first I searched for robots online, then searched for robots for people who aren’t newbies, then finally gave up and told him, “Hey, I’m buying you a robot for your birthday, surprise! You get to pick it out.” So he bought a robot that came in pieces, and lots of LOTS of little wires, and put it together. It’s very programmable, with lots of features to add, so he’ll be tinkering with this little guy for a long time. His love of rockets is also still going strong and we watch the SpaceX launches online whenever we can.
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| Just call me Wires |
Well, I’m loving the weather and our yard, which tempts the girls outside at least every other day and they’ll play for hours (when they’re not cranky and fighting over everything).
Clayton and I are working on a schedule that will allow me to work on writing my story at least a couple times a week, if not more. We bought Scrivener, a program just for writers, and not only has it stoked my creative fire, it’s showed me that I’m barely halfway done with my book. (Yikes!) I mean, I have scenes I still need to write, but I have lots more I need to figure out too. I’m hoping to make progress with our new schedule, which relies on me staying on top of dinner all by myself each day...not my strong point, but at least I’m greatly motivated!
Then there’s my health. I’m tired, I don’t eat healthy often enough, and I’m not exercising. Going on walks and runs is something else we’re trying to incorporate into our lives. Exercising is my miracle juice, boosting both my energy and my appetite. We’ll make it happen!
How’s Ariana doing?
We received a letter confirming Ariana’s school for Transitional Kindergarten in the fall! It’s a school ten minutes away, and she’ll be doing half-day in the mornings. Her new schedule is gonna rock my mornings. I’ve been preparing mentally for these mornings for a while now, but putting all that prep into practice is gonna take time. I still remember needing an alarm clock for school when I was in elementary. (Translation: not a morning person.)
But she is SO excited. She’s excited for friends and she’s excited to learn. She’s still not in preschool, which I regret only because she just longs for that social learning and interaction. Academically, Ari’s doing great--she’s reading! One of my favorite times of the day is helping her through a book after Levi and Brielle go down for naps. She even brought a few books with her during one of our trips for a Walmart grocery pickup. She reads the backs of cereal boxes, the names of episodes on her shows, and the brand names of random items on our dinner table. She loves words and has tried her hand at spelling too. (She’s a good sport whenever she’s written a bunch of words and then neither she nor I can decipher them later.)
Ariana likes to help me make dinner, clean, put away laundry, or any odd thing she thinks she can do. She loves to play with her brother Levi, and has that typical love-hate sibling relationship with Brielle. She loves making up stories and songs. She also loves artsy things, like painting or molding play-doh. She’s a good eater and awesome sleeper. She still loves to play chase or hide-and-seek, and is very competitive.
The biggest thing we’re working on is helping her through tantrums, which are all-consuming and almost always strike if she’s past her hungry or tired tolerance levels. We know those triggers and try to avoid them, but it isn’t always possible. They’ve been hard to get through, but as she’s getting older, they are gradually getting better and she’s able to pull herself out of them a little bit faster.
How’s Brielle doing?
Brielle is going through those phases that always accompany the early years of humanhood. When she’s cranky, she seems to torture everyone, especially her siblings. But when she’s happy, she’s content doing almost anything--playing with toys by herself, playing with Ari, playing with Levi, playing outside, sitting on the couch listening to Mommy’s soundtrack music, or just jamming to her favorite song on the toy piano. She’s a pretty good eater, albeit still has moments where she doesn’t want to eat just...because. She takes good naps most days. Although, because of those naps, she hits her tired hour way after Ariana does. Sometimes Brielle will still be awake an hour after we put them to bed, just singing quietly to herself, while Ariana is completely out.
Brielle has her own personality and says the funniest things at the funniest moments. However, she’s still very much in mimic mode. Sometimes she imitates Ariana down to her exact words and actions. It’s funny when she tries to imitate Ariana’s reading and mumbles in her own little language. I think it bugged Ari at first, but now she’s gotten used to it, and I as a parent have tried hard to make them both feel loved. Brielle loves playing with Levi, but isn’t afraid to take advantage of her being bigger than him. Most of the time that they’re in the same room together, and he starts crying, it’s because Brielle took something or pushed him. But she does love him, and tries to comfort him when he’s crying (when she’s not the one who caused it).
In fact, Brielle is our little sweetheart right now--the one who always runs up to Daddy when he comes home, and Mommy when she appears from a nap, with big hugs. Ariana does this too, but not nearly as often, because she’s a four-year-old who’s too big for such displays. ;) Brielle is less techie than Ari was at this age, and the few times she showed interest in the tablet or the controller for Netflix, she just got frustrated and gave up.
The biggest thing we’re working on with Brielle is potty training; she did really good for a while at going Number 1 in the potty, but her Number 2 was so bad, and I was so tired and not emotionally ready to deal with it, that I backtracked and put her in pull-ups too often. Now we’re back at square one. I’m planning on letting her run around in the backyard with no undies sometime until she finally dumps her load in the potty. Crossing my fingers that it’ll work!
How’s Levi doing?
Levi is just a happy guy. It’s SO easy to make him smile and laugh. Whenever he’s feeling a little tired, or sick, or simply clingy, then I’ll give him a pacifier and just hold him in my lap, and it’s the best feeling ever. He loves his Daddy and sisters. His favorite things to do are run around pushing his walker thing, play outside, and crawl like a madman towards his favorite forbidden places if they’ve been left open (the bathroom, the stairs).
Levi has eczema, and it was pretty bad before the pediatrician prescribed a stronger form of hydrocortisone. It’s especially bad along his legs. Curiously enough, Brielle has it in patches on her legs too, and I don’t remember noticing them when she was younger. But the hydrocortisone works wonders and we’re going to buy a daily cream to keep it under control. Besides that, he’s in great shape. He was taking one long nap from 1:00-4:00 for a while, but if anything compromises his sleep or he gets sick, he goes back to napping at 11:00 and takes two naps for the day. He sleeps great at night.
He’s walking! So, I originally wrote this post a week ago. At the time, he could walk, but it wasn’t his preferred mode of moving around. He’d try to walk really fast and, well, you can’t run before you walk. But he’s gotten it down now and is starting to walk everywhere, much to the delight of his sisters. Levi also communicates really well. He gestures to what he wants to eat or when he wants his sippy cup, and is very clear in letting me know when he’s tired or still hungry. He pays close attention to my expressions whenever he does something that he suspects is either good or naughty.
The biggest thing we’re working on with Levi is FOOD. He’s really picky. Again, when I first wrote this post, he was absolutely refusing to eat bread--would spit it out as soon as it touched his lips. Since then, I’ve successfully fed bread to him twice by coating the little chunks in peanut butter and jam! Hurray! He really likes jam. We’re trying to wean him off baby food, especially because his appetite is rapidly growing. I feel like some mornings I spend the whole time just feeding him!
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| Chilaxin' |
It’s the life
Overall we’re a bit on the tired side, which is something we’re working to improve. We need to change our routines anyway to be ready for Ariana’s school in the fall. But we’re enjoying the weather and our family. We’re enjoying meeting new people, including people from other backgrounds and cultures, and also people who have come from lower cost-of-living states and share with us this interesting predicament of living in a beautiful place far from family where no one can afford to buy a house. Even with some adjusting that still needs to happen, we’re happy to be here.
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| My faithful vacuum helpers |
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| The loves of my life, hypnotized |
