1. Our neighborhood’s summer street festivals are back. The vibes are so good – we absolutely love them.
2. My work laptop arrived. That makes the job feel much more real, and I still can barely believe this has happened.
3. B had a good weekend, which makes me hopeful that we’ve turned a corner on this particular stretch of difficult behavior. He tends to have these little rough patches that are theoretically short-lived, but in the moment they feel like an eternity. Recently he’s been biting, hair-pulling and pinching A LOT, and he absolutely never shuts his trap, making it impossible for Kyle and I to have a simple conversation. Whenever B hears us, he interrupts us to say “what does that mean? what is that called?”, and if we don’t answer right away he starts yelling. It’s sensory overload to the max and it makes me feel completely fried. So hopefully things are starting to improve.
4. A nice lunch with some old work friends on Saturday. My team at my old law firm was pretty tight-knit, and had very low turnover so we worked together for a long time. One of the ladies is retiring and had a little lunch celebration. I was grateful back in my firm days to have been assigned to that team – it was a good crew. I’m grateful now to still be considered part of the team.
5. My thrifted Patagonia Torrentshell parka. Every rain jacket I’ve ever had has soaked through in hard rain, but not this one – it actually keeps the rain out.
(I meant to post this yesterday but never got around to finishing it)
What I’m grateful for going into this week:
1. Somebody in our neighborhood Facebook group is giving us a supposedly like-new jogging stroller. We’ve put literally thousands of miles on ours (not jogging hahaha, not for me [actually my kid would love that, maybe I’ll take up jogging]) and it’s falling apart, so I asked the group if anyone is looking to re-home one and got a response.
2. A somewhat related item – our crib is now out of our house. It’s really hard to find somebody who wants a used crib. Thrift stores don’t generally take them, and I see people trying to give them away in the Facebook group all the time without any takers. Fortunately for us, a couple months ago somebody in our preschool no buy group asked if anybody had one they were done with. I responded that we would have one in May and she said that would work, and she has now collected it. I had expected we’d have that thing sitting around for a long time. I’m very happy somebody else will get some use out of it.
3. We got new sidewalks with pedestrian ramps at all four corners of the big intersection leaving my neighborhood. It’s a big safety improvement and also means no we longer have to maneuver the stroller over the huge mounds of dirt that existed at one of the corners where there was no sidewalk before. It’s nice to see the south end getting some improvements.
4. Another big win for the south end: we’re officially getting our new light rail station (still years away ha), which will be only a couple blocks from my house. We were already pretty close to the existing station, but this new one will improve access for a lot of people coming from east or west of the tracks who previously had a 30ish minute walk to the train. And for us personally, it will make trips to and from the airport SO much easier. The station had initially been approved in the same package as another, far less useful and far more expensive station, and with funding problems they had both up for removal. The mayor recently amended the proposal, which effectively stopped them from considered a packaged deal. Now ours has been approved to go forward, while the other, less practical station remains on a list of projects to cancel if the money doesn’t miraculously appear.
5. And speaking of money miraculously appearing, a part-time job seems to have fallen into my lap. And not just any part-time job, but something that feels… absolutely perfect? Evidently an attorney I barely even worked with years ago recommended me so highly to an aquaintance whose company needed a little bit of paralegal help that they contacted me with an offer. At first I wasn’t very interested. I was initially told they needed somebody to work 3 to 4 hours a day, and I can’t work that much. I don’t have any childcare until September, and even then it will only be ten hours a week. But they decided they want to move forward with what I can provide, so it will be one or two hours a day, remotely of course, and at whatever time of day I’m able to fit it in. Throughout the past two years there have been several moments I’ve wished I could find a way to make a bit of money, but these opportunities are really hard to find. I can still barely believe this one found its way to me, and it feels good that the work I did years ago impressed somebody so much as to facilitate it. I am BEYOND excited about it.
1. We’re done switching the office and B’s bedroom. Why we ever decided to put B in the smaller room as a baby and then move him into the bigger room when he got a little older is beyond me – all it did was make a future hassle for us, and a hassle we’d have a toddler around for! We had to cram all our office furniture into our bedroom for the weekend to make space for his things in the bigger bedroom, and then once his things were out of the smaller bedroom we moved our office things in there. We still have some reorganizing to do in the office, but the move is done. I’m happy the house is now in its forever configuration.
