hawaii

The Final Countdown

The time has come to tidy up loose ends and head back to the wintry north.

In some ways, it feels like we arrived yesterday and in some ways it feels as if we’ve been gone for years. So much has happened.

When we arrived, little Ollie was, as a friend calls it, in “Potted Plant Phase”. Sure, he was rolling back and forth but for the most part he’d stay where I left him, arms and legs waving wildly. Now, it’s a full on race to keep up with my crawling, standing, stair climbing babe. He’s chock-full of change. From erupting teeth to bubbling over with babbling, he’s changing right before our eyes.

The other day, I was listing all the boats he’s been on:

A cruise to the Columbia Glacier in Valdez

A boat trip across the lake at home

A glass bottom boat in Hawaii…

This kid has run the gamut, from ice cold ocean to salmon filled lakes to warm seas. In such a small time, we’ve been so many places, met so many faces, learned so much. Change with a babe is constant but adding external change makes the ride even wilder. I did a little more tallying:

Since right before Ollie was born we’ve moved from:

Home to Anchorage

Anchorage to Anchorage (three days before the little dude arrived)

Anchorage to home

Home to Hawaii

Hawaii to Hawaii (we moved out of our family’s house this last week while they had friends visiting and we get to stay with Grandma and Grandpa who are also visiting)

Next up: Hawaii to Hawaii (back to our family’s house for the last week here) and then?

Hawaii to Anchorage

Anchorage to McCarthy (quick trip for The Chief to fix up the cabin)

Anchorage to Fairbanks (work trip for The Chief)

Anchorage to Anchorage (moving from housesitting to another friend’s home)

Anchorage to McCarthy for the summer

And finally…

Anchorage for school in the fall and beyond!

Phew! I’m a little tired just thinking about it and simultaneously ready to get this show on the road. Change, here we come. Time to go.

I never in my life thought I’d be ready to leave Hawaii but I am. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’ll miss the heck out of the ease and the breeze as I wrestle my babe into winter clothes for even the smallest endeavor outdoors but Alaska for me right now signals a slow down (at least in the fall) and I am here for it. Because, while I wouldn’t change a thing, I definitely wouldn’t recommend moving umpteen times with a tot. It’s…well, it’s a lot.

And, it’s exactly what we needed to do to figure out exactly where we need to be.

Alaska.

Who’dathunk it?

When we arrived four months ago, I didn’t even want to talk about Alaska. I needed a break. Now, four months later, we are coming full circle. Because while I’m sad to leave, I’m more excited to greet community, continuity and (eventually) calm.

Am I worried about the weather?

Yep.

Ready for the cold?

Maybe.

Excited for what comes next?

Definitely.

Alaska.

With love,

From Hawaii

*Where epic sunsets greet you on your way out of the grocery store*

The recap

It’s been a while.

I’ve written to you in my head countless times, crafting paragraphs of prose I promptly forgot. So lest I lapse again, here’s where we left off:

Sick.

When Ollie was born and we were learning together how to nurse, our doula remarked how we always expect babies to just eat straight through until finish, forgetting that we too pause during meals. We put down our utensils. We take a beat. This simple reality that “babies, they’re just like us” hit home in that moment and I’ve thought back to it ever since.

They’re constantly learning, constantly changing. Yet still, when Ollie got his first fever, it felt terrifying, like I’d never see a fever before. Certainly the stakes are higher for babes, certainly it’s something to watch, but overall? Babies, they’re just like us. They get colds and coughs and just when you think the last sniffle has rung out, just when we think we’ve got a handle on it, something new comes up.

Just

Us.

And you can’t study your way out of the unknowns (trust me, I’ve tried).

Ollie sailed through his first fever with his warm cheeks pressed to my chest and straight out of that he went into another new: crawling.

Or sometimes just planking. The kid has better abs than I do though he really needs to work on his form!

Well, more like an army crawl that now has progressed into a true crawl that I’m sure will soon progress into even more mayhem. The new and the firsts just keep coming with our tenacious little man.

