Our cups runneth over.

We're blessed. We know we are. We have jobs (although the terms of mine are currently the subject of discussion at a special session of the legislature), our bills are paid, our house is warm (insulated, I imagine, by the stuff on all of the counters and tables...) and we are healthy (unless you count colds). At the end of each crazy day, Rob and I look at each other and say it out loud, how lucky we are.

Ava is a little girl. Not a baby, not even a little bit, anymore. She knows more words than she says and her personality is really coming through. This morning I went in to wake her up, and she looked at me like "WHA?", handed me her monkey, and pulled the blanket over her head. That's my kid all right ;). We're working with Daycare to transition her to the Toddler Room. She is down to one bottle a day (right before bed) and she's losing interest in that pretty quickly. She can walk all the way from the car to her classroom. In the Toddler Room she will eat her meals at a table, instead of in a high chair. She'll nap on a cot instead of a crib. They have two hours a day of outside play (weather permitting...) which she is going to LOVE.

She's so big. I look at her on the rare occasions that she falls asleep in my arms, and I can only see glimpses of the baby she used to be. She's stretching out, so the rolls of little chub on her legs are going away (booooooo...). She is going to be a handful, I think. Already, she makes it clear when her world isn't what she wishes it to be. She doesn't like too many people, so we're watching her carefully as she moves from the familiar team of Daycare Ladies to a new group. She'll be OK, I know. But we will need to help her learn how to be OK and stay OK.

Right now, I have 3 close friends (you know who you are, ladies) in various stages of pregnancy. It's so cool to be on this side of it, like I'm in on a secret. It's such a big deal. One will have her baby next week (!!!! so excited!!!) and we can't wait to meet him. Seeing my friends go through this after having done it myself makes me realize that no, we're not ready to do it again. I'll say that again in case you missed it: no, we're not ready to do it again. Not yet. It's too big. We're good with where we are right now.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I like to think that we've gotten pretty good at adapting to new stuff in the last year. There's been no rule book, and since everyone has survived, I'd call it a success. We spend a lot of time talking about how we can do stuff better, how we can help Ava become safer, stronger, happier, quieter (eh, we're realists, but we're hopeful). Work, for both of us, has been pretty static, and while we kind of got bored with the same-old same-old, it was easy to coast through most days after even the roughest nights.

Rob recently scored a promotion, and my job is about to undergo a major upheaval. Our days of phoning it in during business hours are O-V-E-R.

Rob will be traveling for his new gig. There is a training session that will be in any one of a dozen cities, depending on when he goes, and then after that he expects to be out of town 10 days a month or more. Adding that on top of his 2 classes at the university, and Rob's going to be one busy guy. He's gone from low man on the totem pole to "Guy With Company Laptop and Blackberry and Credit Card" with three days' notice, and we're kind of reeling from all of that.

My job hasn't changed in 2 years, and before that it hadn't changed for 4. Now, suddenly, of the 3 systems I use at work, one is being replaced (long overdue--the old one was implemented in 1990 and is written in freaking COBOL, which is the IT equivalent of carving runes in the wall of a cave), the process behind another is being redesigned by the Department of Homeland Security (seriously, and can you imagine my delight at their involvement...) and the third, which links the two others, is going to need some serious upgrades, both to hardware and software. My role in all this? Evidently my boss thinks I'm good at seeing what needs to be the end result and then working backwards to find the process that will be the solution. The cherry on top of the cake that is all of this, is that one more database is being tossed into the mix (just for kicks, I assume, because God is funny like that) and I'm not even sure where that one even is applicable.

All of a sudden, we have no constants. Ava is changing every day. She went from taking 5 hesitant steps from me to Rob on Monday to charging across the living room with a handful of toys and a big hyperventilating smile on her face. Rob's job is going to be full of new stuff every day for months to come. My job? My job description now consists of words like "development" and "implementation processes" and it all sounds like a big load of bureaucratic BS that is going to keep me jumping.

The changes to both of our jobs are good in so many ways. Suddenly we're both in careers with clear trajectories (if we choose) that will lead to even better opportunities. We will have control in what our jobs look like, and how they're done (to an extent). It's exhilarating!

I'm afraid of getting swept away by all of this and missing important stuff. I'm so relieved that all of it didn't hit six months ago, when we were still flying by the seats of our pants as parents (well, we still kind of are, but we bounce back faster when we fall). But now, Ava's becoming this little girl who points to herself when you say "Where's Ava?" and discovers a dozen new things every day. Shutting the door at the end of the day on the lunacy that our jobs are about to become is going to be so important. We'll need to not only set aside time that is just for family, but we'll need to remember that merely being present in the room is not the same as being present in the moment.

"So, is Ava walking yet?"

Watch volume--there's a bit of squealing and "Oh my God!"-ing on this one.



Why yes, yes she is walking.