Monthly Update 3/30/2025
Full disclosure, it's not 3/30 yet. I wonder if I'll post on the right day. Wanted to get some things written down before they left my mind. Thank goodness for saving drafts.
My neighbors are screaming while my child is asleep. I'm unreasonably mad about it. She's been sleeping weirdly, having late naps, resisting them for an hour or more at a time. Going to bed and waking up late. It hasn't helped that I've been out of commission with back pain for a few days. Nate has had to be a single working parent with two kids, basically. He's taken amazing care of both of us, but some things don't work as well when he's working. Managing nap time is one of them. He can't rock her to sleep and type at the same time.
Really she shouldn't need rocked or held for naps anymore but she's been crazy without it, and it's routine at her grandparents' house because I want to make sure she falls asleep despite the unusual environment. I could probably not, at this point, but if I'm honest I also just really like her falling asleep on me. I only get that for so long, you know?
Speaking of her grandparents, things are perhaps looking a little worse for her Zaide. Kurt has been spending larger portions of the day sleeping, complaining of more head pain, and coughing even more than before. Hospice care has now officially been recommended by his neuro oncologist. They're gonna try to find in home care, I believe. We'll see what's available, fingers crossed.
In lighter news, Nate's grandma is recovering from her broken femur quite well, from what I understand. Also, Erica's eye drift seems to be noticeably improving, just from a couple hours of patching each day for less than a week. I'm really grateful, it seems like she won't need any surgery to me. We still have to wait and see what the doctor says in about a month, but I'm much less worried than before.
Otherwise, she's doing really well! She's standing with no supports for longer and longer stretches of time; over 20 seconds is her record so far. I'm sure she'll take her first step or two in no time at all. She's eating tons more food than she was even a couple weeks ago, both in volume and variety, and she's finding new ways to pseudo-communicate and play with us all the time.
OK, now it's 3/30.
Ken left for Montana again today, and Nate's parents are ill, so Nate will be staying at their house for a few days to care for Kurt while Ken's getting his treatment. Thank goodness my back is doing better. Life is wild right now, y'all. Everything is requiring more patience and open communication between Nate and I than ever before. It's growthful and good, but man, this process of loss and grief is challenging. No one ever knows what to say. I never know what to say.
What else? I'm still writing letters to family. In one of them, I made a lil deal with my dad that we'll both work on our books (he's writing a fantasy fiction too) and hold each other accountable, starting earlier this week. We've tried this before with exercises and kinda failed, lol, but I think we'll pull this one off. We each set very attainable and somewhat flexible goals for ourselves. I added mine to my daily quests, and it's definitely a higher priority than the other quests right now. Fingers crossed. I did do some editing this week; I need to get my novel down from 130k words to like 80k. It's daunting but probably doable?
Tomorrow is the last day of March, and I said I would post about this blog on social media this month, so I have to do it then. I'll be writing those posts tonight and tomorrow. I'm very nervous, which is absolutely wild because I don't expect many clicks, and everyone on my social media is people I know (or knew) in real life anyways. To be fair, I haven't regularly posted on social media in years and years, so just sharing this site is putting myself out there much more than usual. I'm gonna hold myself to it. I really am hoping it'll spark some interesting conversations or renew some positive relationships that have fallen by the wayside, even if just a couple.
There's not much else to share that hasn't been covered in my earlier blog post this month. The biggest thing on my mind, besides Kurt, is weighing my back issues against having a second kid like Nate and I want. Pregnancy would be terrible for my herniated disc, and the consequences of worsening that could affect both my present family and the child who would come from it. It's also just scary to know I have a persisting injury that may never be fully healed or go away. Pain from it has made me immobile for a couple of days. I can't afford to worsen that. It's a lot to reconcile.
What a way to welcome myself to my thirties, eh?
Reckon this is long enough. Next month is Erica's first birthday, so I'm big looking forward to that. Hoping some of my family can visit for it, though my mom may be the only one who can make it. We'll see - either way, it's gonna be mind bending. I can't believe my baby is a toddler. Also I'll be adding my digital art post to my Long-form Blog page, since I'll continue to update it as I draw new things. If you haven't checked my art out yet it's here.
Thanks for reading, fam.