Griffin, Uncategorized

Minnesota Progress

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A lot has happened in the past four days:

  • On Wednesday we flew to Minnesota, duly documented via iPhone.
  • On Thursday morning I met with the principal of the St. Paul Open School.
  • Then we had lunch with Maddy and Zoe and I visited Laura Jeffrey Academy, an all-girls middle school in St. Paul.  I toured the school with some prospective parents and then had a great meeting with the educational director (their equivalent of a principal).
  • Somehow in the midst of all this Sarah and I drove around various neighborhoods in St. Paul and Minneapolis to start thinking about where we might want to live.
  • On Thursday evening we celebrated Griffin’s first birthday in Courtland with a whole passel of Stocco family friends.  It was fun and festive, and the cake was delicious.
  • Friday morning began with a somewhat strange meeting with the principal of a progressive charter school in Minneapolis.  Sarah and I participated in their “morning meeting” and then chatted briefly (and awkwardly) with the principal who basically said he doesn’t have any job openings and has no ideas about where one should look for teaching jobs.  Weird.
  • Then we raced over to Crosswinds Middle School in Woodbury (east of St. Paul) and met with a friend of a friend who has been teaching there for a bunch of years.  She was great and introduced us to her principal who was similarly great.
  • The sum of all the meetings was that budget cuts will make the job search very challenging. On the bright side, I got many useful tips on how to best market myself and where to focus my efforts most productively.  At this point I’m focusing on charter schools and will start checking out possible private school options.
  • On Friday afternoon Sarah and I met with a realtor and started looking at houses and exploring various neighborhoods in St. Paul.  Our first foray was a bit underwhelming (but things got better later).
  • On our drive back to Courtland that evening we realized that we were utterly exhausted.  We called the realtor to reschedule our Saturday tour to Sunday morning.
  • Saturday was our spring break!  We had a leisurely breakfast, napped, took long hot baths, and walked to the local park where Griffin loved the slide.  (First time he has ever been really into it — he just kept diving down this one, head first!  Pictures will be forthcoming.)  I also wrote thank you cards to the various people I had met with during the week.
  • This morning (seriously, I can’t believe this was today) we raced back up to the Cities to meet with our realtor.  Today’s tour focused mostly on Minneapolis and was much more positive.  We saw a fabulous house in the Bryn Mawr neighborhood and a couple of other cool contenders in Southwest and near Lake Nokomis.
  • Then a picnic lunch by the lake with Pam and Jeff who had just picked up uncle Bob at the airport.  Fun in the sun, and great to overlap with Bob for an hour.
  • Then back to the airport to fly back to SFO.  Griffin had a harder time on this flight.  He’s got a molar coming in and was tired but couldn’t fall into a comfortable sleep.  Still, he handled it pretty well and is a pro at airplane bathroom diaper changes.
  • When Ed picked us up at the BART station he handed us a bag with three English muffins from our favorite bakery.  He figured we might not have breakfast organized for tomorrow.  Is that not the sweetest thing?

Whew.  We would never have been able to get this much done if Pam and Jeff and Alli hadn’t handled Griffin during most of our trips to the Cities.  It was a win-win for everybody: we got a lot done and Griffin got to bond with his grandparents and auntie!

Here’s what Griffin thought about all of this on the BART ride home:

Worn out after house hunting and job hunting and birthday partying... what a spring break!

I can’t believe I have to work tomorrow!

Griffin

Happy Birthday Griffin!

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We tried to get a cake from the bakery in Minneapolis that made Sarah's first birthday cake but it had closed long ago. However, this one was made in the same spirit, with clowns, balloons, and two coke bottles from the original cake!
Griffin doesn't quite know what it is, but he's pretty sure he wants to touch it.
Whoa, that's sweet! (Probably more sugar tonight than in his whole first year...)
I could get into this...
Sticky gooey fun!
In the end, not nearly as messy as we had expected. He didn't even put his hands in his hair. Older and wiser already!
Griffin

SFO->MSP

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Had a great flight! Griffin was squirmy but generally polite.  (And who isn’t squirmy when they have to sit in a tiny seat in a noisy tube packed with strangers?)

( I probably could have skipped these posts, but I am addicted to my new phone. Love the wordpress app!)

Lots of must have items at the Sky Mall.
He miraculously fell asleep right before the beverage cart came by, so we could actually get something without him tossing it all over us. Slept for about an hour.
Mom is so great!

