We made it . . .

I should have gotten around to a short post earlier than this but we did, in fact, make it to Minnesota.

Last Monday some very wonderful friends came and helped us load all of our belongings into a POD--a portable storage device. The POD was shipped separately to Minnesota and will sit in storage here until we have a place to live at which time the POD guy will bring all our stuff right to our driveway. It's a great way to move and I highly recommend it.

We did, however, make some fatal errors in this move. We knew that we would be separated from our POD for as long as a month but I was not very organized about packing and did not pack for the road trip and our month at Grandma's before our friends arrived to load the POD. Not having that stuff out of the way paralyzed me into a state of indecision about a lof of the odds and ends in our apartment so a whole lot wasn't packed on moving day. And the only person who knew what should go in the car rather than the POD was me and I only knew in my head--I didn't have it written down or anything. Oh, and I had the flu or something. I was incredibly sick and remained sick for the entire road trip. And I'm pregnant. Sorry if you're hearing that for the first time but we ran out of time for personal phone calls.

Our friends were incredibly patient and understanding and loaded the POD for us including such items as: Eric's wallet, the checkbook, my maternity clothes, the kids' toothbrushes, Joseph's pajamas, the cable I need to get pictures from my camera to this blog. You get the picture. I don't at all blame our friends. Its 100% my fault that these things didn't make it to Minnesota. But it made for a stressful start to the trip.

We had a rainy, but picturesque drive through the mountains the first afternoon on the road and we stayed the night in the first hotel over the Ohio River. The next day we set out for Madison, WI and spent hour after hour driving through farm after farm. We'd been sad to leave DC and I was miserably sick and the morning was not at all fun. The kids and I got a good afternoon nap and then Eric got some friend Walleye for dinner in Gary, IN. By the time we hit Chicago we were all feeling somewhat human again and feeling like we were withing strking distance of what will be home for the next year. We hope to visit Chicago a bit. The kids were asleep by the time we hit Wisconsin and the final leg of the trip was made more pleasant by a stop at Culver's for frozen custard--Eric's first attempt at turning me into a Midwesterner.

We spent two nights in Madison hosted by Eric's grandfather. He's living in a very lovely retirement community/assisted living/nursing facility where he has his own apartment and he put us up in one of the guest suites. We visited him, visited some other family members, bought me some clothes, and tooled around Madison a bit. Eric lived in Madison until he was fifteen so there was lots to remember. The kids had a really great time visiting with the older generation of Iltis/Dobbs family. Margaret was not at all shy and took to everyone really quickly. She calls Grandpa, "Frapup."

Thursday we set out for St. Paul and discovered that the midwest flooding had been farther north than we'd realized. Field after field was underwater though the freeway was passable all the way through. We arrived at Eric's mom's house in time for dinner and we were very glad to have the trip behind us.

We're staying in the Tuthill basement for now and being well-cared for here. Lots of good food and help with the kids. Eric started work yesterday and is feeling good about his new job. I'm getting to know St. Paul in a more intentional way. We have an appointment to see a house on Friday that seems like a really great place so we hope to have our housing finalized by the end of the week as well.

I have a few pictures but I'll need to consult with the resident techie here to see if there is a way to get them off my camera, so stay tuned.

Packing up and moving on

I think most of our blog readers have heard our job and moving news by now. If you haven't heard all the details and you count yourself among our personal friends, please drop us an e-mail and we'll fill you in.

Early last week Eric accepted a job in Minnesota. It's not the perfect job but it is a great job and we're grateful for it. Eric has been job-hunting almost without a break for eighteen months straight and the strain of always wondering about the next step was a bit much for our family. When we finally realized that Eric did have a job and we did know where we were going it was hard to believe.

We are quite sad about leaving DC. We've lived here a couple of years longer than the average DC resident and our time here has included our entire marriage and the births of two children. We have come to love urban living and we've made some wonderful friends. We'll really miss all of the (free!) cultural opportunities, our pedestrian lifestyle, lots of choices for churches and coffee shops, the East Coast and our relative proximity to family and friends here. I doubt we'll return to DC but we do plan to try to get back to the East Coast as soon as possible.

