Visit to Seattle

Ah, July, what a perfect month.  Sunny and beautiful almost every day.  We started out by celebrating the 4th of July at our friends' BBQ and did some fireworks for the kids.  It was a 3-day weekend so we got some time in our swimming pool as well.  The next weekend was my 38th birthday and ta-dah, Glen's 40th!  Are we really that old?  My mind doesn't feel it, but my body sure does.  I wanted to go to Quassy Amusement Park for my birthday, but as happens on Saturdays after a long week at daycare, Teagan was a mess, so just Claudia and I went.  Claudia wasn't as adventurous as she talked to herself up to be (no roller-coaster, boo), so we mostly went on the kiddie rides, but we did go on the bumper cars where she showed her true colors.  She was smashing into people and didn't mind the whiplash that almost did me in.  That's my girl!  The next weekend, we got a babysitter and Glen & I went out to dinner at a local Italian restaurant, which was our first night away from the kids since we arrived in Connecticut.  We're planning a more memorable celebration to New York City for a weekend in August (childless!), thanks to Glen's family for giving us the money for the short holiday to celebrate his 40th.  My family got us a much wanted outdoor patio set, which I've enjoyed many of nights.  I've seen fireflies for the first time in my life (super cool) and I get to hear lots of interesting wild life.  Earlier this year it was frogs and now there is some kind of insect (I think) humming all night.  So different than the city.

So... speaking of the city, Claudia and I visited Seattle near the end of July.  It was a whirlwind trip, but we had so much fun.  We flew out of JFK, so I drove from Connecticut to Queens, NY, which was intimidating, but I totally ruled it.  I'm a city-girl at heart.  We stayed with Neely & Emilio, which felt very comfortable and 10x easier then last winter since no-nap Teagan wasn't with us.  Claudia said her favorite part of her visit was seeing her cousin Asher.  Ahh.  She had even more of a whirlwind trip than me, staying at 5 different places in 7 days.  Her Auntie Neely (home base), Auntie Gina, Grandma & Grandpa, Great Grandma, and the Robbins (her friend Hadley).  Besides seeing my family (awesome, of course) I also went to my 20 year high school reunion.  Juanita High school class of 1995!  I'm so thankful for everyone who turned up that I was able to reconnect with.  I was especially thankful that my old Camp Fire girlfriends (Meredith, Alicia, Christy, and Melissa) were able to attend and said so many kind words about me and my family.  You are all amazing women and I'm so thankful to have you as my childhood friends.  It was too short of a trip to include everyone, but those of you who I was able to visit, thank you!

Quassy Amusement Park

 Our pool.  Really, how much do we love our house?

Glen-cutie with a Dairy Queen 40th birthday ice cream cake.

My trip to Seattle, starting with my #1 baby boy, Asher.

Claudia riding Polo on Gina's farm.

Claudia with Asher having fun on a hot day (no air conditioning in Seattle):

 My silly girl with her Auntie.

My best girls having fun before we head out for the reunion.

More good friends from HS: me, Hiroomi, Jenny, Lisa, and Neely.

We had to check out the new playground at the Seattle Center.  Claudia did the big climb and slide twice, but got a bit scared after that and decided to hang low on the swings.

A surprise visit from my old friend Kim and her boys.  She missed the reunion, but got to hang with the Olson family for the day (even better, I think?)

Summer is here

This summer is all about exploring our new neighborhood and playing in our backyard.  We have almost an acre yard that Glen mows every weekend on his riding lawnmower, and we both do weeding and pruning.  Lots of new stuff if popping up and blooming, some unwanted stuff like weeds and crab grass, but a ton of neat bushes, trees, and flowers.  It's all quiet beautiful.  Glen has been working hard every weekend trying to get our swimming pool operational.  It's a learning process, and it had been neglected for years, so it needed a lot of cleaning, but we're almost there and hope to have it open soon.  It's certainly been warm enough to go for a swim.  After an exceptional May of sunshine every day, June was a little hit-or-miss with some thunderstorms and humidity (both new concepts to me), but July is shaping up well with temperatures in the 80s every day.  We've tried a few local Cheshire family-friend spots.  First, Mixville Park, which is this 75 acre park with a small lake and a sandy beach.  On a sunny 85 degree Saturday, it was practically deserted.  It's really a hidden gem.  We have several local produce farms and nurseries, and discovered that one just 5 minutes away has you-pick fruit, so we tried out blueberry picking for the first time, which the girls loved.  We will be back again soon because the raspberries are almost ready.  The girls received bicycles as a gift from their Nana, so Claudia has been practicing a lot on her bike with training wheels and borrowing Teagan's balance bike.  She is hoping to work up to riding without training wheels by the end of the summer.  And, Glen & Claudia got to attend their first professional golf tournament, the Travelers Championship in Cromwell.

