![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It occurred to me that in my last post that I was perhaps a bit unfair in regards to how I described K's car behavior. She was really almost saintly for a toddler, particularly one that has recently discovered a passionate interest in walking and wants to be on the move all of the time. It's been fascinating watching how she's developed over the past month, moving from stumbling along until she fell and then converting to crawling, to now walking almost steadily from drunken sailor to merely tipsy sailor, hoisting her little butt in the air when she falls and getting back up to walk some more.
She is also passionately interested in stairs. The house we stayed in in Philadelphia was a gorgeous three story house with a lovely staircase that she was magnetically attracted to. We wound spending most of our time there following her up the stairs and carrying her back down (she can actually go down stairs pretty competently, but I don't care to let her practice those skills on steep, slippery wooden stairs). It was clearly a game for her by the end of the visit - one night at dinner after she had made a beeline out of the dining room for the fifth time, I went out to find her sitting on the bottom stair, grinning at me and only starting to climb up once she saw me seeing her (we are going to be in much better shape soon if this stair obsession continues; Philadelphia houses are much more vertical than their Midwestern counterparts). Little monster.
A little monster who is growing like a weed, apparently. I had thought we were set for her winter clothes and even told the various grandparents that she didn't need new clothes for Christmas. But I've noticed recently that her current onesies have a dip in the front collar that suggests they're being stretched to still close under the crotch. And I put her in a special outfit tonight to take a Christmas card picture and discovered to my horror that it barely fit. I had planned for it to take us through a winter of going to church. Then I pulled out a Carter's one piece outfit in 24 months and put it on her to discover that it's a little long in the legs but fits perfectly in the torso. Sigh. So if you're a relative reading this who is planning to give K clothes for Christmas, she wears 24 months now, not 18.
***
There are a number of things I'm looking forward to about moving to a big city. The ready availability of stores like Whole Foods, Trader Joes and Ikea. The great variety of restaurants (I was on Citysearch the other night and discovered Philadelphia has two Afghan restaurants. When we moved to Lafayette, it didn't even have a Thai restaurant. Viva la difference).
But the thing I'm looking forward to is the much more readily available opportunities to pick up my sadly neglected career. Philadelphia has literally dozens of colleges, and while the Free Library doesn't need catalogers right now, there are also the public libraries in the surrounding suburbs as potential sources of jobs. This is in stark contrast to where we're living now, with the two public libraries in town and Purdue. For the most part, the fact that I've only worked in a library for one year out the past five hasn't been nearly as much unfavorable life circumstances or the desire to stay home as the simple lack of job opportunities. In simple numbers, five cataloging job opportunities have come along in the past five years here; I applied for three and got one, and passed up the other two due to bad timing (one was only a week after K was born; the other was right after I got home after my mother's accident - I was sick and kept saying I would apply when I was better only to go from stomach flu to a cold to a horrible flu that had me sick for the next six weeks). Meanwhile, I've applied for two cataloging jobs in Philadelphia in the past two weeks. I went to quite a bit of troubl e to get this Master's degree; I'm looking forward to the opportunity to use it again.
***
I think I'm somewhat in denial about the fact that Christmas is in one week, and therefore we will be traveling again in a mere three days. I know it intellectually, but I can't seem to process it in terms of realizing that this means that I really need to get working on finalizing Christmas presents and, God help me, packing to go on the road again. Somehow sitting on the couch drinking tea and reading Tamora Pierce novels feels much more attractive. However, Christmas will come whether I'm ready for it or not, so I need to buckle down tomorrow and get to work.
She is also passionately interested in stairs. The house we stayed in in Philadelphia was a gorgeous three story house with a lovely staircase that she was magnetically attracted to. We wound spending most of our time there following her up the stairs and carrying her back down (she can actually go down stairs pretty competently, but I don't care to let her practice those skills on steep, slippery wooden stairs). It was clearly a game for her by the end of the visit - one night at dinner after she had made a beeline out of the dining room for the fifth time, I went out to find her sitting on the bottom stair, grinning at me and only starting to climb up once she saw me seeing her (we are going to be in much better shape soon if this stair obsession continues; Philadelphia houses are much more vertical than their Midwestern counterparts). Little monster.
A little monster who is growing like a weed, apparently. I had thought we were set for her winter clothes and even told the various grandparents that she didn't need new clothes for Christmas. But I've noticed recently that her current onesies have a dip in the front collar that suggests they're being stretched to still close under the crotch. And I put her in a special outfit tonight to take a Christmas card picture and discovered to my horror that it barely fit. I had planned for it to take us through a winter of going to church. Then I pulled out a Carter's one piece outfit in 24 months and put it on her to discover that it's a little long in the legs but fits perfectly in the torso. Sigh. So if you're a relative reading this who is planning to give K clothes for Christmas, she wears 24 months now, not 18.
***
There are a number of things I'm looking forward to about moving to a big city. The ready availability of stores like Whole Foods, Trader Joes and Ikea. The great variety of restaurants (I was on Citysearch the other night and discovered Philadelphia has two Afghan restaurants. When we moved to Lafayette, it didn't even have a Thai restaurant. Viva la difference).
But the thing I'm looking forward to is the much more readily available opportunities to pick up my sadly neglected career. Philadelphia has literally dozens of colleges, and while the Free Library doesn't need catalogers right now, there are also the public libraries in the surrounding suburbs as potential sources of jobs. This is in stark contrast to where we're living now, with the two public libraries in town and Purdue. For the most part, the fact that I've only worked in a library for one year out the past five hasn't been nearly as much unfavorable life circumstances or the desire to stay home as the simple lack of job opportunities. In simple numbers, five cataloging job opportunities have come along in the past five years here; I applied for three and got one, and passed up the other two due to bad timing (one was only a week after K was born; the other was right after I got home after my mother's accident - I was sick and kept saying I would apply when I was better only to go from stomach flu to a cold to a horrible flu that had me sick for the next six weeks). Meanwhile, I've applied for two cataloging jobs in Philadelphia in the past two weeks. I went to quite a bit of troubl e to get this Master's degree; I'm looking forward to the opportunity to use it again.
***
I think I'm somewhat in denial about the fact that Christmas is in one week, and therefore we will be traveling again in a mere three days. I know it intellectually, but I can't seem to process it in terms of realizing that this means that I really need to get working on finalizing Christmas presents and, God help me, packing to go on the road again. Somehow sitting on the couch drinking tea and reading Tamora Pierce novels feels much more attractive. However, Christmas will come whether I'm ready for it or not, so I need to buckle down tomorrow and get to work.