Fortunately, there is much to look forward to. It's pure coincidence that Eric got a job in Minnesota but it is a happy coincidence. Our landlord is selling our condo and we needed to leave by June 30th, anyway. Our plan was to put all our stuff in a POD and take our regular trip to the Midwest to visit family and friends. We'd save July rent and, we hoped, have a job lined up by the time Eric's mom got sick of us. Its worked out so that we can pretty much just keep to our plan but now we don't have the stress of wondering where we're headed after Minnesota. Our stuff will be stored for us while we look for a rental house in our new town and we can stay with Eric's mom until we get settled. Eric starts work as soon as we arrive in Minnesota.

We'll be living just thirty minutes outside the Twin Cities in a town where we have a few friends already. We're really looking forward to seeing more of Eric's family. His little brother, Ben, will be a senior in high school this year and we'll finally get to participate in all his school things that we usually miss. Both of the kids' godparents are in the Twin Cities and they'll all get to know each other better. I'm looking forward to becoming more familiar with Eric's "homeland." We'll be able to make easy trips to Madison to see more of Eric's family. And we hope to take a couple opportunities to indulge our love of road trips by venturing further west to sightsee.

I apologize for the infrequent posts but life, as you can imagine, is pretty crazy. Boxes piled everywhere and everything in disarray. Joseph hates change and is decidedly ambivalent about this move but Margaret can't get enough of packing.


We just have to be careful about what she's putting into those boxes:


I'll be back with more frequent updates once we're settled in Minnesota. I can't promise to post much before the beginning of August but I will try if I have the opportunity.

Speaking of Joseph and his mobility

I've been meaning for awhile to post about Joseph's new long leg braces. They aren't all that new anymore, actually. I think this set arrived shortly after Christmas. You might remember that his old set of braces were very non-mechanical. The hope was that he could use the trace muscle control in his hips to move his legs forward without any mechanical assistance. Joseph made off-and-on forward progress with that set of braces. Last September when I posted a video of Joseph in those braces was pretty much the peak of his ability with those. He was also outgrowing that set so we met with his doctor and therapist to think about other options. We decided to go with a Reciprocating Gait Orthotic (RGO). (If you follow that link, note that Joseph has the isocentric design). The RGO is mainly different in that there is a joint on the back, pictured here:


The joint automatically swings the left leg back when the right leg moves forwards and vice versa. This means that Joseph can more or less just lean to one side and the mechanical motion gives him a lot of help advancing. This brace also lacks the "moon boot" design of the old set. These have a molded plastic piece that fits inside his shoes and attaches to metal pieces on the side of his leg. Joseph has lightweight ankle braces he wears all day long when he's not in his RGO so this is just the same thing all in one piece.

There is still a steep learning curve. We are very far from taking this brace out to use in public but Joseph can get across the room fairly easily using his walker. It's very wide and has a large, slow turning radius so it isn't all that much fun for him but he's usually willing to try it out for a few minutes.

Shannon, his therapist, also has Joseph working on walking with crutches. The crutches were actually Joseph's idea several months ago. He saw a kid at the hospital using crutches and wanted to try it himself. Typically, kids don't start with crutches until at least age five but Shannon wanted to go with Joseph's interests and she brought him some. Joseph was doing such a fantastic job with them this morning that I was able to snap these pictures. All he is actually doing here is standing unsupported but that is a huge milestone for him. Obviously the crutches are much less stable than a walker with four wheels and a wide base. Every little movement throws off his balance. But he did it. He stood for several minutes on his own this morning. He can walk around using the crutches if he gets a lot of assistance.

Progress is slow, but mostly steady. It is unlikely that Joseph will ever use braces and crutches for everyday mobility but they are very valuable as a therapeutic tool and he may find that he likes them better for around the house or around a workplace in the future. And they provide a lot of entertainment for Margaret who wants to be just like her big brother.

Wheelchair Update

"Smile, Joseph!"


Most of our family have had a chance to see Joseph in his wheelchair but many readers of this blog live far away and we missed our usual pilgrimage to the Midwest last year so I thought I'd offer an update and a few reflections on Joseph's mobility.

Part of the reason I'm inspired to write is that we always prepare people for seeing Joseph on wheels for the first time by saying something like, "He does really well. He's so good at maneuvering and so fast. Wait till you see him." When we say this the other person smiles and nods and says, "Uh huh." Then they do see him in person and say something like, "Holy cow! What an amazing kid! He can really do it!" You really have to see it to believe it. And, unfortunately, you don't see it much. There are not very many paraplegic three-year olds with the cognitive ability to power a wheelchair. There is an amazing wheelchair-accessible park out in the suburbs in Virginia where we've been several times and we've never met someone like Joseph. He is amazing.

