Still here....

No, we didn't fall off the face of the Earth (I know...you were so concerned...); we just moved...again.

We are officially residents of a little town called New Albany, Indiana, situated directly across the mighty Ohio river from Louisville, Kentucky...you know, the place where they race the horses and make baseball bats. After taking a lovely vacation up north in one of our favourite places -- Traverse City, Michigan -- and recovering from my disgusting bout with pneumonia, we headed down. Michael came first (he spared me the back-breaking work that is loading up a truck with all your worldly possessions) and then Ezra and I joined him the second week of August after spending a bit of time with my family. I have moved enough times now to know that I HATE living out of boxes so we unpacked all of them and set up home in one week. Here is a short video tour of our new home:



Believe it or not, we've actually already had a couple overnight visitors and this month we will have a couple more! Our dear friends the Wingers came down on Labor Day weekend from Cincinnati and last week my dear friend, Bekah, came down with her two girls from Cincinnati as well!

If you have read the above description of this blog (found under the title) you will notice the mention of a certain Roxi-roo. Roxi had the great fortune of spending the past two years with my parents. We could not take her to Germany with us (and I think she's still bitter at us over the missed opportunity to explore her motherland) and we were not willing to pay the pet rent for her last year (we told her she could get a job and pay her way but she was not interested...) We also weren't stoked about having her in an apartment setting again. Schnauzers were bred as barnyard guard dogs and, although her bark is worse than her bite, it's still no fun to listen to every time someone goes up and down the stairs. Now that we have our own home (the first since we've been married...11 years, by the way, this past July 29th) complete with a fenced-in backyard, we felt ready to take her back. I'm certain she had mixed feelings. My mother is a dog-lover and Roxi had her fair share of spoiling while with her DRams. I'd like to think that she is pleased to be with us again. It was hit or miss for us the first couple weeks. She had some health issues that were causing her to christen our home liberally, but as soon as those cleared up, she was back to her old self. She and I spend most nights attempting to share the legendary avocado La-Z-Boy recliner procured as a gift for us by Michael's mother for $1 at an auction.

Michael is settling in to his new position at Indiana University Southeast (IUS) as the German department. You heard that right. Apart from one adjunct instructor, he is the only professor in the department. He is loving it even more than he imagined. It is so exciting and liberating for him to FINALLY be doing what he has been educating himself SO long to do. So nice to have his own office (in this building) with shelves and a desk and a computer and phone and filing cabinets! The freedom to create class environments and experiences wherever his imagination can take him...and he has some GREAT ideas! I have ALWAYS known that he is a great teacher (I would have COMPLETELY failed my college economics class had it not been for him) and it is so fantastic to see him in his element. However, we are both keenly aware that things are not set in stone just yet (are they ever?...will we ever learn?) I believe I mentioned before that this position is a one-year contract. It will open up as a tenure-track position next year but Michael will have to apply for it just like every other person looking for the same type of position...and there are a lot. Of course, he has a huge foot in the door but, nonetheless, the same grueling job-search that took place last year for him will be taking place again this year. (And wasn't that just a huge, soggy wet blanket...sorry...)

Ezra and I are, naturally, keeping ourselves busy. We discovered the IUS Children's Center which is awesome! It is a childcare center on campus. Most of the instructors are IUS students working toward their degrees in early childhood education. It is more than a daycare, though. I hesitate to call it a "school" since that word is not in the establishment's title but, as far as I'm concerned, it is everything I would look for in a pre-school type setting for Ezra. It is more than just babysitting. They do activities together and there is a definite schedule to the day. Ezra only goes two mornings a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30am to 11:30am) but he loves it. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday he and I are continuing pre-school at home. We are having lots of fun. Last year we did a small home group and that was great. But I am also definitely seeing the advantage to one on one teaching. I had thought I wanted to try to do a more formal curriculum this year complete with detailed lesson plans. I admit, I was getting a little stressed about it (helped, I'm sure, by the fact that I put off preparing until the last-minute.) I went to a large bookstore to find a book of ready-made lesson plans. There were none. I was near panic when I found a book called Home Learning Year by Year. After browsing through it and reading the opening sentence of the pre-school chapter ("I never DREAMED of having lesson plans with my pre-schoolers...."), I began to gain some clarity and remember what I knew all along. Children Ezra's age learn by doing. I turned my search into one for a good book of activities (not a workbook...plenty of those out there and we do have some but not quite the same thing...) I happened to find a MARVELOUS book at, of all places, Once Upon a Child! Here is a video of one of the activities we did together this morning:



