welcome home notes

Returning home from a work trip this week, D had the opportunity to put to the test one of life’s oldest maxims, namely whether absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

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in the middle of the night

Though he still wakes up occasionally, at some point during the last year Munchkin went from tormenting us on a nightly basis to sleeping soundly through the night. The same cannot be said for Junebug. Every once in a while she’ll provide us some respite, but much more often than not at least one of us (usually S) is up in the dead of night to coax her back to sleep.

a life in pieces

There are many ways in which the Foreign Service career turns life into a study in contrasts, the opportunity to immerse oneself in disparate cultures the world over being the most obvious. One of the things we find most challenging – and necessary now that we have two kids – is maintaining structure in the face of the great unknown that always lurks a year or two beyond our current assignment.

Boise greenbelt

In retrospect, three nights in Boise was probably one too many out of our all-too-short home leave road trip, and we should have spent an extra day hiking in the Sawtooths. Still, Boise proved charming and we found plenty to do with the kids.

life in a nutshell

Despite moving to DC in July, we’ve written very little about our time thus far in the nation’s capital. It’s not for lack of things to write about either. On the contrary, we’ve been so busy that sometimes sitting down with a book in the evening feels like a guilty pleasure because of how much there is to research and take care of. From purchasing a car to arranging childcare, finding new doctors, and adjusting our finances, it’s taken a lot of adulting to get us settled in our new home.

all over the map

This summer marked the twentieth anniversary of D’s first concert, a one-day festival featuring the likes of Green Day and the Offspring. In the intervening two decades, D’s musical tastes changed and expanded, but his passion for (obsession with?) live music has remained constant. Of the 430 shows he’s seen over the last twenty years, 17 have been in just the last couple of months since we’ve returned to the United States, and these concerts have been literally all over the map – D has managed to catch shows in seven states plus the District of Columbia this summer.

anger management

Grappling with Junebug’s growing pains, we can’t help but compare our current struggles with similar periods in Munchkin’s development – both to remind ourselves that the rough patches eventually pass and also to compare and contrast.

birding with a broken lens

Perhaps the saddest moment of our Kigali tour happened a couple of months before our departure, when D realized just a split second too late that he had neglected to zip up the side pocket of our camera bag. As if in slow motion, he watched with a sinking heart as the camera tumbled out and dropped several feet, the lens landing with a sickening crunch on the tiled floor.

the zen of slow walking

With Labor Day approaching, we initially planned to take advantage of our first long weekend in DC to go hiking in Shenandoah National Park. Given the 100-degree heat this past week, however, we’ve thought better of it. Hiking, as we discovered to our chagrin a couple of months ago, is not Munchkin’s strong suit anyway.

experimental photography

Our attempts to get Munchkin interested in hiking and the great outdoors proved only marginally successful. Apparently, we’ve done quite a lot better in getting him interested in photography.