We've had the chair for just about a year, now, but last summer was a challenge as we got everything adjusted correctly and we've only had it permanently since August. Joseph learned quickly how to operate the chair and has continued to amaze us as we watch his strength and skills increase. He can easily wheel himself four or five blocks in our neighborhood if we aren't going uphill. He still needs help crossing streets safely but I imagine that most three-year olds do. Joseph can wheel up and down ramps. He's a bit slow going up but he always wants to do it by himself and he always makes it. Going down is even more fun: he lets his wheels go until he's going incredibly fast and then grabs them at the last second--simultaneously braking and making a 90-degree turn at the bottom of the ramp. He does the same trick coming into our kitchen. He zooms down our long hallway and comes careening around the corner into the main room. He can also do small bumps and slightly uneven ground himself. On the sidewalks we use all the time--at our house, in front of church, etc.,--he knows exactly where the uneven spots are and knows the easiest path. He can pop (small) wheelies to get over an obstacle that is an inch or two high.

Lawns are still a challenge. We've been to the Arboretum here and Joseph did have fun while we picnicked with friends but only because one of the other girls thought it would be fun to push Joseph around all morning. Between her pushing and Joseph wheeling they got around fairly well but I still had to go rescue them several times. While we were visiting CUA to see Pope Benedict Joseph was off on his own playing with some other kids and hit a dip in the lawn. If he were standing we would have said he'd gone head over heels. He was fine but it was scary.

This is one reason, by the way, that we love city living so much. A yard is not all that beneficial for Joseph. We'd much rather live someplace with wide sidewalks and other interesting paved areas. Our favorite activity lately is to walk Daddy to the Metro where Joseph can watch a building under construction and zoom around on the huge Metro plaza.

We take the wheelchair with us pretty much everywhere we go. The exception is if we're truly just "going for a walk" and don't intend to let either kid out of the stroller. Our double stroller is much easier for me to push so we still use it a lot when we're just out for some fresh air. Needing to take the chair has crimped our pedestrian lifestyle, somewhat. For example, I used to take Metro to get to the library but pushing the wheelchair, carrying Margaret on my back and carrying our library books proved to be too much for me. We've been driving more than I like for the past several months. That is starting to change as Joseph's wheeling abilities grow. We're trying to find places to go close by where Joseph can wheel most of the way himself and both kids can have a chance to get their wiggles out. We also try to meet friends around town regularly. One favorite destination is the National Gallery of Art. Joseph does like art but I have a feeling that his favorite part of that museum are the huge expanses of uninterrupted smooth marble floor. We've been yelled at by guards (even though Joseph has never bumped anything) who then stand off to the side and just stare in awe as Joseph zooms around spinning in circles and never bumping anyone or anything.

Not that he's a perfect angel. We have to remind him to look out behind him all the time. The handles on the chair are removable and we have them off as much as possible because they stick out really far and are a real hazard in crowds. He's also not very good at following voice commands such as, "Joseph! Stop! There's a car coming!" We have a lot of work to do in the traffic safety department.

The best thing about the wheelchair, by far, is that we get to go to the head of the line everywhere we go. I'm just kidding. The best part is that Joseph can interact socially in a very age-appropriate way. On Sunday mornings, for example, we head down to the parish hall for donuts and coffee. Joseph eats half a donut and then takes off to play with the other kids. He can chase them and run from them and get right up to them at eye-level and he has a blast. We went to IKEA last weekend and Joseph decided he was an ice cream truck driver and gave out ice cream cones to all the other customers. We love to watch him be a regular kid.

There are challenges, of course, to having a kid in a wheelchair. The chair takes up half the space in our trunk. Our apartment is too small for us to give Joseph total access to toys and materials. He can't carry things very well (though he's getting good at one-handed wheeling). He's getting almost too heavy for me to lift--but we're working hard at teaching him to transition in and out of his chair to various surfaces. But mostly Joseph is just a normal kid with a very cool way of getting around. We've found that, on the whole, fitting a wheelchair into our life requires far less effort than we thought it would.

