March!?

It's March! But today, it feels like May. The sun is shining, I have the A/C running, my open windows are filled with the sounds of boys shooting each other with water guns in the pool. It's close to 80 degrees out there! It's supposed to hit 80 tomorrow and then drop back to around 60, where it should be.

Whew!

I'm so thankful for the sun and the warmth, though. It means I can get outside, get some sun, and my brain will stop going wonky and depressed. It does so every year between January and February, but this was one of the bad years. I have so far had the flu and two cases of bronchitis this year. Berrykin brought home the last case, and ended up with pneumonia during a massive snowstorm. Between the nebulizer and my inhaler (confirming one and for all that I have a BAD reaction to albuterol), I got flashbacks to ten years ago and the horrible reaction to albuterol that set my anxiety in motion. In a way, this bout of not being able to breathe and listening to Berrykin cough and wheeze and be miserable was actually freeing. Because it was the albuterol that triggered so, so many of my anxiety and depression issues, I don't have to feel broken any more. I'm not necessarily enormously predisposed to all these problems...I just can't handle my albuterol. :)

In other news, Berrykin has started talking a LOT more. He's still hard to understand at times, especially as his pronunciation is changing so words that used to sound one way now sound that way sometimes, and sometimes a new way. But he's actually expressing his needs most of the time, he makes jokes, says yes and no (that one is HUGE) in response to being offered things, and just generally interacts more. At this rate, he should be talking close to normally by the time he starts kindergarten, which is a HUGE load off my mind! (Speaking of which, I should probably get him registered... :P ) Now that I know he understands me and I can understand him better, we're working on discipline. It's incredibly difficult to discipline children who don't grasp language - there's no way to explain what's going on, what they did wrong, or what they can do instead. There's just screaming and tantrums and awfulness. But now that we've progressed beyond that exhausting stage, he really needs more discipline. Of course, that is going to be harder for me than for him - I grew up in a largely undisciplined household, and I keep hearing my mom's responses come out of my mouth. I love my mom and she's a great mom...she just...never figured out how to be okay with being "mean." I have almost no idea how to offer discipline and boundaries, so it's a major learning curve for me as well as for him.

Berrykin also makes me want another baby. I mean, I've wanted another one for a long time now, but there's very little likelihood it's going to happen any time soon. Jeremelon and I are...we'll say not where we need to be. It's a lot worse than that, but I don't want to discuss it in such a public forum. Still, I'm getting baby fever in a new way, a way that hasn't happened since I had the berrykin. We met an old friend of mine and her kids at the museum a couple weeks ago, and Berrykin led her older boy, who's about a year and a half younger, all around the museum. They held hands. A lot. It was so adorable. He loves little kids, and he would be such a good big brother! I really want to give him the chance...but I don't think it's in the cards.

Instead, we're looking for ways to make our lives more stable. Denver is rapidly outpacing our earnings (considering we have still never managed to pay for all of our bills ourselves for a whole year, that's...bad), so we're looking for a new place to call home. An opening I've been watching for in Florida opened up for Jeremelon recently, so that's on the table. I'm considering going back to school for my Master's in Anthropology, and right now my best option looks like the U of Wyoming (or possibly Arizona State, but it's so HOT down there...). Wyoming is blessedly cheap. Orlando is less so, but there are a lot of job options available there. We have friends in both places, though more in Florida. I love Colorado - it will always be home - but the reasons keeping us here keep shrinking every year.

And that...is pretty much all I've got! We're stressed and recovering and I have a lot of writing I'm supposed to be doing but managing to procrastinate on happily. But in all, we're working toward better things!