Its a blustery subzero day here in the nation's capital, which means we're stuck indoors. Perfect time to blog. Our biggest to do this past month was Caro's first birthday. We held a small party at our place, with the Epps and a few other friends over. While Caro was the center of attention at the party, I would say the celebration was mostly for us... to acknowledge the fact that during the past year we didn't manage to accidentally kill, injure or maim, our precious child. We had pizza, fruit, cheesecake, and Caro had a cake of her own to smash. She had one bite, frowned, smashed, and then shortly after puked all over grandma. Then everyone went home. Puking aside, things are looking positive for the next year, because at least we know the basics of keeping her alive for at least another year.
Moving on, I managed to get our taxes done early this year. Most wouldn't be terribly excited about this feat, yet, for the first time ever, I didn't have to pay any additional taxes out of pocket. Being a single, childless, propertyless jet-setter had its innumerable benefits, but the taxman was merciless. Now, my mortgage, marriage and child mean cash cash cash come tax time, which is really only for a fleeting moment, because that cash cash cash goes right back to them them them. Oh well. At least for a time I'll feel a little richer whenever the refund comes, assuming I don't get audited before then.
I've also started taking early morning Russian language classes to try to get my language abilities back up to snuff. Every workday, I join two other students and a teacher from 7:30-8:40 and attempt to talk about current events. Seems as though I severely overestimated my abilities, as most of my Russian sentences go like this, "President Putin...Ukraine... I think... (several Spanish words), (long pause)... , (long pause)..., (sigh), very bad." After ten years of not speaking Russian, mixed with 5 years of speaking Spanish, I am very much the worst student in class. I have 15 weeks left to try to get up to speed, which currently seems insurmountable.
Meanwhile, to try to keep things exciting around here, I planned a family vacation to Charleston, SC over the long Presidents Day weekend. As we're back Stateside for two years, we decided we wanted to try to travel locally as much as possible, as there is so much new to explore in this part of the country. We soon discovered that traveling with a toddler is even more challenging that traveling with an infant, as they are now mobile but still just as fussy. We managed to fit in some sightseeing, visited some family, but mostly just ate and napped in the hotel room. Looking back at our pictures, I think we probably did end up having fun, but at the time I wondered how we could be so foolish to attempt a trip like this. We're going to Iceland next month, and there is a good change none of us will return mentally intact. Again, at least the pictures we'll take will convince us at some point in the future that we will have had fun. (Comment: Now that I'm studying grammar again, I recognize the grammatical tense I just used at the end of that sentence clearly puts me at a 4/4 speaking level in English. End Comment.)
That's it for today.
M
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