Wisconsin Tour

Eric has a lot of family in Wisconsin--he mostly grew up in Madison and his Dad is from Door County (the "Thumb" of Wisconsin). We had hoped that we'd make several trips to Wisconsin this year since we're only four or five hours away from family there but, unfortunately, those plans didn't work out. We did manage to fit in one quick trip last week before returning home to finish packing.

We spent one night on the south shore of Lake Superior where Eric once spent a summer. Very beautiful country. We then headed out to Sturgeon Bay and had a great visit with Eric's dad and his family. The kids insisted on going swimming in frigid Lake Michigan. We have some pictures on the way (I hope!) of Margaret and Joseph at a really fun farm museum feeding animals and riding tractors.

After Sturgeon Bay we headed for Madison and since the kids were pretty fried from so much visiting we decided to make a stop at the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge. It was a lovely couple of hours wandering through the marsh and checking out some wildlife.



After two nights in Madison we took a slight detour to come home north along the Mississippi River. That part of the country is so beautiful and it is awesome to see how wide the river is just a little south of here--and we're way north of where the river gets really big! Along the way we took an hour-long rest stop here:


Recognize that house? This is the house where Laura Ingalls Wilder was born. It's a replica, actually, but it is accurate and it is on the actual spot. This park land was donated and the house built in 1974. The house is tiny. The Ingalls family lived in it when their first two daughters were born (Mary and Laura) and then moved back after a failed attempt at living in Kansas (Little House on the Prairie) with a third baby (Carrie) before moving on to Minnesota (On the Banks of Plum Creek) and, finally, South Dakota (By the Shores of Silver Lake and on). I was completely in love with all the "Little House" books growing up and we've read already read the first few to Joseph. He loves them too and both kids had a great time visiting Laura's first house.


This house was the setting for Little House in the Big Woods but you have to look really hard to discover that this used to be dense woods--the edge of the Great North Woods. It has since been cleared for farm land.


And, yes, Eric was humming the Little House theme song from the television series every time Margaret went running across the field.

William's Baptism

William was baptized on March 29th and I've finally found some time to put up some pictures for those of you who missed it! These were all taken by my grandfather . . .

He was baptized at our parish, the Cathedral of St. Paul. We were lucky to have several family members fly in from both coasts to help us celebrate. The godfather is Brett, our dear friend from DC and it was great to give him a good excuse to come visit us!


Ben entertained everyone at the party afterward with one of his amazing Kapla creations. I'm not sure this toy will ever get used once we move away from Ben.


Yes, my baby adores me . . .

The happiest baby on the block

Here are a few from the series of shots I tried to get of William's first smiles. These are probably two weeks old, now. I really can't slack off if I want to blog about a tiny baby. He changes so fast! William is doing well. He continues to be our easiest baby by far. I like to think it's because I'm such a great mother now but I suppose his temperament could have something to do with it.

This and that . . .

What we do for fun on the fifth of April here in Minnesota:



You might think that building snowmen would be boring after five straight months of winter but the rest of the winter was so cold that the snow would never pack into balls. The kids put this together (with some help, I gather) while I made breakfast this morning. Then they knocked him down. And he'll probably be gone in a day or two. The extended forecast is starting to look up later this week and I'm hoping that we will finally have real spring. It's been sort of fun to note that it is almost always twenty to thirty degrees warmer in the city we're moving to than it is here.

And speaking of moving, I was trying to take some pictures of William's smiles while holding him the other day (those pictures to follow . . .) and accidentally caught this shot into our dining room.

I know I never got around to posting pictures of our house and I wish I had because it really is beautiful. I thought this one really captured it. Our lovely old house with all the built in glass-front cupboards and dark woodwork is one thing I will definitely miss about Minnesota. I think I'm posting this picture more for my benefit :)

The Good News

I think all the biggest fans of this blog already got this news via personal e-mail but I want to make sure everyone hears.

Eric got a fantastic job offer last week (on his birthday, no less) to teach theology at a university. It's easy to be optimistic before anything has started but this job sounds like the best opportunity of anything Eric has applied for or considered doing in the last three years. The endless applications, trolling of job banks, networking and rejection letters have been a real trial. We've moved twice and relocated our family halfway across the country for a job that didn't survive the economic meltdown. And now it seems that an ideal situation has finally worked out for us and all the stress almost seems worth it.

We'll be moving early this summer to New Jersey. This is quite ironic, to my mind. Long time readers of this blog and, really, anyone who has talked to us for more than ten minutes will know that we love urban living and tried to move to Brooklyn two years ago. Eric has now landed a job pretty close to New York--but not close enough that we could actually live there. When we were discussing the New York idea together Eric suggested that we consider living in Newark, New Jersey. My response was something like, "No way! I am not moving to New Jersey and certainly not to Newark." Now Eric has a job in New Jersey and our top-choice neighborhood is in Newark. But my opinion has changed somewhat.

