Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Ruby will be 9 months old this week! Since January, it seems like our lives have begun to move very quickly.  I fall asleep on Monday night and wake up on Thursday morning, blink my eyes and I’m starting the work-week again.  I feel like I’m running down a steep hill, at first it was so exhilerating to just pick up my feet and let gravity do the work for me go go go. And I did go faster and faster, and now I am feeling like I can’t sustain this pace, but we are stuck in it–we certainly can’t just stop. This seems to be the pace we are at now.  Our schedules make it difficult to have any time together during the week, and our desire for Ruby to know her out-of-town grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins means we are often traveling or entertaining guests on the weekends.  We can’t keep this pace up.  And so we talked and discussed and did budgety things, and then we decided that in December I will just stop.  I will just quit my job and stay home with Ruby. 

Now, we have made some  pretty drastic, life-changing decisions in the past, but none has freaked me out like this one.  I’m not really sure why, though.  I have so many worries associated with this choice–will I be bored? will I be any good at being a stay-at-home mom? will I still be interesting to talk to? will I ever get a chance to take a shower? will we make it financially? For now, I’ve got grand plans of homecooked suppers, freshly baked bread, a thriving vegetable garden, daily walks, library story-times and a folk-music class… And this is my “trying to be reasonable” list.  Am I replacing one insane life with another?  Maybe.  But at least my new one will be self-inflicted and I will have some control over it. 

I will say that I’m feeling more and more at peace with this decision as the weeks go by.  And Ruby is making things easy by being the sweetest little lady.  A lady with a TOOTH. Who can CRAWL*. 

 

*Ruby has possibly the least efficient crawl ever, but she is on hands and knees and there is forward motion, so it counts.

Nomads No More

David and I have been somewhat nomadic for the past 6 years, but last February, we actually renewed a lease for the very first time. This December we will have lived in this house longer than any other we’ve inhabited (including the one we owned!).

We love our house, but that old feeling is returning. The one that makes me consider what my stuff would look like in another setting. We’re getting restless. Our current house is the right one for us for now, though, so a couple weeks ago, we started trying some things to help us suppress our urge to move.

So, we switched our artwork around, we moved my sewing table downstairs, we reorganized our bookshelves. We made resolutions to use all of our CSA produce, to only put Ruby in disposable diapers when we absolutely have to, to go on a family walk every day, and then we broke them all before the week was out. We talked about me quitting my job to stay home with Ruby. We did our budget. We got a little freaked out and decided to revisit that later.

Surprisingly, all this superficial rearranging did the trick. But I’m sure that come January, we’ll both be checking out craigslist just to see what’s out there.

Other new stuff on my mind:

Shouldn’t we get chickens? I would make this coop and they would be Easter Eggers.  Do I even have to tell you that David is against this idea? I am working on him, though.

Ruby needs a Christmas stocking! To knit or to sew? Hmm

The GED class I teach just finished reading The Hunger Games.  Next up:  Catching Fire.  Thank goodness students filter out, or else they would surely catch on to the fact that all the books I choose are young adult science fiction with strong dystopian future themes.  Hahaha