2. My kid handles change we really well. I know that’s not the case for a lot of toddlers. We had talked with him a little bit in advance about his bedroom moving, and it probably helps that his new room has a cool new race car bed, but even without the cool new bed I think he would’ve been fine. He’s happy as a clam in his new room.
3. We had a really fun play party on Sunday. We invited a few toddler families over so the kids could play in a new space and the adults could hang out together. We set up a vegetarian gyro bar and a toddler snack table, and arranged the back yard to fit as many people as possible, and it went well! We really like the parents we had over, and now that we’re almost done with the co-op (how we know most, but not all, of the families) we’re hoping to transition to being actual friends with some of them. I’ve been trying to crystalize what exactly makes a parent feel like somebody I can be friends with. Aside from what I look for in a friend regardless – compassionate, funny, similar values – we want friends we can drink a few beers and talk shit about our kids with (out of earshot of the kids, of course). The co-op environment can feel so precious, with a lot of parents who would be truly bothered to hear somebody say “oh man, my kid was such a dickhead all weekend.” Those parents are not for me. Parenting is hard, and we don’t need to make it harder by pretending it’s always a magical experience. Like, let’s not take ourselves that seriously.
4. Our backyard. It’s small, but it’s so nice to have a little oasis in the middle of the city, and it’s mostly in the shade in the evening, which is wonderful.
5. That I’ve spent the past year writing. Before having B I was a pretty lazy writer, waiting for inspiration to strike and not being very purposeful with whatever story I was trying to tell. Which all meant I did very little actual writing, and what I did write was usually sloppy and lacked intention. The first couple years after having B I just didn’t feel like I was in the headspace to spend the little free time I had writing. Last June, when it became clear I’d be staying home another year, I committed to spending that year making a real effort with writing. And in that time I’ve written six short stories, started working on a new novel, and created a really cool little writing group. Six short stories might not sound like much, but they’re real stories I’ve put thought into crafting and effort into refining. I’m so grateful that for whatever reason, last June everything came together to prompt me to get serious about my writing. This next year I’m hoping for another six short stories, a finished novel draft, a few acceptance letters and maybe a second, different kind of writing group. Either a workshop group or just a group of writers in my area who meets regularly to work.
1. B had a good first session with the speech language pathologist, despite her concerns at our evaluation that he wouldn’t be able to follow her instructions. The exercises were very simple and he did pretty well, and we’ve been working with him since then and we’re seeing improvement. I’m feeling optimistic.
2. Our neighbor has great things to say about the preschool program we’ve chosen for B next year. We ran into her and her family at the playground yesterday and chatted about preschool – we had no idea her son has been in that class, with the same teacher, this past year. She says it has done WONDERS for her son’s development, which was really reassuring to hear. We’re really excited that that’s where he’ll be next year.
3. That I’m almost done with my co-op parent responsibilities. The fundraisers are all over, my committee has held its last meeting, the final parent meeting is this Thursday, and all I’ve got left besides a few more weeks of classes is an end-of-year cleaning shift. Y’all, it has been a lot. Some parents thrive in a co-op environment, but I am not one of them. And with everything I’ve heard about drama at the board level, and the parent drama my class has already dealt with, as well as chatting with a few moms at a birthday party last weekend and hearing that they’re all overwhelmed – well, I’m doubtful that anybody involved is actually thriving. The classes have been really beneficial for B, though, and I’ve met a few parents I genuinely hope to remain friends with, so in those ways it’s been worth it.
4. I had a really fun night out with one of the preschool moms last week. This mom and I have been trying to get together for a while, but our kids kept alternating periods of illness. We decided last-minute to attend a school event together and I had SUCH a great time. It was really refreshing to spend time with another mom I felt I could really relate to – that just hasn’t happened before. The vibes could not be beat. I really hope she and I become good friends.
5. Brooklyn 99. Hands down, my favorite show. For me it’s a show that always feels good, with characters I want to root for (like, all of them, even the criminals), it’s hilarious but not stupid, and even though I’ve seen it three times now it’s so densely funny that I’m surprised by the jokes and the plot twists every time. This show got me through the months after my dad’s death, and somehow that doesn’t make me sad rewatching it now. And the reason we’re rewatching it now is that it’s the perfect show to decompress with after an episode of The Pitt. I’m not a huge TV person and I often get bored and can’t make myself give a shit what happens from one episode of a show to another, but I absolutely love this show. (I’m also really liking The Pitt, but goddamn).