There's a whole cool world under the seats!
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Monday Accomplishments

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Today was a very productive day.  A selection of our activities:

  • Reorganized all the bookshelves so that they are both orderly and attractive.  (Sarah has taught me many things… you don’t have to just put books on bookshelves… you can stack some books horizontally to break things up visually… you can intersperse photos and art objects… it’s rad.)
  • Packed ten boxes and stacked them in the shed along with two empty bookcases
  • Rearranged the bedroom now that it lacks a bookcase to make it look more open
  • Contacted the principal of a charter school in Minneapolis and scheduled a meeting with him on Friday.  (He definitely doesn’t have a job for me, but gotta start building the network somewhere.)
  • Walked down to lakeshore and bought an iPhone!  It’s a very welcome birthday present from my parents (thanks Mom and Dad!)  We’ve resisted the “smart phone” phenomenon for years now, not wanting to pay the added monthly expense.  But with the chaos of the move coming up, the ability to have internet access in the car while driving around the Twin Cities seemed well worth the expense.  Of course I don’t have time to play with my new toy, but I’m sure it will be extremely useful in MN this week.
  • Cleaned up the kitchen to make it look like the counters are not usually completely covered with clutter.
  • And, of course, we changed diapers and did all the usual parenting stuff… but I must admit that Griffin has been very generous at allowing us to pack and accomplish things while he toddles around the mess.
  • Now we’re about to head into Berkeley for a date: Patty Griffin at Zellerbach Hall!  Sarah put this on the calendar months ago, but she called it “Special Date Night” and wouldn’t tell me anything more.  I just found out what it is.  What a great way to end a day!
Two reorganized shelves
Some of our reorganized shelves
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Moving Madness

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We haven’t been posting on here as much recently for two reasons.  First, Sarah has been working full time, so she doesn’t have nap-times to post.  Second, we are up to our ears in preparations for our summer move to Minnesota.  When we actually think about the entire list of things that have to happen we tend to freak out.  One step at a time has become our mantra… stop, breathe, just one step.  🙂

Some things we’ve been up to recently:

  • Got the house repainted last fall.  Glad we thought to do that early.
  • Painters are coming tomorrow to touch up some things and do some odd projects we hadn’t predicted in the fall.
  • Gardening team is trying to make it look like we’ve been spending our weekends weeding for the past five years.  (Good luck…)
  • Packing… while we’re not quite up to Dave and Nancy’s level (they have packed two gigantic crates!), we are very proud of the growing stacks of boxes in the shed filled with clothes and books and kitchen supplies that we won’t be using again until we’re in the Twin Cities.
  • Found a new tax accountant because we found out that our previous guy, who I’ve been using for six years, is in jail for mail fraud.  Yep.  He was in the news.
  • I have completed my résumé with lots of valuable help from Jeff (who used to be a career counselor).  Also two different cover letter templates that should be flexible enough to work for many potential job openings.  And this weekend I typed up electronic applications for both Minneapolis and Saint Paul school districts.  (Not that they have any job openings at the moment, but everything is uploaded and ready for review in case anything opens up.)
  • I’ve contacted a principal in Saint Paul who I will meet with on Thursday to discuss possible openings at his school and other schools.
  • Did I mention that we’re going to Minnesota on Wednesday through Sunday?  (It’s our spring break… and we get to spend Griffin’s birthday with Grandma Pam and Grandpa Jeff and Aunt Alli!)
  • We are in touch with a real estate agent in Saint Paul who we’re meeting on Thursday and Friday.  She’s compiling lists of houses and neighborhoods that we might be interested in.
  • We’ve changed all the doorknobs and hinges in our apartment so that it doesn’t look so 90s (at the advice of our local real estate agent.)
  • Been mowing the lawn every week at the command of the aforementioned gardening team.  (Usually I try to get to it a few times a year.)
  • We’ve been enjoying Griffin’s increasing abilities to walk across vast amounts of space.  And the parallel ability to hurt himself more rapidly than ever.  (He’s got a cool pirate-like scrape from his forehead to his upper lip thanks to an aggressive cardboard box.)
  • Investigating what to do about our leaking water heater.
  • Oh, lest I forget, I have a master’s thesis to write.  Met with my advisor Tuesday morning.  Took Wednesday off and was very productive.  Aiming for a rough draft in my advisor’s hands by April 28.

So, in short, we’re moving to Minnesota.  Somehow between now and then we will sell this house, buy a new house, finish my thesis, get a job, finish packing, hire movers, and drive across country to the great state of Minnesota.

