Monthly Update 3/10/2025
Happy Monday, fam.
I don't particularly want to get into the habit of posting monthlies in the middle of the month, but I've put it off too long at this point. I reckon it's time to try catching people up.
So uh. I think the format I'm gonna try to use is something where I pick a few of the biggest overarching pieces of my life and try to expand on them and how they affect me; anything I repeatedly mention in dailies, perhaps, or the things that are most important but don't necessarily make it to dailies. I dunno. For now I'll just pick a couple and run with it.
Obviously the biggest thing is Erica. Right now, she's 10 and a half months old. She says mama and dada, she crawls, stands, and bounces to dance. She waves, she claps, and she puts her finger to her mouth and moves it up and down to make funny noises. She's starting to eat more solids, and is a weirdo who seems to appreciate savory flavors more than sweet ones right now (I'm not complaining!). She is basically always smiling and friendly, and I feel like I can't take any credit for it. That smiley love is just who she is.
She truly blows me away. I'm still going through a huge period of transition and growth, only just beginning to understand what being a mother even is. I realize I have never known the breadth of my ability to love before now, and that's humbling. I am even more empathetic to the people around me, which is both unsurprising and yet still unexpected. Life is suddenly much more, but in a way that doesn't invalidate my experiences before. Rather, it makes every previous naivete more beautiful, and even more valuable in my sudden understanding. Being a mother now is so wonderful that I have a deeper appreciation for everything leading up to it, even the difficult bits.
I could wax poetic about this forever, I think. I digress.
Another very big arc in my life at the moment is the ongoing death of my father in law Kurt. It is stark, sudden, slow, and painful. Yes, sudden and slow, together. He was diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma in his brain about two years ago now, I think, and at this point he is a shell of his former self, with a prognosis of about half a year to live, give or take. You never know with brain cancer, though. His body may live on for years, though mentally there's not a lot left.
His body has betrayed him entirely, and the unfairness of the situation is hard to reconcile. My mother in law told me a story that someone in her spiritual community wrote that really resonates with her, where a man's wife is becoming an angel (literally, I suppose) and he must live with her drifting away and losing substance. She feels this with Kurt. I hope the thought of his becoming an angel does offer her solace. It just hurts for me.
Our biggest challenges besides the emotional ones right now are related to his physical care. He can't walk, or move well, and is a very high fall risk. In home care is a big financial strain, as one might expect. Nate's Uncle Ken has been living with them, supporting them and being Kurt's biggest source of physical care. We would be lost without him, and can't express our gratitude to him. Ken has cancer in remission himself, so he has to go back home to Montana for his maintenance treatments every so often. The few days he's gone at a time are incredibly difficult, with Nate working from his parents' house and caring for Kurt so Jane can keep her part time work going and can have someone help with moving Kurt, leaving me alone with the baby for very long stretches. Jane, Nate, and I all have back issues that make moving Kurt without Ken difficult and risky, so Ken keeps his visits home as short as possible. His generosity and big heart are unbelievable. He says it gives him purpose. I say his love for his sister is immense.
This month, Kurt's mother and brother visited for the first time since Christmas, and it was painful to see. He's declined quite a lot in the last few weeks. Over the holidays, he was still able to converse and be present. Now, his attention span is negligible, and you can't hold a conversation with him. Every now and then he'll make a joke about things that are going on around him, and you see who he was for a second. Otherwise, he's pretty much gone.
Erica still brings him happiness and gratitude, and we're grateful for that. The juxtaposition of death with new life is sometimes startling and is both a boon and a stressor, but we chose to have her when we did because we'd already been considering a child when Kurt got his diagnosis, and he straight up told us he would love to be a grandfather before he passed. We are glad we could give him that, and that it was the right time for us regardless. Though his dying has made our first time being parents more difficult, our first time being parents has made him dying much, much less difficult and has brought much more joy to everyone involved. I keep using the word grateful. It's the most appropriate one.
Other arcs? I'm still in my book writing era, I swear. For those unaware, I finished the roughest rough draft of a novel a couple of years ago. It's about 130k words, which is far too many, and it doesn't quite tell the story I want it to tell. I worked on it off and on for several months after finishing the rough draft, then put it aside almost entirely for the course of my pregnancy until now. It's itching my brain again recently, finally. It inspired me to take a novel writing class at the community college here, but that ended up being a bust and I dropped it six hours in. I hope to keep educating myself more on creative writing as a craft, and to work on my book regularly again soon. I have had a couple sparks of inspiration for how I can turn the story into more of what I want, and have hand written some new notes in the last week. Positive steps, even if they're small ones.
Other ongoing things... It's hard to say. I think those really are the biggest ones. I want to keep in contact with family, especially some extended family, better in the coming months. We'll see how that goes. I'm writing letters to my root family now, even though I talk to them online almost daily. I have so much ink and paper and spend so much time just doing calligraphy for myself. I want to use that time as connection to family too. I gave Nersch some calligraphy supplies while they were visiting this week, because they showed some interest, as well. That was fun. Incorporating my joys with each other and overlapping them with my family is rewarding. I hope to find new ways to do that.
Self care is always an ongoing challenge, and I'm doing this as part of taking that on. When I began making this blog, I had some "daily quests" I wanted to complete in the effort of forming good habits. They've fallen by the wayside, but I'm going to use this moment of sharing as a chance to revamp them. I also had been planning meals weekly, making grocery shopping lists with intent. I'll be trying to get back into that too. I have a notebook dedicated to it and I'll share a picture of a sample page of successful "questing" and meal planning below as motivation.
My daily quests were to complete my skincare and exercise regimens, practice ten minutes of music, and practice ten minutes of language learning. Journaling was also a daily, but I've been managing that well enough with the blog that I'm going to call it a success and not track it anymore.
Wish me luck for the others. I do have a few things that have been previous daily quests that I've integrated into my life successfully, and I might make a page here that's a short list of current daily quests and successes. We'll see.
For the blog, I'm making it a goal to start sharing the link on socials by the end of the month, even though it scares me. It's super unlikely that many people will want to read regularly, so the fear is silly, but it's still there. I want to challenge it head on! Having even a bit of online presence is excellent when one starts trying to publish, at the very least.
I'm also working on a recounting of my labor and postpartum experiences, cuz that is a doozy of a story. It'll be a very long post that I'll add to the blog list. I'll probably also add my Motherhood is post to that list, because I'm going to keep updating it as more funny and intense motherhood stuff happens.
This is getting very long so I reckon I'm gonna end it there. That's probably enough catching up for now. Love y'all.