Another first followed: solids!

And yet another first arrived about a week later: his first time meeting his Grandma and Grandpa.

There’s something so special about seeing your parent do the things you loved with your kiddo. For us, reading was my favorite pastime and here it was, recreated in the next generation.

After the dust had settled from meeting the grandparents, up it went again in the form of a work opportunity for me and a new path for The Chief. Big decisions loomed and some still do. The dust up started to feel more like a whirlwind. Yet another first came as we got to talk about these new moves over drinks and appetizers on our first date night!

Still, the holidays stood before us as did time off to think and recoup and…sleep train.

How many years I’ve waited to write those words. They stopped me right in my tracks. I am so incredibly grateful.

We had plans, y’all.

Apparently we forgot that plans in parenthood (and in life) are laughable, at best.

Two teeth made their debut on Christmas Eve and while it’s been mellower than I anticipated, schedules have gone out the window along with our plans.

What’s a gal to do?

Roll with it.

As we welcome this new year, I welcome (albeit, sometimes begrudgingly) letting go. There are so very many uncertainties in our life right now that the only way forward is just that: forward. So cheers to the unplanned, the unstoppable, the unexpected. I hope it treats you well.

Here’s to a beautiful year.

With love,

From Hawaii

P.S. What is you resolution or your word for 2023? Leave a comment below!

Workin’ Moms

If the pandemic did anything for us, I think it helped to make each one of us humans recognize that everyone else is human also. Radical, I know. We saw people in their homes working with everything from kids to cats to dirty laundry in the background and finally we decided it was OK.

Working from home the past 6 years, I’d always felt that things had to be perfect. I’d tidy up my humanity into a professional front and hope and pray that Leto wouldn’t decide he needed to serenade us or that my background didn’t look too much like a cabin (it is a cabin because I live in a cabin), or that no one would notice when I’d slip and say “I just have to run outside to use the restroom”, failing to cover up the fact that we use an outhouse.

In my current job, which started in April 2020, that veneer became less important. People there seemed more interested and less appalled by my lifestyle as living a simpler life and getting back to basics (hello sourdough super fans!) gained popularity. Plus, everyone loved dogs, thankfully, as that was the summer that Leto fell in love with neighbor dog and howled 24/7 for two months. It felt a little less essential to hide my life and little more appropriate to share it yet still I spent a lot of effort tidying it to look a certain way (even if that way isn’t really my way).

What have we decided that looks like again? And…who decided this?

As I came back on screen for my first day after Parental Leave, despite being on the grid with an indoor toilet and all, I worried that again I would look unprofessional. In 87 degree weather my options were thin strapped clothing or heat stroke so I chose the straps. I also didn’t have my desk setup yet so I sat outside, Bougainvillea blooming behind me. Was that ok?

Yet locale and skimpy clothes were the least of my worries, because now I had a whole human to hide. How was I going to pull that off? I mean, I couldn’t simultaneously don my professional hat and my Mom hat, right?!

The funny thing is, I don’t believe any of this inner speak I was shouting at myself but somehow it crept in anyways. Sure, my attention might be divided if I’m holding my babe during a meeting but it will also be divided if I hear him crying during a meeting and still if I can’t hear him crying at all because I’m working away from him. Why? Because, as one of my coworkers pointed out to me when I asked how she dealt with working as a mom: I’m a mom. Part of me will always be thinking of my babes. That’s ok. That’s human.

Whether he’s in my sights or out, he will always be on my mind but that doesn’t make me less of a professional or less valuable of an employee. Perhaps it’s even a strength. Wild idea, I know! It’s amazing what I’ve seen multi-tasking minds do. I can’t count the number of times my parent friends have held a meaningful conversation all while clothing/feeding/calming/teaching another smaller human. Nor can I express how absolutely fluent these people have become in all things baby in no time flat. The learning curve is steep but up that hill we all climb, slowly, steadily learning along the way. Parents aren’t dummies but I sure was being one. All it took was a three hour kickoff meeting to shake me sense-full.

