It's Been a While, I Know

There's really no good excuse for my absence from these pages. Well, May and June were a bit tricky because finishing uni was commanding a monstrous chunk of my attention and then my practical teaching experience commanded a monstrous chunk of everything during the latter month. So much for capturing this important time of transition for posterity! Lazy basstid. I did become a qualified teacher in the meantime, though.

Okay, time to atone for things. As it's the first day of spring in Australia (they base things on the calendar here rather than the celestial event—go figure), it's a good day for it. Spring cleaning, you could say.

The big news is that Katie is wicked pregnant. Having said that, she still seems to have tons of energy, though her sleeping has been shallow and broken for a while. A few weeks back we had our pre-admission meeting at the hospital and the midwife asked her, at the meeting's end, "Do you have any other questions or do you want to tell us anything about your pregnancy?"

"Nothing that I can think of—I've enjoyed it." Wow. 

Anyway, the pic above is from about three weeks ago. My mother had sent us a kit to make a cast of Katie's belly and other bits, and that's what we did that Sunday afternoon. It's no mean feat for a woman who is almost eight months pregnant to sit still for 1.75 hours, but anything in the name of family artifacts.  

It needs to be noted that the baby (working title Ruby Meg, a name that people love in Oz but not so much in New England) is very, very active. If memory serves, much more so than her brothers. Always on the move. Takes after her Mum, I suppose. The little one is slated to make her entry into the outer world in 18 days. Katie feels as though she's had some movement at the station and that things will happen earlier, yet her sister and mother delivered their babies late. At any rate—even if she's really late—she'll be in our arms by the end of this month.  

One of the other big events during the last few months was my cousin Andy's visit back in May. So awesome to see the guy. We last saw each other about a dozen years ago, when he was in his 20s and I was in my early 30s and had no kids. We laughed a lot and sort of caught up on things. Katie was amazed at how quicky we fell into natural rhythms of conversation. I told her that some cousins see each other rarely, but there were a lot of holidays and weekends in the 70s and early 80s down at Gramma White's, down The Cape, at Stock Steet in Dorchester, East Dedham and in Norwell. Lots of major goofiness, childhood bravado and crazy laughs with Frankie, David, Andy and Gregory. Throw in the similar experiences in the Navy and there was no way we weren't going to have a good time. 

On top of that, it was wonderful introducing both Katie and the boys to a family member. Although Cal knows many of the people back home, Andy was the first member of his father's family that Mac met. Six years old. I get really bummed out if I ponder that one too much. Enclosed is the money shot from Andy's visit: someday I hope my sons will say, "Here's that picture of us with cousin Andy when he was in the war." Yeah, I suffer from terminal nostalgia, for sure. 

At some point in another entry I'll write more about Andy and my family in general. I had some notes about how proud I am of the family's tradition of service, in the military and in health care, education and the trades, but I'll get to that later. Suffice it to say I had a huge feeling of pride while hanging with my cousin who's made good on his lifelong passion for aviation and who has served his country so well.

What more can I say? I work full time at Kitchenware Direct now, though I am applying for teaching jobs. Lots of red tape to deal with, like getting a registration number through the Western Australian College of Teaching (done) and another official number of some sort and salary figure from the Department of Education and Training (not so done). A few private schools have me on their lists for relief/substitute teaching, but no calls yet.

Cal and Mac are doing well. Getting so big... Mac's front teeth, which he seemed to lose mere weeks ago, have come in. Cal is putting on a whisper of weight, slowly gearing up for latency and then that big push towards puberty in the next few years. They both love to climb trees, draw, fart and wrestle with each other. Mac recently got a free ice cream at school for receiving nine good conduct tick marks. He needs to exhibit more of that behaviour at 15 Kadina Street, I think. Okay, I'm being a little hard on the kid. He's generally quite good, but can be a bit obstinate from time to time. And he's not exactly nice to Katie. While she'll never be unaffected by his generally cool and sometimes cruel distance, she has a huge amount of patience there. Thanks, Sweetheart. Trust me, things are likely to get better over the years.

Cal, on the other hand, really does make an effort. With everyone. While Mac won't give his Old Man a kiss when he gets dropped off at his mother's house—you really can't blame the conflict he must have over his allegiance there—Cal will give me two. He's also pretty warm towards Katie. Anyway, he can make his own bowl of oatmeal and recently I had asked him to go to the store next door to buy a half gallon of milk. I crept out of the house half a minute after he left, followed him and watched him from the far side of the parking lot, but he completed the mission in fine style. Seems like only yesterday when he could be held in one hand and balanced on a forearm.

Everyone is growin' or growin' up nicely down here.