Catching up

Pictures are from Jacen's 18 month photo shoot.

So it's been a busy month. I guess I should start with the biggest news: We bought a house! Yep, we're now officially homeowners, or will be as of the 23rd. We're really excited. The house is in St. Charles, MO, not too far from where we live now. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a great room with a fireplace. The back yard has apple trees, a grape vine, and maybe strawberries (they're a little overgrown so we can't tell exactly), and it's fenced in, so we can let Jacen and Autumn play without too much worry. It's also directly across the street from a very nice park.

I have now officially started my costuming job and I love, love, love it! Our first show is Wonderland!, a contemporary musical version of "Through the Looking Glass". It's wild and psychedelic, so there's lots of fun costume opportunities. I'm currently brainstorming a Chinese-dragon-style Jabberwock. The kids are great, I have a lot of artistic freedom (as long as I keep within my limited budget), and I had forgotten how much I really thrive in the theatre.

The unfortunate part is that it's very stressful balancing my theatre job with my nanny job. I enjoy nannying but it's definitely not my calling. Some days it's work to keep track of my own child, much less 2 others as well. It's a good job and they pay me well for the work that I do, but a lot of days it's just too much. I'll leave home at 6:40 in the morning and not come home until 8 or 9 at night. It just makes me tired. And my apartment is a wreck.

As always, Jacen is a total character. He's still his happy-go-lucky self, but we're starting to get a few of the toddler tantrums thrown in. The funny thing is he'll throw a tantrum for 30 seconds, and then stop and look up to make sure we're still paying attention. A lot of the time we can avoid the tantrum by asking lots of questions to figure out what it is he wants. Usually just saying what he's trying to tell me stops the tantrum immediately. He's still doing well with the potty training. He wears underwear whenever we're at home, and a pull-up or diaper when we're out. Once we get through this move I'm going to start having him wear underwear when he comes with me to nanny.

In all this business I feel like I'm losing touch with a lot of friends and family. If you haven't heard from me in a while, I appologise, and promise that I'm still thinking about you. And probably missing you in all this craziness.