1. B has started going down slides again. We don’t know what sparked his fear of slides, but it’s been at least six months since he’s wanted to try one. This past week, whenever we were at a playground, I made a point to go down the slide over and over and make a big deal about how fun it was. I think he internalized that and has been thinking it over, because yesterday at the playground he spontaneously started going down the slide, and did it again and again.
2. B tried a few other new things at the playground yesterday, too. Lately, playgrounds have basically just meant he sits in the baby swing. We’ve been trying to encourage him to at least try the regular swing, because he’s getting too big for the baby swing and some of them are really high off the ground and it’s nearly impossible to get him out once we’ve got him in. And yesterday he did try, and did really well! And he also started climbing across a rope bridge, which he had never interacted with before. But the most exciting development, to me, was that he fell on the rope bridge several times but kept trying. He’s had a tendency to get spooked by something and avoid it for months, like whatever happened with slides. I feel like we’ve unlocked much more play possibility with playgrounds heading into the summer.
3. We had a very low-key mother’s day. Bagels for breakfast, swim class and grocery shopping in the morning, and in the afternoon we rode our bikes out to get ice cream. Then we went to a playground, where B did all those exciting new things, and we had a nice, child-free dinner on the porch after putting the kid to bed. Last mother’s day, under the spell of being told “happy mother’s day” by practically every stranger I passed, we euphorically brewery-hopped our way through the neighborhood and I awoke the next day with one of the worst hangovers I can remember and a toddler to take care of. I’m grateful that’s not the case this year.
4. We had a fun, easy plan for this morning. On our way home from swim yesterday B noticed there’s a playground there, too, and he really wanted to go but we didn’t have time so I told him we could go today. I asked if he’d rather we take the car or the bus, and he said bus. The boy loves bus. And I love bus because even though it’s a short ride, it somehow turns an hour-long outing into a two, maybe three-hour-long outing. Our whole morning was taken up with absolutely zero thought required.
5. Tonight is my final meeting for the committee I was assigned to as part of my co-op parent duties. I’ve found the experience really overwhelming. The last-minute nature of the tasks I’ve been responsible for doesn’t play well with my ADHD, and now the committee is working on raising literally millions of dollars to save an education program, and a campaign of that magnitude is absolutely not something I have the bandwidth to meaningfully engage with. And it has left me feeling like I’m not doing a good enough job, because somehow these other parents from other co-ops are able and willing to do the work, but I suspect they have day jobs and spend some of their work hours doing committee work. My job is chasing around a small criminal hell-bent on killing himself using even the unlikeliest of tools, and it doesn’t allow for the spontaneous creation of Instagram reels about an auction basket.
1. To be back home. Traveling with a toddler is exhausting at best and sometimes it’s downright unpleasant, and anyway, I thrive in a routine. Call me boring. Call me inflexible. Just don’t call me on the phone because I haven’t planned for it and I’ll have a panic attack. We had a good time in San Diego but I’m happy we’ll be home for a while. Sometimes, but especially with a child, I wonder if the best part of travel is when it’s looming on the horizon, a thing in the future to look forward to. And I think that’s okay. We need things to look forward to.
2. Seattle tap water. It’s legitimately good. Whenever we go somewhere else we miss it.
3. That we swapped our gas stove for electric before B was born. That little shit turned on a gas burner not once but twice at our airbnb. There’s no doubt in my mind that we’d all be dead if we still had a gas stove in the house.
4. That yesterday’s swim class went well. We started B in swim when he was just shy of two years old and he loved it. But then he had a bad experience at a splash pad and spent six months deathly afraid of water. Fortunately we’ve made it through that, but we still weren’t sure how swim would go this time around. He loved it!
5. Farmers markets start up again this week. We really love community festivals, and the return of the farmer’s market in particular feels a little bit like life returning after another winter that feels like it will never end.