One.  Step.  At.  A.  Time.

Griffin

Griffin Walks!

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Griffin has been experimenting a lot with walking lately: letting go of the coffee table, taking one step and then falling to his knees in a crawl, cruising all around a chair, or holding on to a finger to barrel across the room. But TODAY he full-on walked for the first time!

I had just gotten home from work, my arms full of baby and bags. I put Griffin down on his feet next to an ottoman and threw my bags to the floor. Just as I was about to drop to the floor and join him, he turned around and walked seven or eight steps to a pile of boxes that have been waiting to be put in the storage shed. He did it all by himself!

I tried to get him to repeat his wondrous new abilities once Andrew got home from school, but the G-man still prefers crawling. It will only be a matter of time before he’s confident enough to try it again!

Griffin

Spring Morning

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I’ve been meaning to post this series for a while… Griffin made the most of our first full-on warm, sunny weekend back in February.

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My parents let me play with glass bowls!
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It's wet and shiny!
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Dirty water... YUM!
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And it makes a cool helmet.
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Spring is awesome!

Griffin

Confrontation

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I reached a milestone today as a parent: I was accused by another parent of neglecting in my duties as a mom to care for my child.  The accusing mom did not actually say, “You’re a bad mom,” but she may as well have just come out and said it that way.

I returned to work three weeks ago as a full-time teacher, covering my friend Bess’ kindergarten class while she’s out on maternity leave.  It has been a hard adjustment for everyone in the family, and it’s been further complicated by the fact that Griffin has been fighting illness since he started going to day care.  I was expecting him to get sick, and he predictably did almost immediately.  What I wasn’t expecting is for it to go on and on the way it has.  He’s had a cold in one form or another for nearly three weeks, had stomach flu complete with projectile vomiting and diarrhea up the back and down the legs, and now is on to wheezing like an asthmatic.  Andrew and I have both stayed home from work with him for a couple of days when he was really sick, and we have been to the doctor three times in the past three weeks.  I was beginning to feel like a worry-wart mom, but on the last visit this past Wednesday, his pediatrician assured me that it’s just par for the course and that he’ll get better eventually.  We’re currently treating his wheezing with two inhaled medicines, and he’s pretty much back to his old self, laughing, playing, eating, and sleeping normally.

This morning when I went to drop Griffin off at day care, another mom (who made it clear she’s a nurse) handed me a printout on RSV (the illness his pediatrician has already told me is the likely culprit of his symptoms) and said she was “very upset” that Griffin had been at day care yesterday.  She went on to tell me that RSV is a “highly contagious” disease and it’s “completely inappropriate” for him to be at day care.  I told her that his doctor had said nothing about Griffin not attending day care, at which point she said, “Sometimes you have to ask specific questions.”  She went on to say that “many children who get it are on respirators in the hospital” and she didn’t want her child to get it, so if Griffin was going to be at day care, she was going to take a sick day and pull her daughter out, although “it may be too late.”

I think it was about this point that I started to cry.  I babbled something about “being new at this mom thing” and how “of course I would never bring Griffin to day care if I thought he was going to get other kids seriously ill” and she talked back at me about “it’s highly contagious and we’ll probably ALL get it now.”  By this time, I was late to work and was supposed to be with my students in 15 minutes.  I called our extremely compassionate secretary who assured me she’d handle it.  I gathered my things and left with Griffin on my hip and tears streaming down my face.

I’m home now and am calmer.  Griffin and I enjoyed playing together this morning, and now he’s down for a nice long nap.  His doctor emailed me back right away saying there’s absolutely no reason Griffin can’t go to day care, that he stopped being contagious 24 hours after his fever broke, and that basically he’s fine.  I am happy I am vindicated, and happy to be home enjoying some unexpected hours with my little guy.

I’ve thought a lot about what I’m going to say when I run into this mom again.  She was wrong, plain and simple, on so many levels including medically.  I could point all these things out to her and tell her just how wrong she was, but I think I’ll just say this to her: If I’ve learned anything about parenting so far, it’s that we all do the best that we can for our kids.  Instead of keeping this in mind, you made me feel ignorant, incompetent, and stupid when you could have addressed your worries by showing compassion, understanding, and asking questions instead of accusing.  I hope you keep this in mind the next time you are doing the best you can for your daughter.

The latest news from Sarah and Andrew.