In June, Claudia started at the Bright Horizons (BH) summer day camp program.  It's a pretty small program, just 10-20 kids on a given week, but they do a lot of fun outdoor play, crafts & games, as well as field trips.  She went rock climbing at Mountain Fun in Wallingford and she's hooked, she loves it.  We've noticed an increase in "sass" lately, I think from being around the older kids all day, but other than that, we are very happy with the program and jealous over the neat stuff she gets to do every day.  I think adults need summer camp too!  Teagan is still at BH too and they've added a few more kids to her toddler room, so it's a bit busier, and she's getting used to all the routines and now feels very at home there.  Having the girls at the same location has been great for my commute.  It still takes me 75-90 minutes door-to-door to get the girls and get home (which is insane), but it's not nearly as stressful now because I have a bigger time window to get it done in.  But I should point out, it's not that frustrating bumper-to-bumper traffic like Seattle.  With the except of a couple bottle-necks, most of the time I'm flying along at 65+ mph.

Teagan's vocabulary has really taken off lately.  I love how she just puts together sounds even if she doesn't know what she's saying.  She's really into singing songs, especially Itsy Bitsy Spider, Wheels on the Bus, and Baby Bubble Bee.  She continues to be a physical kid who likes to roughhouse and hit or push if she doesn't get her way.  This is whole new territory for us.  She mostly takes it out on Claudia, who likes to push her buttons and turn everything up a notch, but Teagan in turn likes to "poke the bear" and try to get a screech or cry out of Claudia.  It's exhausting to be the referee to all their fighting.  But when they're not hungry or tired, they actually play very nicely together and are the best of friends.  I especially love how Claudia can be so patient and helpful.  I often hear from Teagan, "Claudia help" and Claudia is almost always happy to help and proud that she's the big sister.  Teagan is at the age when color is very important, so when Teagan yells out, "I want blue bowl", Claudia always returns with "I want yellow bowl" (or whatever other color is available).  This makes me smile on a daily basis to see how Claudia is learning humility.  In other situations I feel like I'm always saying, "your sister is only 2 years old!" but in this particular case, she totally gets that color is important to a 2 year old, but not nearly as important to a 6 year old.

Mixville Park.

New bicycles!

Go Claudia!

My little cutie.

My flowers.

 Glen's lawn.

No blueberries actually made it into Teagan's bucket.  Yum.

Yale University

The big news is that I got a job!  I started the beginning of the month as a Research Assistant at Yale University.  I looked it up on Glassdoor.com and someone said for the pro, "smart people, brilliant ideas, fast pace, and cutting edge science" and for the con, "low pay."  I think that sums it up well!  I'm in the School of Medicine, Department of Pharmacology and my lab works in collaboration with Gilead Sciences (they fund us) to look at up/down regulation of shRNA in response to an anti-cancer drug they're interested in, as well as ones we're interested in.  The job is perfectly matched for my skill set, as it relies heavily on cell culture experience, but also lentivirus production and titer (check!), experience with small molecule drugs (check!), and experience with robotics and high-throughput screens (check!)  I'm excited to be back in the work force after a 4 month "break" and thankful to get a job at such a prestigious institution.  Besides the job, I'm enjoying eating a variety of food for lunch, as the hospital adjacent to us has a good assortment of healthy options, and there are about 20 food trucks lined up outside my building with most of them being Asian food.  Yum!  The only thing I'm not enjoying is the commute.  There isn't a lot of traffic, but it's just a long tedious drive into New Haven.

Just before I started my job, we has some awesome visitors.  My mom, sister Neely, and nephew Asher visited us for a week at the end of April.  It was so good to see my family.  Don't take this for granted, it's so wonderful to have a house and to be able to host guests.  We had a bit of coordination with a 1 and 2 year old's naps, but we managed to have a few adventures.  First they helped me host a birthday party for Claudia, with her classmates as guests.  We did a garden theme party and thankfully the weather was pretty good, so we planted potted flowers, played in the yard, and hit a flower pinata full of candy.  The next day, we took a day trip to Mystic to visit the Aquarium, walk around town, and take a photo of Mystic Pizza.  The kids were all too tired to actually eat there, so instead we got take out from Rossini's in Cheshire.  Probably not as amazing, but still good authentic East Coast pizza.  Other than that, I showed them around my new town and we just enjoyed each other's company.  I'm looking forward to my visit to Seattle the last week of July.

The biggest event for the girls this month has been starting daycare.  Teagan is at Bright Horizons adjacent to Glen's work.  She loves it!  It's a small center, so we were initially disappointed that there didn't seem to be any kids her age, so she's in a room with a bunch of toddlers when she is almost ready for preschool.  But, she has already started potty training and making quick progress, and they have a very low child to  teacher ratio, as well as a great facility, so it's working out well.  Claudia goes to an after-school program run by the YMCA at her school and she loves it as well.  She's sometimes disappointed that she's almost the last kid there when I pick her up (refer to long commute), but she always seems to have fun.  This summer, both kids with go to the Bright Horizons, and I'm excited to have them in the same location to help with the commute.  Other than that, the girls continue to have fun playing with friends in the neighborhood and playing in our big wonderful yard.  Every weekend we're out pulling weeds and mowing the lawn, but no complaints here, we love it.  The only downside of all this outdoor space is that Teagan got bit by a deer tick.  It was gross and kind of scary.  I found it behind her ear when I was doing her hair one morning, so I know it had at least been there overnight.  Glen tried to pluck it out with tweezers, but couldn't get it all, so I took her to urgent care.  They taught me a better removal method and the doctor said she was at low risk for disease transmission because we caught it in less than 24 hours.  It was still kind of a scary thing.  She never got a rash or any other symptoms of disease, so she should be okay.

