I recently checked in with my longtime online Mom's Group and asked for life updates. Here is what I shared on my own behalf.... Kind a a good checkpoint summary, so I wanted to add it here for posterity.
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Quick updates from the Southerland house:
First,
here's our most recent family photo. I took the kids and Joe out to get
photos of them specifically, and everyone was actually cooperating and
chill, so I jumped in a few at the end and am shocked at how I don't
hate them. haha!
Life is
pretty good here. Nothing spectacular, but also nothing very miserable.
Joe and I finally bought the house we live in, about 1.5 years ago.
It's stressing Joe out to have to adult so hard, but it's a good thing
overall. As long as you don't notice how the slab addition side of the
house is starting to break away from the rest of the structure. Those
big dark crevasses are fine as long as we spray them for spiders, right?
Joe
is working at SIUE in Illinois--- he started the job right in the
middle of 2020 nonsense, and it's a good job. It came with a promotion
in position and a raise. But now he is restless that there is no room
for growth there, so he is beginning to contemplate the next degree-- a
PhD or Ed degree. Whew!
Noah
continues to blow us away with his quirky interests and passions. He is
one of a kind for sure. He loves his engineering class, loves his
Rocketry and Politics clubs, and is in two non-school choirs, one of
which gets to go to Carnagie Hall this June. He is opinionated,
hyper-intellectual, and a fountain of random knowledge. He wants to live
in Finland. He wants to be a Renaissance Man in that he doesn't want to
have to specialize in his life, he just wants to embrace it all--
music, languages, geo-politics, engineering, science, writing, etc. He's
6' tall and funny and a little "old man grumpy", and really just a good
kid.
Lucy has been
thriving in her first year of middle school! She has been medicated for
ADHD since the beginning of the school year, and she really seems to
have a handle on her anxiety and her inattentive ADHD issues. She got a
4.0 last semester, WHOA. She is growing into herself and I can see it,
and it brings me a lot of peace and happiness. I have spent way more
than my fair share of parenting energy worrying about this girl. But for
now, all is well.
Quinn
is the one I am currently worrying about. I just want to make sure he
doesn't get lost in the crowd of big personalities in this family. I
want to give him opportunities to be a leader after spending his whole
life following Noah. I want to make sure he gets to practice voicing his
own opinions and ideas. And I just want him to feel seen and loved just
the way he is. I also want to get him a leopard gecko. I think he needs
something to take care of, and our attempts at a betta fish two years
ago just kept ending in tragedy. I don't have the heart for more
attempts.
Larkin is as
Larkin as ever, and that's really all you need to know. Cats are still
basically 56% of her whole personality, she is bright and happy and
helpful and clever and creative. She's a classic baby of the family
too-- doesn't clean up after herself and doesn't like to be told NO. But
mostly she's a gem. Kindergarten can barely keep up with her.
And
I am chugging along. I began a daily walking habit when they started
the school year--and have only missed two days since August. It's been
fulfilling in ways I could not have imagined when I set the goal. In
some ways, it's like I'm parenting my inner child in that I am nudging
myself to get outside and breathe the fresh air more, and I get to be
read to (storytime!) when audiobooks are in my ears. Weirdly healing. I
also joined my first official choir since being married, and it is
bringing me so much joy. I should've been finding a way to sing all
along. I mean, technically I DID sing all along-- just in my car and to
my kids at bedtime. Not enough. It's such a lesser-visible part of my
world here, but I really was born to sing, and it means the world to me
to get to do it again so regularly. Photography is still going strong,
and I still love it 90% of the time, and it definitely helps keep our
family afloat and keeps my kids in new shoes and such. I am finishing up
the paperwork to become a sub in our school district, but I really only
want to take a sub job maybe once or twice a week at most.
And that's us! If I could change anything, I'd have:
1. a new minivan
2. an addition added to this house, plus those cracks repaired.
3. two more solo hours a day, which is greedy because I already now get 7 a day as it is.
And
that's it. Life is pretty good.♥