Three hours is a chonka chonka sized meeting for anyone but for a new mom? Extra chonk. Even if Ollie wasn’t home with The Chief and I, I still would have had to stop to pump at some point. Yet, him being home meant I could stop and simply feed him and then go back and…that was A-OK. There were three quick pauses in the three hours and one was just for me to refill my water. The week followed suit, going surprisingly well most hours of most days.

Truth be told, no matter how well the days go it’s still hard for me to be at work. It’s hard to not be the one who knows Ollie best or has all the tricks up my sleeve but once my ego started to let that go, I could see the beauty in The Chief stepping into the spotlight as I stepped out.

Watching him rock our little love to sleep when my classic moves weren’t working slowly felt less like defeat and more like freedom. Freedom to see myself as as a workin’ mom. Freedom to start taking longer than a bathroom break moment to myself. Freedom to share in the hard. And while the baton handoff has been shaky at times (I’m not crying, you’re crying) I know deep down I needed it.

So, I’m letting myself take the gift of the pandemic and allow myself to be human, a human working mom. May you all have coworkers as wise as mine to help set you straight, if need be. Let’s all just be humans together, shall we?

With love,

From Hawaii

The finish line

I’m not much of a runner anymore but I used to run in local races in California for fun (for fun?!). The longest run I ever completed was a 10k and at a point mid-race I remember thinking “Well, this will never end.”

Surprise! It did. I made it. And I lived to see another day. I know the pancake breakfast at the finish line had a lot to do with it but so did just putting one foot in front of the other, cliche as it may sound.

Back in my racing days. Color run at Candlestick Park

The last few weeks were all about one step at a time. There were so many bumps in the road I thought we might not make the finish line but there was something even better than pancakes waiting. I know what you’re thinking: “Better than pancakes?! Is that even possible? Barely, but yes.

Hawaii.

After spending two weeks shutting down the house and driving for 60 miles through the nearly two feet of fresh snow that dumped the day before we left (plus cutting down a tree blocking our passage), plus two moves once we got to Anchorage, a sore throat that we worried was COVID, Leto tummy troubles that had us up in the night more than our Ollie, and Ollie’s first flight, this exhausted quartet made it to Hawaii. It felt like we’d never reach the finish line but we did.

Leto bounded out of his kennel as if he’d been expecting the tropics and has adjusted well in the 10 days we’ve been here. Ollie is a little fish in the ocean who is pretty sure he can swim already and The Chief and I are learning the keys to baby + puppy travel in a new place (where the dog can’t be left in the car and the baby suddenly HATES driving) and enjoying the ease of the warmth and slow pace.

It’s been a week plus of settling, adjusting and finding new rhythms and this week marks a whole new shift: back to work. To be totally truthful, it’s rocked me. I’ve had to force myself to stay present and enjoy the magical moments this island provides and the sweetness of being with family.

Settling wise, we are nearly there. We have a car and groceries and a beautiful place to live with our relatives.

Work wise, I’m 100% panicked about starting back but…one step at a time towards the finish line, right? A finish line even better than pancakes (but I might need some of those too).

Wish me luck!

With love,

From Hawaii

P.S. Parents: any back to work tips?

How to Travel with Your Partner: Round III

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

The Chief and I have been lucky in love. Vacation, on the other hand, has been a beast.

From arguing our way through Ecuador to falling prey to a flu (oh, and also to arguing) in Mexico, our last two vacations have left a lot to be desired. So, after two years of being cooped up in a cabin in the woods (we jumped the gun on 2020 and deemed 2019 our Year to Stay at Home. Little did we know…), we found ourselves planning vacation number three. Third time is a charm, no?

Now, right off the bat, let me address the elephant quietly plodding about the room: Julia, you’re complaining about vacation?! No, no, no. Bear with me a moment.

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