quick overview of much togetherness

So...

life has been pretty, well, crazy, what with the move looming next week. we've been doing lots of visiting lately, trying to see as many people as we possibly can before we hit the road. I don't have much time, so here is just a brief summary of what we've been up to, in photo form:

We ate at better burger, and Cadence had her first encounter with a straw. She actually got some!!

We visited good friend and agent Carole...you can tell by this amazing photo that great fun was had by all!!!

This was a great afternoon, when Cadence met Cadence! Cadence (Dubus) is an old friend of mine from Theater in the Open. We haven't seen each other since I was like 13 and she 15. So this was really cool.

Thursday saw a much needed evening with Francis!! I love the look they're sharing here. He brought the quote books from college, and we had great fun revisiting some old, very random, memories.

Friday, we went to the beach bar with the wonderful folks from James's office.

The lady got her first feel of sand!!

I love this photo...vibrant souls! Brian was bouncing and dancing with Cadence while Baba looked on.

Then we let our hair down with Piel,

and hit the dance floor !!

Cadence was the life of the party!

There is so much more to say...but no more time to say it. We'll miss you all!!

Packing!...but mostly, watermelon.

Things have been pretty chaotic around here.  Deciding to up and move your entire family to an entirely new environment a thousand miles away, and ditching half your stuff in the process, all in three weeks time, makes for a crazy three weeks.  We've been sorting and packing and gathering records and trying to field all the "WTF you're leaving?" calls and trying to organize our farewell party (and silent auction!) for this sat (e-mail if you need details!) and...

Well, Cadence has been extremely helpful during all of this, helping us pack (above), entertaining visitors, and just generally being her wonderful self.  On saturday, she had her very first taste of watermelon, which I had cut up for her.  She liked it, but wasn't as interested in it as she was in the slices that the rest of us had.  So, on Sunday, we went ahead with a Grand Experiment and gave her her very own slice.  The results:  We died.  It was too much cute.  She LOVED it!  And she bit off tiny pieces that posed no choking hazard.  Hurrah! 

It was a mini, seedless watermelon, which proved to be just exactly Cadie-sized, and perfect for munching on with those aching, tooth-infested gums.


Ack!  the baby-sized bite marks in the baby-sized melon, with those baby-sized hands holding it so delicately...these photos just can't do the event justice.  I'd say it was the highlight of something, but with Cadence around, every moment is a highlight, and she keeps things so unique it's hard to compare one event to another.  [For instance, our simple trip to the container store yields moments of preciousness like this:

Aren't they cute?]

Another noteable moment came this Saturday, when, after a mere 3 years (3 years!  Seriously!!) Puy finally met Puy.  Here they are together, in all the glory that is Puy, x2.

Musical Catharsis

I want music! I want crescendos and diminuendos, life, vibrance, heartache, joy, anger, excitement, energy. Music has a weird, broken place in my life right now but I yearn for the epiphany of music I've felt on occasion. The connection of an angsty teen to music, but less self-conscious. I want music for me, finally. I think music will help me through these trying times, and bring me to myself.

A New Life

Kate, Cadence, and I are moving ourselves and the cats to Kentucky in a few weeks.  I can't really speak for Kate on this, but it's probably the biggest, single decision I've made, and it's teaching me a lot about how I make decisions.  And the choice feels right, even though there are a lot of unknowns.  It's odd to be making such a life-changing decision and not know exactly what's going to happen when we get down there, but that's what we're doing.  We don't have jobs lined up, we haven't even figured out how exactly we're moving down there yet, and that's a little SCARY.  At the same time, the fact that are options are so wide open is part of what makes going down as exciting as it is.  We're going down to make a new life for ourselves, and we have all sorts of options open to us.  And we have family, who are giving us a place to live, and their love and support.  That makes things a lot less scary than they could be, otherwise.

We have a lot of reasons for going, and I won't go into detail here.  I think the biggest reason we're doing this, though, is because of how desperately we're in need of some sort of big change to shake us out of the pit we've gotten ourselves into.  Things have not been ideal for a while, and they probably never will be, but it's time to be proactive and start making a life for ourselves that we're more happy to live in.  This will also be a great move for Cadence, as she'll have space, trees, and family who can watch baby sit and keep her laughing.  And Kate and I will have more chances to get out and do things together, spend time together.  And fresh air!  It will be so good to get out of the city.

We're going, and we're going soon.  My last day of work is June 13th, and we're planning on leaving sometime in the week after that.  Probably packing over that weekend.  We're going to be planning a get-together before we skip town, so stay tuned and we'll let you all know what's going on.

Thank you for all the good times, New York, and we'll be back some day.