Because time isn’t real while traveling. What I’m grateful for going into this week:
1. The three of us got to sit together on our flight to San Diego. When we changed our flight last week we couldn’t get seats together, although we were close. Kyle and B had the middle and aisle seats of one row, and I was in the middle seat in the row across the aisle. We had hoped the person sitting between us in the aisle would trade, but he wouldn’t. However, the window seat passenger in Kyle and B’s row never showed up, so I moved. Now, having said that, maybe it would have been better for me if I’d stayed on my own and let Kyle deal with the kid…
2. For our airport lounge membership. We’re not always sure it’ll be “worth” the money, but we eat there before each flight and then we pack food from the lounge onto the flight, and Friday we’ll return to Sea-tac at dinnertime and will head straight to the lounge to get dinner instead of trying to keep B up late to eat after we get home (we have never done this before and confirmed that it’s allowed). We can usually find a little corner to occupy where B can spread out with some toys, and Kyle and I have a couple drinks, and it’s a great, low-stress version of waiting for a flight. I adore the airport lounge.
3. B had a blast at Belmont Park. When he was one year old we took him on one ride there, a little boat ride for small kids, and he loved it. We have an adorable video of him shrieking with joy while riding it. So when we decided to come this time, we went all in on Belmont Park and bought wristbands for two days. We had a lot a lot to lose if he had decided on day one that he wanted nothing to do with the rides. But he loved it, and we did the same few rides about 30 times, and he doesn’t know it yet but we’re going back tomorrow to do it all over again.
4. Our airbnb has a good yard for B. We knew there was a “grown up” outdoor space for hot tubbing and hanging out around a fire after he’s in bed, which isn’t a particularly toddler-friendly space (think fire pit full of little pieces of glass). But there’s a separate yard area, completely enclosed, with absolutely nothing in it and he’s been having a good time hanging out there. It’s also entirely in the shade during the second half of the day, when we’re most likely to be pulling our hair out trying to occupy him. It’s hideous – a mismatched quilt of different-colored patches of astroturf – but he doesn’t know yet about ugly.
5. This has been an active trip. A lot of our recent trips have been to more rural areas to see family, which has its upsides, but it has meant much less walking than we like. Nowhere to go within walking distance, less access to sidewalks where we can walk safely, no public transportation which means driving everywhere, and coordinating with more people with varying interest in walking. We’ve been averaging 20,000 steps a day on this trip. The past couple years we’ve found ourselves returning from trips feeling like Elvis at the end of his life, and we’ve known it’s had something to do with the lack of walking. This trip has really crystalized it for us, though – even though we do our best, we don’t eat the same while traveling as we do at home. We know that and we’re okay with it. Fewer vegetables, more restaurant food, a few too many drinks. Walking a lot somewhat mitigates all that, though. Even with the overindulging, we still feel physically okay if we’re getting all that exercise. It has been really nice to have such an active trip again.
1. My husband, and how aligned we are in how we want our lives to look. It’s really important to both of us that we make time for what matters, for joy and rest, rather than working all the time. I know so many people who are always busy with some obligation or another and never think they have time for themselves or for doing anything fun, and we both refuse to live that way. In general, I think it’s far more important for two people to have values in common than to have interests in common. We do have a lot of similar interests, but we also have interests that aren’t shared. Our values, though, are pretty in sync and I’m grateful for that. He’s a sweetie, too.
2. The zoo has brought back our favorite event, and my mom is going to watch our kid so we can go. Back before the pandemic the zoo used to have an annual wine tasting event, where they shut the door to all those annoying kids and let those over 21 stumble around drooling and crying and dropping their Cheez-its. And this year they’re bringing it back!
3. The weather seems to have really, really turned a corner. No more false spring, no more secret second winter. Even our rainy days are over 50 degrees now. We’re home free. It’ll never be cold again.
4. I have a few friends who still invite me to their parties. I almost never go. I’m almost always on kid duty, and I choose not to take him to things that would just be difficult. And if the kid’s in bed I’m exhausted and just want to sit my ass down. Everyone knows I’m not going. But a few friends invite me anyway, and that feels good.
5. I finished crocheting my sweater. It was a really ambitious project and I didn’t find it very enjoyable. On several occasions I let weeks go by without working on it. But I finally finished it, and now I’m looking forward to working on something that feels fun again. And considering the sweater was my first big crochet project, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Several strangers have stopped me on the street to compliment it, and somebody even took a picture. How fun!
1. I’m starting the week with food prepped, thanks to my husband taking B out for a couple hours yesterday afternoon. My week always feels less hectic when my ability to eat healthy food doesn’t depend on finding the time to cook it while my toddler cries because I’m not drawing him pictures of stingrays and manta rays and spotted eagle rays.