We are quite excited to get back to an urban lifestyle and we think it will work well for us long term. Though we do live right in St. Paul now it is a pretty car-centric town where everyone has a yard. A yard is not in any way useful to Joseph. Joseph has three times dumped his wheelchair playing on grass. When we lived in DC we got outside almost every day and used sidewalks. Joseph can play best on paved surfaces. And I find it far less stressful to just walk out my door and go somewhere than to load kids into a car and drive. That's just me. We're excited to get back to being pedestrians more often and excited to be part of a vibrant city neighborhood.

The location, I know, is not what some in our family were hoping for. I know for sure that some were hoping we'd remain here in Minnesota while others hoped we would get into New England. Either of those things would have been nice. But our location in New Jersey will put us an easy distance from my sister and brother and make weekend trips to New England possible. We'll also be quite close to New York City and not too far from Washington--a city we really came to love and where we still have many friends. Eric will also be well-located for his academic interests.

And, best of all, we have no reason to think this isn't permanent. That is such a relief and it's even sort of hard for us to wrap our minds around at this point. We've been living for so long with "ifs" and "maybes" and contingency plans. We won't be buying a house right away but I will be able to buy houseplants for our next apartment because we'll be able to take them with us when we do move a house. We'll be able to buy a side of beef again without wondering if we have time to eat it all before we have to move across the country. We can really settle in to a parish and friendships and community organizations knowing that we are making a long term investment in the place where we hope to raise our children. It's pretty exciting.

We've told the kids, of course, and they are excited. Although I'm not sure they really have any idea what this means. They know we'll be taking a long trip and Margaret is excited that she'll be able to have goldfish crackers on the long trip. I don't think they realize that we'll be getting a new house and no longer visiting Grandma Marga twice a week. We'll all be pretty sad to leave Minnesota and we're all so grateful that this last year--a strange chapter in our life--was able to be spent here. The kids have been able to really get to know Eric's family and I've really been able to see where Eric is from. We'll certainly look forward to annual trips back to the Midwest.

And so as not to cheat you (because, after all, this is a blog about the kids) here is a cute one:

The Joseph Catch-All Post

In an effort to catch up a bit and get some really cute pictures out there I thought I'd try to do a summary on Margaret and Joseph while we're waiting for William to do something really interesting like smile on cue.

The top picture here is very emblematic of Joseph's crazy imagination. I was working in the bedroom one afternoon while Eric played with the kids. When I finished what I was doing I found my two kids as you see them in that picture. Joseph had decided that they were going to be in a race together and needed racing outfits. They picked out their racing shirts, racing hats, racing gloves, and racing leg warmers all on their own. Joseph's costumes are not usually this elaborate. He'll often play for an hour with a piece of silk, a blanket, a scarf or a baby sling. He has "rest time" each day in our sun room. He almost never sleeps these days but makes up stories and games for himself. When I came to get him a few days ago he had wrapped a piece of silk around his head and gathered it in front into a long tail. "Mommy, I'm an elephant!"

Sometimes, Joseph does still conk out after a busy "rest time."

He'd probably looked at all the books strewn around him. Then he built himself a fishing pole out of Tinker Toys. Then he fell asleep.

We've gotten lots and lots of snow this year. I could write a whole post on winter in Minnesota but I've been fighting the temptation because I try not to be whiny on this blog. Eric has gotten plenty of opportunity to shovel and whenever he hasn't had to rush off to work he takes the kids out to "help" him. Joseph doesn't usually go out in his wheelchair, actually. Maybe this picture was taken before he got snow pants. The kids, inexplicably, like to lie on their stomachs and tunnel through the snow. Margaret cries and comes inside after a few minutes of this. Joseph would probably stay out as long as we let him.

Joseph adores his new baby brother and the feeling is mutual. Since Joseph actually understands how to hold a baby we can let William hang out with him for longer stretches. William loves Joseph. He almost never cries if Joseph is holding him and last week he fell asleep in Joseph's lap. It's really neat to see them together and I'm looking forward to watching them grow up together.

And, in the milestones department . . . That is Joseph's foot (next to Margaret's foot). We were at a playgroup last Friday and Joseph was playing hard with the other kids. He wasn't wearing shoes--just thick socks--and his big toe was hanging a bit over the edge of the footplate on his wheelchair. No one--including Joseph--is sure of what happened. But we assume he crashed hard into a wall or projectile of some sort. He smashed his toe really hard. Another mom saw blood everywhere and called me over. Joseph has no feeling in his legs or feet so he hadn't noticed. Eric came and brought him to the ER where, after a six-hour wait, Joseph got eight stitches in his toe and a nice bandage to go with them. Since he wasn't in pain he thought the whole thing was pretty fascinating. He'll be fine as long as we can keep him from banging his foot around too much. You'd be surprised how much foot banging a paralyzed four-year old can do!

So there's a bit on Joseph . . . Some photos of Margaret and some good news coming up soon.

A few more pictures