Communing with My Community

I'm excited to report that my neighborhood (and several other adjacent neighborhoods) has formed a new volunteer-run parent resource group. The focus is on both providing community for and with one another so that we know our neighbors and recognize the kids on the playground, and also on supporting parents of families with kids aged 0-5 (although it's not exclusive to those parents). The idea is that by providing a centralized website and resource with information about daycare, preschool, and babysitters parents will be better able to care for themselves and their children. Likewise, the group has organized some Moms' Nights out and Dads' Nights out too, as well as several playgroup opportunities for kids. I'm stoked!

One of the things that I have found the hardest about being a stay-at-home mom for the last 2 years, is that slowly many of my peers who had kids of the same age as my daughter, began to go back to work leaving me literally at home alone with Peanut. When I was growing up, my mom lived right next door to two families with other stay-at-home moms. This meant that there was a constant flock of children around our house and the moms seemed to have "coffee dates" just about all the time (although I suspect the actual *sitting down* with a cup of joe and a coffee cake happened at best once a week!). I suppose a part of me envisioned that this is how my life as a SAHM would be. The best of both worlds - time with my daughter and female companionship. Not as easy as I thought.

I'm not sure that this particular group will hold the answer. But even if it doesn't, I think that the benefits to the community and our neighborhood make participation well worth it regardless. Our neighborhood isn't super family or kid friendly and although we're lucky to have lots of nearby parks (whoo hoo!) that seems to be the extent of our neighborhood's "child-friendliness". Hopefully this will change things.

7-ish Weeks and Counting

That's right. Just about 7 more weeks until my due date of June 15th. And I'm really not sure how I'll make it that long. It feels like there is NO room left in my belly. I've got a mild grade nausea by the end of the day, surely the result of being pummeled in the stomach by a squirming baby who often lodges itself squarely against said stomach for hours (ouch). I've also got an increasingly clingy toddler who wants to be held and carried by me even if I go no further than across the room. I'm not finding this easy to manage.

Still, I'm grateful that we're getting more sleep at night. Have I mentioned that Peanut is back in her crib here at home and hasn't figured out how to safely scale the sides of the crib to get out? She occasionally climbs in by herself, but she won't climb out so we're all sleeping much better at night. Last night was the first night she had a night waking in 4 or 5 days and it was a brief one after some minor reassurance. It's been lovely!

Everyone's health is quite good. I just wish the next 7 weeks wouldn't be as hard as I think they might be. I've got a stomach ache right now and I have no idea why. Usually I feel good if I'm laying down, but with a toddler - close to impossible. So. For now, we just keep on keepin' on.

Hazy Days

The jet lag seems to have worn off, but there are days when I'm not sure if I'm coming or going. Between moving from Japan to our friends' place, then after 2 weeks with them back to our own home (after our renters left), we've been all over the place. Having entered the 3rd trimester, this all seems much much harder. I feel as though I'm walking through molasses on most days. I spend most of my time trying my hardest to keep up with an incredibly active toddler who has become very clingy (lots of travel + impending new baby arrival makes this not too surprising). This means that we still have boxes that we pulled out of storage that remain unopened. Any preparations for baby are likely not to happen until just a week before the due date. In the meantime we're also fighting the fires that come with home ownership - a pest invasion (cleared up), a leaky fridge (fixed), damaged floors underneath fridge (pending), busted fireplace (pending), windows in dire need of cleaning (mold growing in window tracks), etc.

Having said all this, I'm ecstatic to have my own gloriously comfortable bed to sleep in at night. I'm over the moon(!) to be making homemade macaroni and cheese for dinner tonight (and to have access to the ingredients to do so)! I've fallen in love with my local library all over again. Well, I never fell out of love with them, I just happy to be reunited! Our cat has returned home after an extended stay with friends while we were out of the country and we're all thrilled to be together again.

All in all, life is good right now.

Moving Around

I know, I know! You’ve been wondering – where *will* she be living?! How did the whole renter thing turn out? We decided that we’d just go ahead and let our renters stay since I was comfortable with being displaced for a week and in the end they were only asking for another 5 days beyond that. Seattle here we come!

We're now frantically packing and trying to get ready to go. This has been complicated by Peanut's never-ending illness. Things started to get dicey the other night when she spiked a fever. Then on Friday she first complained of pain in her ear. Things seemed to improve a little, although she was clearly not sleeping well at night and was then sleeping a lot and at strange hours during the day. Then the ear pain complaints started again late on Friday and by Saturday morning we had our diagnosis of an ear infection along with a prescription for some antibiotics. Thank goodness this all manifested before our flight on Monday; traveling with a toddler with an ear infection on an international flight doesn't sound like my idea of a good time.

I'm looking forward to heading "home" to Seattle in less than 48 hours. Even if we won't be in our own space right away, it's time to move on.

I've migrated...

but have no idea how successful the migration is yet. The comment counts are all wrong and often I get an error message when trying to access a post. Apparently I'm one of a "small number of users" who now get this message after migration. We'll see what happens next. Stay tuned.

Transitioning Back Home

As we were making our preparations to return to Japan last fall, we found renters for our house at the last minute. Truly, 2 weeks before our departure a friend put two and two together and matched us and our vacant house from December - March with some friends who were about to undergo a remodel on their house and needed a place to stay for that same time frame. Even better, their home was only a couple of miles from our place so they could periodically check on the progress of their remodel and since our place would be rented as a furnished space, they could leave most of their stuff in their home and not have to worry about where to sleep or what pots and pans they'd be using for cooking. And basically I want to starting nesting as I've mentioned before.