Impromptu Big Day Out

Yesterday, Cadence and I had our very last Shape Up With Baby class, which Cadie had really outgrown before the class even started.  I don't think the age limit they put on the class accounted for babies who are consistently about a month ahead of schedule in terms of development, which I then failed to account for when I signed up for it.  It said 6 weeks to 9 months, but should have said 6 weeks until mobile.  Cadence was 8 months at the start and was already crawling, and at our last class yesterday, she was walking.  Oops!  Well, we had fun, even if we didn't really do what the other moms and kids were doing.  (The most mobile, other than Cadence, was able to wiggle off his matt in the space of five or ten minutes.)  In honor of her 'Graduation', I brought the camera along and tried to catch a few shots between moves. And chasing after her, of course.

Notice how my 'baby' is having nothing to do with the passive activities all the other babies were doing...no, my little lady was dancing right along with all the mommies!  After watching her follow along and do a bunch of stretches, (and then then take it a step farther and lead some child's pose and thread-the-needle,) our teacher invited us to attend her yoga class.

After class was done, we picked up Baba and headed to central park for a spur-of-the-moment picnic in central park.  While we do this fairly often when the weather is nice, it is still a big deal each time we go, since this 'nature' [I know, I know, central park is man made, but its the closest we get and frankly, the flora and fauna is all still real!] stuff is so different from the New York City streets that we call home, and it takes Cadence some time to adjust to the leafy, green surroundings.

Of course, there was the requisite poking at the dirt (with a straw):

I love this next picture.  It's the first time Cadence  has ever really gotten to examine a real live tree, up close.  I think she might see the same beauty that I am still struck with whenever I take the time to really take in the life we so easily take for granted.

Enough with the sentimentality, says Cadie!  Number one!  Yeah! way to rock the sunglasses, girl.

As if the day hadn't been full enough; a new adventure was just starting!  Our picnic spot happened to be just up a hill from this great little playground.  It's just across the street from the maternity ward where our little lady was born, (I could even see it from my window!) and I used to pass it as I walked through the park after prenatal visits with my midwife.  I'd revel in the excited anticipation of getting to bring my own little one for a day of climbing, sliding, and swinging someday.  I don't think I ever guessed I'd be doing so within the year, but...

Well, she may be a little young, but Boy, what a hit!!!  She figured out almost instantly that she could climb and walk and play with the bars on the structure, and it wasn't long before she saw the other kids using the slide and wanted to explore it herself.  For her introductory venture, she went down with Baba:  

She looks understandably concerned in the picture, but once she got to the bottom she broke into this huuuuge smile.  The one thing that did go wrong the whole day was that we kept missing the smiles by milliseconds, and thus in most of the pictures she looks somewhat contemplative, rather than exuberantly happy, which followed each bout of intense concentration.

She even made a friend!  She played a wobbly version of chase with a little boy who would play for a while, then duck behind his brother, then they'd all go off and do their own thing for a bit, then start the whole thing over again.  It was incredibly cute, and oddly gratifying to watch.

It was a very busy afternoon.  She bopped from one thing... [I swear she's shouting with glee here, but the photo makes it llook like a scream]
...to another, going from the baby stuff...

to the big kid stuff, getting more adventurous at every turn.  For example, she went from the little slide you saw earlier, to with Mama on the big slide:

...To 'by herself' on the [little] fast slide!

To cap off our exposition here, we'll leave you with one final journey.  Up the whole structure (look at her go!  We followed, never steered [except of course away from dangers] the journey was entirely of her own design!):

...And then down the big, fast slide!! (with Mama, of course.)

All in all, I think it was a pretty derned successful day.  Happy first playground adventure, Cadence!

Once again, we've managed to go a full month without posting a derned thing.

I blame this on lack of proper blogging routine mixed with very hectic lives.

UPDATE:  ...I think the fact that this is as far as i got with this entry speaks for itself.

OK, there is a major problem in our household.  Its been getting steadily worse over the past few years, and has begun to increase exponentially just in the last few months.  It has gotten to the point where no visitors can emerge unscathed, and we aren't sure how we are managing to muddle on with daily life.  (We must have built up a tolerance while it was building up.)  The symptoms aren't pretty, and can include high pitched shrieking, euphoric wiggling, and in severe cases, it can cause the victim's brain to actually soften to the point of liquidation, often leaking out the ears to form an unpleasant puddle on the floor.  There has even been one reported death.  There is no known remedy, and frankly the area hospitals are beginning to complain that we're overloading their ERs.  The culprit:  Too.  Much.  Cute.

UPDATE:  this post was never finished.  I just found it in drafts, so I figured I'd post what was here, at least. It was meant to be a much larger post with full retrospective on Cadence's life and all the best pics.  then life happened and i didn't get to it...oops...sorry...and worse yet, then the other computer crashed. Which other computer, you ask?  Surely not the one with the newest pictures on it, the ones not backed up? >_<