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for awhile because Eric told me I couldn't publish a wheelchair post without some wheelchair pictures. But Joseph is hard to get while wheeling. I took some on an outing last week. We got together with our friends Emily and Andrew and the Bartel Family. Clare and Kate Bartel are good friends of Joseph and Margaret. Here they are watching a mama pigeon and her two babies:


Margaret, who is usually shy, clung to Clare the whole time the kids were playing:



And, finally, the whole group that evening. These friends have been our "A List" social network for the last six years. Andrew is moving to take a teaching job and we hope that we will be, too. We went out for a last hurrah at a favorite restaurant. The weather didn't exactly cooperate but the kids had fun in the light rain. These friends will be dearly missed.

Ever wonder what Margaret actually looks like?

So did we. This is what we usually see:


My mom visited for Mother's Day weekend and Margaret consented to let Grandma put her hair up.





Look at that cutie! I couldn't resist putting up all three pictures.

Aunt Laura, a big favorite with both kids came for the day as well.

Introducing

Doctorandus Eric Johnston.

Eric defended his dissertation yesterday afternoon. He was told that one is supposed to pretend to be at least a little nervous but he had no trouble summoning up actual anxiety for the occasion. He wasn't really concerned about failing--your board is supposed to make sure you don't get as far as the defense without a good product--but it is possible to fail. And, more, the five-person examination committee is supposed to be tough on you. They don't call it a defense for nothing.

Eric's committee, however, spent two hours telling him that he'd done excellent work and encouraging him to publish the dissertation. I brought the kids to campus and met Eric for the post-defense champagne. His committee was very complimentary of Eric and there was much joking about how relieved I must be. I've heard horror stories about what wives of Ph.D students have had to endure but I can't really complain. But I am relieved.

Joseph is calling Eric "Dr. Daddy" but the committee was very emphatic that Eric is not to be called "Doctor" until the degree is conferred which, unfortunately, can't happen until October. CUA does not have summer graduations and Eric missed the spring deposit date by three days. He already had convinced his committee to put an extreme rush on the defense in order to finish this semester so getting those few days really was impossible. One of the professors decided that the proper title in the meantime is "Doctorandus" a Latin construction meaning "to be doctored." And Eric wants me to be sure to note that the above picture was taken this morning as he left to give a final exam to his students. He dressed up more nicely for the defense.

Benedict XVI

I don't know if the visit of Pope Benedict XVI has been big news in the rest of the country. Living in Washington we are always surprised at what seems like a big deal to us and is barely on the radar of friends and family outside the Beltway. But even if your local news isn't running 24-7 papal visit coverage this is, really, a big deal. The last time a pope came to Washington was in 1978, I think. I tried to look that up but I don't have time for lots of googling right now. John Paul II came to the US five times in 26 years, anyway. This was Benedict's first visit and most of you probably know that after spending a few days with us here he left for New York this morning.

Our family really had good luck in the ticket department. Every diocese in the US got tickets to one of the stadium masses and our parish had 65 that went into a random drawing. We only won one but, somehow, they found three more for us. The Mass was a long morning: we left at 6:30 for a 10:00 Mass that lasted two hours. But it was a great time. The kids did really well. The new Nationals Stadium here in Washington is very nice--it's only been in use for a few weeks--and we had fantastic seats so we were able to people watch down on the field. We saw the priest who baptized Margaret briefly (he lives in southern Virginia) and an old friend from the National Shrine who had the job of master of ceremonies for the Mass. Joseph loved seeing the procession of bishops all in red. Most of all it was wonderful to see the Holy Father in person and attend Mass with him. Here are a few pictures of his arrival in the stadium and the general set-up of the Mass:





We were also offered, at the last minute, tickets to get onto the CUA campus to view the Popemobile ride between two different talks Benedict was giving. We were pretty tired after being out all morning and getting lunch and getting home but we wanted to try to get a closer view of Benedict and we knew that the campus atmosphere would be very festive and fun and we wanted to be there with our friends. It was a pretty good party and our closest friends were all there. Lots of kids were running around and Joseph and Margaret got to play outside. We were all gathered on the lawn outside the National Shrine and many had brought guitars and drums. Benedict came by and Joseph got a great view from atop Daddy's shoulders. My view was a bit obstructed but we still saw him pretty close and had a great time visiting with everyone. I was holding Margaret in a crowd so I couldn't also get a picture of that sighting. But Margaret had a great time playing with our friend Emily.