And of course, given the short notice and the fact that they were referred by friends, we didn't get a rental agreement in writing - something that worried me from the start. I'm a bit compulsive about these kinds of things. I just want everyone to have the same clear expectations. Not having the rental agreement in writing was probably our first mistake.

At some point, a few weeks into their stay, one of the renters emailed us to ask if we'd reduce the rent because they really would have liked to use the extra bedroom that we had closed up with our personal belongings inside. At the time that we explained our circumstances (in 2 weeks' time we couldn't move out all the furniture and stored items from our daughter's room), the renters assured us that they didn't need to use that 2nd bedroom and were more than happy with our proposed one-bedroom furnished rental. Upon further consideration, they decided that they would have liked to use that room for hosting guests and could we consider reducing the rent accordingly? To be fair, our estimated rental price may have been a little on the higher side because when we drew it up in our minds, we were anticipating renting out the entire house including both bedrooms. We conceded their point and reduced the rent slightly.

As we prepared to return, we asked how the remodel was progressing and were assured it was on schedule. We still planned to return as late as possible in March so that our renters would have lots of time to make the necessary arrangements to move out. Now they're asking us for another week "or so" in April. They feel bad about asking us not to return to our house, but don't want to move their belongings twice.

Here's the sticking point. When we initially talked to them about our return plans, we acknowledged that we had no set return date but given the pregnancy, I didn't want to be traveling after the end of March so we'd be back by then at the latest but were thinking of mid-March. As I recall it, we had told them we had friends we might be able to stay with until the end of March to give them the remodel duration time. But we never talked about April. And now that they're asking us to stay away until almost mid-April, I'm not thrilled. I've been looking forward to returning to my own home and space. I've been thinking about my own bed and settling back into my own kitchen. I've been dreaming about eating all the foods that make me healthy and happy instead of having to eat whatever my mother-in-law cooks because we only have one kitchen and in-laws that don't generally care to eat the kind of food I'd cook up.

So. What to do. We'd like to have a positive recommendation from these renters for future purposes in the event that we rent out our place again as we hope to do the next time we return to Japan for an extended trip. And of course, since they are friends of friends, I don't want to screw this up too badly. But is it all worth it? I'm just not sure. I feel like we've already made concessions of all kinds regarding the rental amount and even which things we'd move around in order to better accommodate them before we left.

And I really had never anticipated being displaced from my home well into April. I'm sure our renters did. Realistically, a remodel never goes according to plan and I get that. But I thought it was pretty clear that we'd give them until the end of March (we'd make it work one way or another) but that was pretty much our best offer. Now I am able to envision that there may have been some room for misinterpretation as I'm sure they interpreted our suggestion that we might be able to stay with friends for a week or two as an open-ended kind of thing that would start whenever they needed they extra time (or call it their wishful thinking - whatever).

They've said that they can stay with friends but don't want to have to move twice. I don't blame them. We're thinking of offering them our garage as storage space until an April 15th drop dead date. They'd need to be out by March 28th since we'll be back on the 29th, but they could leave the bulk of their stuff behind (and it sounds like they brought a lot with them and that's part of the reason they wanted more space at our place) and not have to drag it all with them twice.

We're going to check with one set of friends who would normally do just about anything for us and thus might be able to put us up. But I'm concerned that their child, who is close in age to our daughter, might not handle it well. He's a very intense, spirited-child and he doesn't like to be around other children or even other adults all that much. I'd hate to come back into his life after being going for more than 4 months and to invade his space creating a real threat for him. Needless to say, staying with them for a week would normally be fun for us adults, but I'm not sure the toddlers will have a great time which ultimately means we adults may struggle. And have I mentioned that I'm pregnant and the hormones are raging????? I'm definitely coming around to the idea of staying with our friends for a week and just seriously hanging out and having some fun. We used to be roommates and it could be nice to have some together time again. Also, two of the four of us adults will celebrate our birthdays that week, so we'll surely be spending some quality time with them anyway...

If there's another option, I'd love to hear it. I'm trying to make everyone as happy and comfortable as possible, but I always do that and then I feel like miserable martyr and that doesn't seem useful. *sigh*

Riding the Hormone Roller Coaster

I woke the other morning from a dream in which I was crying and I found myself actually, physically crying. And then I was sobbing. Suddenly I felt overwhelmed by a number of questions and doubts about our life here in Japan, about our attempt to live a bicoastal/bicultural life, about our second baby - you know the "little" things!

I was amazed at how powerful the emotions were and at the same time I realized that the extent to which I was crying sort of outweighed the feelings I was having. Good old pregnancy hormone roller coaster strikes again!

I confess I'm really, really looking forward to our return to the U.S. as I'm feeling a strong desire to be in my own home and comfort space as I finish this pregnancy. I'm tired of living in someone else's space and eating someone else's food and feeling like it's just too hard to carve out space (literal and figurative) of my own. And I'm feeling a very strong desire to nest, in a way that I truly didn't feel during my first pregnancy.

So in case you were wondering, that's where I'm at emotionally these days. On the edge...but holding on. Just 24 more days.