2. My little backyard. It’s small, but it’s big enough for a few chairs, a few things for B to play with and a little bit of space for him to run around. We basically don’t step foot out there from November through March, so when spring comes around it’s like our house suddenly gets bigger – we have one more space we can occupy without actually going anywhere.
3. The number of playgrounds we can walk to. I grew up in a very small town and there were two playgrounds – one in the “downtown” park, and one at the elementary school. We live within reasonable walking distance of at least ten. The other day I drove to a nearby house to pick up something that someone was giving away, and saw yet another playground that I hadn’t even known was there, just a mile from our house.
4. The cardigan I’ve been crocheting since September is almost finished. It has been such a slog, has felt like it would never end, that my motivation to keep working on it has been basically nonexistent. But yesterday I finished the ribbing on one of the wrists, and today I should be able to finish the other wrist. That will leave the ribbing along the bottom, the front and the neck, and it’s the same technique as the wrists so I feel like I have it figured out now. I’m starting to think maybe I can finish it before our trip at the end of the month? Possibly? It’s a nice thought, anyway. It’ll keep me picking up that treacherous hook.
5. Spring flowers. There are so many beautiful flowering trees everywhere I look right now, and tulips have finally been opening this past week. It all feels so cheerful. I know these particular flowers will be short-lived, and then it will be irises and whatever else comes next, and those will be beautiful too, but the first flowers of spring are my absolute favorite because, in Seattle, they come after a stretch of cold, wet darkness so long it feels endless. Spring flowers feel like a beautiful sigh of relief. “You made it,” cherry blossoms say. “You didn’t throw yourself in front of the train this year,” daffodils say.
1. The weather is finally starting to improve. I’m sure we’ll still have some cool, rainy days, but it feels safe to say we’re done seeing the 30s. The weather this past weekend was beautiful, which was especially nice because we started potty training and were able to spend a lot of time in the back yard and at our neighborhood playground with our little training potty in tow.
2. I was able to easily re-home a bunch of stuff we no longer needed by posting them for free on our neighborhood’s family-centered Facebook group. I haven’t had much luck giving things away on my local no-buy group – it always takes several tries to find somebody who will actually show up – but this facebook group tends to be pretty reliable. I’ve turned to this facebook group a few times when I’ve wanted to find something but didn’t want to buy new, too. I got my kid’s potty seat and several of his snack and drink containers just by asking the group if anybody had some they didn’t want anymore.
3. We can lie to our kid. We don’t watch a lot of TV, but he has taken a liking to these short videos that show different kinds of animals and then say what they’re called. For the past six months they’re all he’s been willing to watch. We decided we want to shift his interest, if we can, to things with a bit more of an actual storyline – Trash Truck, Puffin Rock, Bluey, Sesame Street, Thomas and Friends, any of those. We want to keep things low-stim, so no Ms. Rachel or Cocomelon in this house. He has been very hesitant to move from the animal videos, though, so after a recent trip to the Museum of Flight where an out-of-order elevator really caught his attention, we simply told him his animal shows are out-of-order. That made complete sense to him, and it’s been weeks since we watched them.
4. We love our pediatrician. I really didn’t care for the first doctor we were assigned to, and it had started causing me SO much anxiety before appointments. Our interactions felt strangely hostile, she often gave us information that was inconsistent with information we’d received elsewhere in the clinic (from the dietician, for example), and I always left those appointments feeling like we’d been on the defensive the whole hour. We managed to switch to our current doctor about a year ago and our interactions all feel very positive. We just had B’s three-year checkup, and I really hope he stays with our clinic for a long time.
5. We happened to have Pepto-Bismol on hand when I desperately needed it yesterday. I’m on a temporary medication that can cause nausea, and was hit yesterday evening with the worst nausea I’ve ever had in my life. I didn’t know it was even possible to throw up that much. I was starting to think I’d need to get myself to urgent care, but I also didn’t think it would be possible for me to leave the bathroom. Over-the-counter meds tend to expire before ever getting used up in our house, and then they don’t get replaced because we never use them, so I didn’t think we had anything I could take. My husband found some Pepto-Bismol in the downstairs bathroom, and it felt like a gift from a God I don’t even believe in. Within 20 minutes of taking it I felt much, much better. Lesson learned. We will always have Pepto on hand. Even if we have to throw out three expired bottles before anyone needs it, we will always have it.
Denise Resting 