April 3, 2007

by christy

I guess we got a little behind on our webpages, time flies with a busy toddler. We've been enjoying some regular life around here, and have had a few special events to share. The pictures mostly tell the stories, and they are more fun to look at than reading about it!

Regular life has mostly consisted of our shared daycare with Henry, who has been a constant part of Anders's life. I still have them both for 1 and a half days a week, and Heather takes them another 1 and a half days. Even though they have some of the normal toddler competition over toys and attention, they are great playmates. I even got them excited about teamwork and sharing in recent weeks, and they seem to understand when I ask them to show me their teamwork and cooperation. They also make each other laugh, which helps everyone keep a light heart.

The other good news on the childcare front is that Henry is out of daycare and we jointly hired a nanny to watch the boys. Her name is Angela, and she is a sophomore in the Family and Human Sciences dept at OSU, where she is concentrating on early childhood development. She is sweet and kind and loves the boys, and Anders had a big crush on her the first time he met her. Before her first day here I told him that Angela was coming the next day, and he danced around singing "Angela, Angela" for about 10 minutes. She arranged her schedule this quarter so that she could take care of them most of the day on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is amazing. We love her!

Grandma Sheryl visited at the end of February to help take care of Anders while I was in Portland taking the bar exam. Anders had a great time with grandma, and still talks about her visit. I will find out my results on April 17.

Last week we had a visit from Grandma Margie, Matty, Lyndon and Jocelyn. They were kind enough to stay with Anders while Ted and I ran off to Hawaii for 3 days--our first vacation without Anders. It was a treat, and Anders was a doll and had a blast with his cousins. We will post pictures and stories of Hawaii soon as well.

Since taking the bar, my objective has been to look for work here in Corvallis (while enjoying visits from relatives and going to Hawaii). I've had some meetings with attorneys and others in town, with another one scheduled this week. While I was brainstorming my options, Ted suggested I go back to school, to which I immediately replied "no way, I've had enough school." But, being the geek that I am, I browsed the OSU graduate programs and was intrigued by the Agricultural and Resource Economics Dept (translation: using economics to help decide whether a particular environmental or agricultural program is a good idea, an efficient way to reach a result, etc). I made an appointment to meet with the head of the graduate program, to see what kinds of things the students studied and the jobs they eventually found. I didn't expect anything to really come of it--but I was wrong! They are extremely interested in getting me as a graduate student (starting by getting a masters and possibly a PhD after that). They have been wanting to get a lawyer into the department to teach Ag Law and Environmental Law. Basically, they have offered to pay my tuition and a monthly stipend if I join the program and teach those classes. Sounds like a good deal for me and for them, so I'm taking a class now to catch up on some economic theory and I'll be learning calculus with Ted's help over the summer. It's a lot of math and economics that I haven't had yet, but they are pretty confident I can catch up and make it in the program. It's not a done deal yet, but they called me again this week to make sure I'm still interested and help me get prepared to officially start in the fall. It's no secret that I actually like school, so this feels like a pretty natural fit, and I'm extremely interested in the subject matter. I've got my doubts about economics, but I think it will be a good tool to apply to issues that I care about, like our agricultural system and the environment.

Enjoy the pictures!