Seven Years

I've been thinking a little bit recently about seven-year cycles: the (in)famous seven-year itch, the seven years Jacob served for both Rachel and Leah . . . Mostly, though, I've been thinking about the significant changes that have come to my life in the last seven years:

In seven years, I married, finished two graduate degrees (including a dissertation!), gave birth to two children, moved cross-country, supported my husband through his first real job search, bought a house, moved again, and, for the first time in our married life, settled into our own home. Not bad, for seven years. I'll have to remind myself of that the next time I feel like I haven't been accomplishing much.

This week has been a nice one--a little more leisurely than the last several, mostly thanks to the winding down of the semester. This week was finals week, which meant no scheduled classes to teach. Of course, the final for my class was scheduled for the very last slot of the finals week: late Friday afternoon. On the positive side, this gave me all week to finish grading their final papers, with the result that I was able to submit their grades yesterday. Dan, of course, was way ahead of me, and submitted his grades on Thursday. In any case, we are officially on break now, although Dan will continue to go into his office during the week.



We had our first significant snowfall this week (along with the rest of the state--and, it seems--much of the U.S.). The kids have enjoyed it--we have a mild hill in the back of our yard that they had fun sledding down the day of the snowfall. Then, of course, a cold spell settled in and it was too cold to play outside. Somewhat idiotically, I decided to walk Andrew to preschool Tuesday morning. While this is our usual habit, this usually works because I push Evelyn in the stroller and the sidewalks are clear. After pushing Evelyn's stroller through several snow-drifts (have you ever tried pushing a stroller through snow? Most of them are definitely *not* designed for it--the only way I could make it work was to tip the stroller back and just use the rear wheels, which don't rotate), I decided that the effort wasn't worth it and we picked Andrew up from preschool in the car.


In other big news for the week, we finally bit the bullet and purchased Andrew a new bed. He's been sleeping in a toddler bed for nearly two years, but as Andrew weighs 45 lbs and the bed's limit is 50 (and we still haven't managed to break him of trying to jump on the bed), we (well, let's be honest--I) have been a little worried about the safety of the bed. Not to mention, he's starting to get a little long for the bed. After considering various options, we decided to get a bunk bed and just set up the bottom part of the bed, figuring that in a few years we'll be able to use both beds when Evelyn has outgrown the toddler bed, and it made more sense to us to get both beds now, since a bunk bed would be cheaper in the long run than two individual beds.

After a couple of weeks of stewing about which bed to get (and where to get it at--options in Cedar are somewhat limited, but we finally decided we'd rather buy locally and know what we are getting than try to order online) --and driving Dan crazy in the process--we finally made a decision. This decision was somewhat tried when a competing model was put on sale at the last minute, and when we found out that our original choice didn't come with all the features the sales lady had told us (admittedly, she was new). Still, we finally (and by we, of course, I mean "I," since Dan had long since made his decision and was just waiting for me to come on board with him) made a decision and got the bed. It's a twin bed over a full bed, and we set up the full bed for Andrew to sleep in (the bed was delivered the same day we purchased it!). He was, not surprisingly, ecstatic, although you can't tell that from the photo below. But it is nice to be able to lay down next to him in bed or sit on the edge of the bed to read him a story and not worry about the bed breaking . . .


The saleslady at the furniture store gave Evelyn a stuffed bear while we were there trying to make our final decision (I wisely decided to go while Andrew was at preschool--Evelyn alone was much easier to deal with), and she was instantly smitten. I hadn't realized until I saw her with the bear quite how much she likes stuffed animals. Anyway, I think she's pretty cute (you'll have to click on the photo below to get the full effect of her funny little twisted smile).