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caps are funny one big change is that you started school in september after a winter and spring unexpectedly at home and a summer spent erratically in a daycare classroom that was filled with screaming children whom you really did not connect with we weren t sure how you would like school initially you felt it was like daycare but with more kids and less toys and you spent a lot of time sitting tucked in behind your teacher as she perched forward on her chair about a month in you warmed up to the whole thing and started having a good time at school engaging with activities and going your own way with a bit more confidence you have stories about the other kids in your class and have made friends with a girl who lives down our street you spend your time building things no surprise and once you have built something at the station you have chosen that day you can be found sitting next to it on a chair with a book your teacher says you are developing good understanding of the sounds the different letters make which is true but rather the tip of the iceberg the other thing you did this year is teach yourself to read you started to be very interested in reading in march and we got some early readers and companion readers from the library your dad spent some time with you teaching you how to sound out words and what different rules there were about how letters can go together then it seemed like you lost interest you didn t want to read to us and you refused to guess at words but you took easy books you had memorized into your room at quiet time and would sit with them staring at the pages every so often we d get a hint of your progress you d ask me about something on a t shirt or laugh at a pun on a new mug once i gave you a chirp on the drive to daycare and because i wasn t looking you read me the table of contents which we never bother reading today the day you turned five you read a birthday card aloud and then read us all the jokes that were in our christmas birthday crackers it was a real leap forward from what i d seen before what do you call a boomerang that doesn t come back giggling a stick i didn t know you even knew what a boomerang was i kept handing you a new joke and you would read it out without hesitation i remain amazed but also delighted if i can instill in you the same love of reading i have it will keep you growing until school catches up to challenge you and maybe keep you from being too bored when they review the alphabet twice over again in sk next year spud you are a character you wear your shirts inside out your underwear and pants are on backwards most days on purpose and you insist on putting your pajama pants on your head as a hat the other day i was worried you were getting sick because your face was flushed but then discovered you had 5 shirts on you morph into dups and insist we are also all the backwards versions of ourselves i m amam you have your own way of doing things and the absurdity of them makes you giggle which makes us giggle along with you you don t want to do anything independently until you can do it perfectly so teaching you new things is a slow gentle process but once you have it down you are highly reliable and capable we ve learned to give you space to consider things but offer small nudges to keep you moving you are a loving if frustrated generous if overly rough big brother and your sister adores you you two are very different little beings and i know you will find a way to coexist eventually in the meantime we re here to help restore stolen toys in either direction and quell madcap chasing games just before someone starts crying not always successfully spud you make me smile every day with your jokes and puns and quirky view of the world you are stubborn but snuggly calm until you are not and a wise old soul your smile is one of my most cherished things in life as it is earned not given i love you spud a million and a ton to the moon and back happy birthday this entry was posted in uncategorized on january 2 2022 by labmonkeyftw end of year wrap up personal 1 reply this year this year was a doozy it had some pretty serious life events and a lot of external pressures i think i am ultimately a better person and in perhaps a better spot than i was at this time last year where my main complaints were around inequitable distribution of household tasks with pea it turns out that those surface complaints were as close as i could get to admitting my deep seated feelings of abandonment and resentment around the dynamic we were in with two children where pea had never really stepped up his game for the 1 5 years of sprout s life and in many ways had stepped back exactly seven days after my update last year i discovered his alcohol addiction which explained a lot but not everything and a deeply unpleasant six months ensued we navigated broken trust long standing alienation on both parts addiction and an antagonistic redistribution of household tasks in which pea now has 100 responsibility for all laundry now he does more work in the house but i manage nearly the entire house and that works well enough we worked out better methods of communication through trial and error and a lot of sleepless angry nights we addressed the toxic patterns in our communication and found ways to reestablish benefit of the doubt and a baseline of trust we both saw counsellors we both have a ways to go things feel stable and warm and continually improve and that s pretty amazing for where we were a year ago aside from serious relationship revelations overhauls strife and reconciliation this year i continued to work to keep my family as safe as possible under changing conditions in the pandemic i have become an expert at navigating the vaccine appointment systems and delight in finding everyone i know their next dose that this is a hunger games esque endeavour is very frustrating but i am finding great satisfaction in scoring appointments for those who are hunting thus far none of us have had covid spud gets his first vaccination dose on sunday one day after he is eligible pea and i have boosters booked for tomorrow and the next day the pfizer trial failing for sprout s age group was tough to recover from extending the isolation and restrictions for longer amid a new more intense wave was a bleak day raised a funny bright goofy frustrating four year old into a moody imaginative focused allllmost five year old fewer big life events for spud this year but he started kindergarten and taught himself to read so definitely some landmarks along the way he s still a kid who feels things very deeply and has trouble knowing how to express those feelings in non destructive ways he s been a challenge to parent this year as his default approach to a smaller sister is to try to upset her four has not been my favourite year for parenting but i deeply appreciate spud s resilience and general even keeled personality in these tumultuous times he remains a punny wise old soul and is starting to try to connect big concepts today in the bath he asked me if there were viruses who infect viruses and if you had a virus that was sick if it would make you more sick pure biology brilliance answer not for human viruses and only kinda sorta for bacterial viruses raised a silly stubborn opinionated 1 5 year old into essentially the same 2 5 year old just with a massively expanded vocabulary and higher standing jump sprout came into life with a firm sense