Glen has been as busy as ever at work.  We didn't think he would have to travel very much, but already this year he's been to Boston, New Jersey, Washington DC, and now his latest trip, New Orleans.  Although his job is demanding, he really enjoys it.  He's now on "summer hours" for work which means 9 hr days M-Th and then half days on Friday.  He already works more than a standard shift, so it doesn't mean a lot to him, but he's hopeful that at least on an occasional Friday he can get off early and maybe play a round of golf.

 Visit with my family.

Mystic Aquarium

This looks like an old photo my girls, but it's actually Asher and Teagan!

Hiding.

"Elsa"

Popsicles outside--the best.

Our backyard woodchuck that lives under our deck and eat all our flowers.

My big girl turns 6

Claudia is now 6 years old!  How time flies.  For her birthday, we took her out to Chuck E. Cheese's, which was fun for all of us.  About a week before her birthday she lost her first tooth.  She lost it at school, so it was extra cool to be able to brag to her friends.  She had been working on that one for a long time, well before we moved.  She is so happy at her new house and school.  All the ticks she had in Seattle have gone away.  She was sucking on the sleeves of her cardigans/sweatshirts and making some repetitive noises like throat clearing.  The poor girl had a stressful time seeing the fires at Alta Lake in July (she's still very paranoid about our house burning down), starting Kindergarten in September, her Dad moving away in November, and then moving in with her Aunt & Uncle in January before her move to Connecticut, which she didn't totally understand.  That's a lot of changes in a short period of time for a little girl.  Now that we're all together in one place with some stability, she is so much happier.  Her new school is in one of the best school districts in Connecticut, and I hear it gets very competitive as they get older, but they make a point to keep Kindergarten age-appropriate and let them play and socialize a lot.  After the rigorous curriculum in Seattle, it's a sigh of relief to not have to push the reading and writing so much.  Although she does love to read, and she even got her first library card recently.

Teagan just amazes me with her interest in learning.  I'm not even trying, but she is counting, asking me to tell her the letters in words, and "reading" books to herself.  She almost has her colors down, everything but green & orange, which she mixes up.  We have a suspicion that she might be a lefty.  Only time will tell, but she definitely kicks a ball left and wants to swing a bat or golf club left.  She loves to sing and dance, so I've been taking her to this weekly music class at the library.  Her favorite is to skip/gallop around and also turn in circles with her arms out.  She's more physically adventurous than Claudia was at this age, so she can climb ladders, go on the big swings, and go down the tall slide at the playground.  The girls are sharing a bedroom and it's working out pretty well.  Initially we tried to get them to go to bed at the same time (failure!) but now we just put Claudia down first and Teagan later, and it works out fine.

As for Glen & I, we're still settling into our new house and seem to have an endless list of "needs" for the house.  We made a couple big purchases, like some beds, a lawn mower, and a BBQ, but every day there is another $20 item, which adds up quickly.  We weren't able to move anything perishable or liquid, so lots of small toiletries and kitchen pantry items had to be replaced.  And just the addition of extra rooms and a yard makes our wish list grow.  We decided to forgo furnishing the living room and dining room, so for now, those rooms will be empty.  Although, we did complete our wish of having an electrician put overhead lighting fixtures in all our bedrooms and closets.  It's finally spring here, so Glen golfed his first round at a local course, and I have been able to explore many kid-friendly destinations with the girls.  We're also getting to socialize a bit with our new neighbors, as are the kids!  We live on the most perfect street because every other house seems to have kids in the age 2-8 range and everyone is so welcoming to us.  Claudia has fit in with the other kids at school quickly and has already been to two fun birthday parties, one at a trampoline center and one ice skating.

Last snow of 2015 (on the first official day of spring):

Trampoline fun.  Teagan just followed Claudia around and couldn't quit get the hang of jumping.  They were both exhausted after 20 minutes.

Last box we unpacked?

First time ice skating.  She did eventually go around without the walker, but holding my hand.

There is is!  The first lost tooth.

Some Easter fun.

Helping mommy do the dishes.

Lowe's Build & Grow. 

As we were spending all our money, the girls got to hammer together a little planter box.

Officer Claudia enforcing all her rules with a whistle.

Chuck E. Cheese's.  The mouse was Teagan's favorite part.  Claudia tolerated him long enough so she could grab some prize tickets.  They both enjoyed dancing along though.