I have picked up a couple Zumba classes at the local Y branches and Ezra is also taking Karate at the Y. He was a bit put-off by all the yelling at first (not really his thing) but we've been practicing at home and he is slowly gaining confidence and enjoying it. We are finding, though, that he is most definitely like his mother in that he is a perfectionist. Like me he also tends to have the mindset of "If I can't be fantastic at it right away, why bother?" Am I proud of this trait? No...but there it is....Here is Ezra in action:





Ezra had a really rough experience last week, poor boy. We went to his annual check-up where I knew he would be getting a flu shot. I gave him a pep talk in the car. I told him if he tried to be tough, he could get a pretzel at Target afterwards (I had to do some shopping there...) He was fine when we went in, then they poked his finger (which I forgot about.) Of course, he thought that was the shot and was not pleased when he found out there was more to come. He was equally displeased when the nurse came back in to tell us something went wrong with the test so she need to squeeze some more blood out of his finger...I almost think another poke would have been better than wrenching his finger around. More crying ensued. Then I found out that he needed two other shots besides his flu shot. Yay. The nurse came in to do the deed. I held him down at his top half and she attempted to handle the bottom half. Turns out a terrified 4-year old is a lot stronger than one would think, though. She decided to go get another nurse who came in and laid her body on top of Ezra's bottom half. The nurse got the shots in. I held Ezra and let him cry for a bit assuring him all the while that it was over. I finally convinced him that putting his pants back on was the best plan of action (he didn't want anything touching those band-aids) and then we left the room. I was immediately approached by the head nurse who sheepishly told me that the nurse administering Ezra's shots had accidentally poked herself with one of the needles after the fact so they would need to do an HIV test on Ezra...a blood draw. I could not believe it. This time around took myself and three nurses: one to find the vein and put the needle in and the rest of us to hold him down. I held his ankles and just felt completely helpless. He kept shifting his gaze from the terrifying nurses to my eyes. "Why are you letting them do this?" he seemed to ask. I wanted so badly to close my eyes but I couldn't. I felt so helpless. All the nurses were trying to soothe him with their kitty-kat voices but it all just came out as a bunch of loud cackling hens. I prayed. What else could I do? I asked God to comfort Ezra because I could not. And, of course, I cried. I felt horrible. After they got their three tubes of blood, they released him and I held his hot, exhausted body while he just trembled and cried. We did make it to Target after (Ezra is a trooper.) "You ready to get that pretzel and ICEE?!" I asked. Ezra's response: "AND a hot dog!" No argument from me.

In lighter news, Ezra and I made it out to the National Jug Band Jubilee this past Saturday. It was AWESOME! So much good music. If you have no idea what jug band music sounds like, here is a video (this is actually one of the bands -- the Juggernaut Jug Ban -- at the jubilee and the one we got to hear...they were amazing...):



This music makes me think of my dad, which is a good thing. He remembers going to visit his family in Virginia and being bored out of his mind as a boy because all they would do was sit on the front porch and play this music. He, of course, loves it now. Anyway...Ezra got to make some instruments and play on stage with some of the musicians and a bunch of other kids. It was just great:



All three of us celebrated birthdays during my blogging hiatus. Ezra turned 4 at the beginning of July, I turned 31 at the end of August, and Michael turned 35 this past week. Michael and I also celebrated 11 years of marriage at the end of July! Michael and I celebrated in our own small ways but we did have a fun party in Cincinnati for Ezra's birthday:



If you're interested in photos of our exploits, click here, here, here, and here.