of self and has not seen reason or impetus to change yet i weaned her this year which was a slow but easy process i didn t mourn the loss of connection like i did with spud i was thoroughly sick of the dietary restrictions which she did slooooowly grow out of over the rest of the year and sprout is by nature a cuddly kid so that physical connection remained she is a very different challenge to parent than her brother as she is so very firm in her toddler beliefs of what should happen and attempts to reconcile her toddler reality with well reality are ongoing tussles in our days she does not countenance logic nor restrictions she is funny in a sunshiney goofy dance bear hug kind of way and mercurial and mischievous and gregarious and brave she s a handful and would choose to take up both hands if we let her leaned on my network more than i usually do i am more often the counsellor confidante supporter in my friendships i needed those things this year and found the people who could be that for me my sisters as bedrocks for everything and some really excellent friends as well visited my father three times including with the kids twice which was better than last year but not much of a panacea for his seven months of total isolation in a hospital room this pandemic has been brutally unfair to him saw pea s two sets of parents twice each in person and with grandkids in tow saw my mother for some extended windows and established a more regular hang out for her and spud we missed her dedicated days this holiday break as spud had a cold but we will make them up in the new year got pretty fit for a while and then a bit less fit and then fell off the fitness wagon entirely with a shoulder nerve injury caught spud in a full speed lunge off a bed tractioned my brachial plexus ended up with pins and needles permanently in my dominant hand went to physio for eight weeks and am back to mostly normal yay self care maybe gained a bit of weight my scale s batteries have died and i decided that the holidays were not the time to resurrect it weaning sprout meant finding a new balance with food and attempting to incorporate twenty months of missed cheese in a healthy way spoiler it was not healthy but it was very soul soothing with the kids home for almost the whole fall with various colds i found myself stress snacking i know this is something i can sort out quickly and weight gain isn t bad but my absolute loathing of clothes shopping keeps me more or less the same size for convenience this category made more sense when i could post hilarious massive gains or losses because of pregnancies navigated our health care system in a pandemic with a toddler who suddenly started having seizures kicking it off with a set of petit mal ones that lasted much too long sprout is still very occasionally having a minor seizure after a breath holding pass out a barrage of tests show nothing explicitly concerning and her generally advanced development means we re just monitoring for now added stress and complications of timelines and time in hospitals where we really desperately do not want to be was not great all around but so far we are not dealing with a life changing diagnosis read a lot more after discovering a few new authors shout out to turia for the n k jemisin recommendation balancing a new book and sufficient sleep remains a failing of mine so i still have to be strategic about when i can start one spent a week at a cottage and invited my mom and younger sister for a few days the first indoor family hangouts we d had for over a year no other travelling aside from seeing family and no house renovations either really a quiet year while we took stock of other aspects of life plus the pandemic found a better work life balance with no more nursing and then with kids actually out of the house for stretches of the last third of the year i am sure to lose it with schools pivoting virtual not yet announced but nothing else makes any sense at all right now it was nice while it lasted continued to see my counsellor even once things had stabilized with pea and made some progress in managing the expectations i hold myself to and the fears i allow to take up space in my brain having someone who is exclusively invested in my positive progress validate or challenge my thoughts or actions has been an interesting and valuable process i m working on leaving space to enjoy life within the detail oriented planning that i rely on allowing my personal sense of integrity to inform my actions rather than my assumptions of others expectations and on accepting variations to my plans more graciously and openly it was to be perfectly honest a hell of a year it required a lot of personal growth pain grit and endurance i m very tired i m still a work in progress i envision a different but possibly equally difficult year next year and am quailing at the idea of having to muster gumption for it i know i have reserves and supports and if need be the financial resources to buy my way out of problems e g the pile of rapid tests on my counter procured at ridiculous expense that allowed us to see family more safely this holiday i d so dearly love for a tough winter to be followed by a lightened burden across the board fingers crossed this entry was posted in uncategorized on december 30 2021 by labmonkeyftw end of year update professional leave a reply it s been a busy few months at work and a productive few months which often means a lull in my blog i do still want to keep this blog going as a space for chronicling our days so will endeavour to write here more often before spud s birthday and the advent of 2022 hopefully not 2020 too my annual recaps starting with professional this year i published eight articles six of which represent work from my lab five of which are original research and one review this is a deep relief to have some of our older projects finally out in the world and to have newer collaborations coming online quickly and efficiently recruited three grad students and one undergrad and then convinced that undergrad to stay for an msc starting next year so far three of the four are completely fantastic and the fourth has promise but is a work type that i struggle to mentor my lab is now 12 and as big as i can reasonably manage without more permanent staff whom i cannot stably afford yet three are set to graduate in 2022 my first flight of phds as part of an ad hoc committee wrote the terms for a departmental edi committee am now the chair of said edi committee this is probably good i care about edi done right and a lot of innovation u s edi work is performative but has its difficulties as there was some small but vocal opposition to the committee in the first place gave nine talks all online and a nice mix of local and international locations fun to meet with some folks at other spots probably too many talks overall but we had fun stories to share with all the papers coming out and not having to travel for 1 4 days to give a talk means it s much much easier to do wrote a massive grant which i should hear about any day now wrote in 24 hours the internal renewal form 10 pages for my fancy chair i thought it was a simple one page form only to be informed i don t have to start that process until february of this coming year phew wrote no other grants aside from two renewals as i just did not have it in me to define new research directions within the timelines offered nor to scope out work with such an unpredictable backdrop the fe...