Yet Another Holiday Newsletter -- 2000

Dear Ones:

This year you will be getting not only this year’s holiday newsletter, but last year’s holiday newsletter. Why such bounty? Well, last year’s newsletter was never sent out. We wrote finished it by December 17, 1999 and printed it off – and then found it again in June! Truly, these holiday newsletters are testimony to our vast skills of organization.

Since we never sent out baby announcements, consider this your announcement. Just in case any of you out there have not heard, here’s the stats:

We think that we may have one of the smilingest babies on the planet. If you are web-savvy, you can find some baby pictures (and a whole bunch of other stuff, including an online journal) on my web page at http://www.sff.net/people/hmm/.

A brief chronology of the past year:

December ’99 -- This was an incredibly stressful month. My pregnancy made it harder and harder to cope with my workload, and I just felt heavier and heavier. Added to all of this were fears of the upcoming cesarean operation. While the thought of the surgery itself did not worry me, I did panic over the thought of being tied down and helpless.

And then there was the reality of our upcoming parenthood. Becoming a parent was both better and worse than I had ever imagined. Before Cassie came along, I feared that I would never bond with her. Hah! Both Andy and I wept in the delivery room. She was the best Christmas present either of us had ever received.

Cassie was alert and responsive from the very beginning. When she was upset, she became soothed by lullabies she heard in utero. One thing that stunned me was how much she could move as a newborn. When put on her stomach on Daddy’s chest (her favorite place to sleep) she would invariably creep upward until she was head butting Andy’s chin.

January ’00 -- Cassie flipped over for the first time at two weeks of age. By the time she turned three weeks, she became colicky, howling every evening just as her father came home. This crankiness lasted until she was almost three months old. At this point, she slept days, and was perky and alert in the middle of the night.

February ’00 -- I became determined to get Cassie on a schedule. I felt extraordinarily sleep deprived, and barely able to function. There was no way that I would be able to carry out a full-time job on the amount of sleep that I had been getting.

I kept track of Cassie’s wakings and feedings in a rather comprehensive log, looking for patterns. I soon learned that a solid afternoon nap was a key to getting her to sleep at night as well. To enforce it, I went to ridiculous lengths, sometimes driving for a couple hours to keep her asleep. But it worked, and Cassie started falling asleep at regular times even without the crutch of driving.

March ’00 -- Cassie got her social smile, started reaching for objects with regularity and started sleeping through the night. My maternity leave ended on the 21st. I went back to work, but cried every day that I dropped Cassie off.

April ’00 -- My church held a baby welcoming ceremony (the Quaker equivalent of a christening) for all the children born in the past 18 months. Cassie was the youngest baby there.

May ’00 -- Cassie had her first bite of solid food, though truthfully more food wound up on the baby than in the baby.

June ’00 -- Our major project this month was replacing our roof. No problem, we thought. Andy had done roofing on three other houses before. We had scaffolding, tools and tons of friends who owed us favors. We checked the weather forecast, and it told us that the entire weekend would be sunny and mild.

Can you see where this is going? Just after we had gotten all the shingles pulled off our roof, in rolled the dark storm clouds. Yeah, we had a tarp, but the rain seeped past it. We kept hoping that it would clear up, but it didn’t. By the next morning, we had a spectacular waterfall inside our house.

I laid down buckets and plastic and every piece of tupperware that I could find. The rain filled my makeshift containers as fast as I could bail them. In desperation, we called upon our friends again and found a group that was willing to roof in the rain. Our roof got finished, but when we were done, the ceiling in our bedroom was shot. Bits of wet plaster would fall down from on high at irregular intervals. This forced us to begin another grand home remodeling project – our bedroom.

Other milestones of the month: Cassie learned to sit up for the first time, and Andy turned 29. Andy also had a major canoe trip with his buddies, canoeing down the St. Croix River.

July ’00 -- Andy’s second canoe trip was on the Namakaagen River in Wisconsin. During this expedition, they managed to flip three of the five boats on the river. Everyone came home soaked, but smiling. Hilary turned 34.

August ’00 -- Andy was promoted from a junior business analyst to a senior business analyst (a leap of two levels.)

September ’00 -- We go to the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago with both the Honse Family and the Byrne Family. We had a great time, spent way too much money, and got to see Cassie crawl for the first time. I began writing again.

October ’00 -- I sell my first piece of fiction, "Carol in the Garden" to In a Nutshell: An Anthology of Micro Speculative Fiction. Woo hoo! Around this same time, I discover that Tile Chess (remember Tile Chess?) has been nominated for an Origins award for the best abstract game of the year, and that it has been published in a French Edition! For those of you who are dying to purchase a copy, you can purchase it through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

We also had Cassie’s first Halloween. Cassie wore a white satin angel costume (made by our friend Kris Honse), and spent most of her time trying to eat her halo. Andy and I went trick or treating with her and the six year old twins from next door. Thanks to unseasonably balmy weather, none of the kids had to wear jackets over their cute costumes. We visited the houses of eight of our nearest neighbors, and then went home to give out candy ourselves.

November ’00 -- Minneapolis Public Library held a referendum to get more funding to build a new Central Library. As the central image of their campaign, they used a photograph of me and three of the bilingual outreach liaisons who I supervise. For about a month after the referendum passed, this picture was featured prominently on the home page of my library’s website!

We finished our bedroom remodeling project (yes, the one we started in June) just in time to host sixteen people for Thanksgiving dinner. The bedroom looks really nice. We went with two-toned walls – mint green and forest green – separated by a border. It feels like home now, and we enjoyed giving everyone the grand tour.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Cassie had a word explosion. Her favorites are: ba’ (ball), he’o (hello), wow, bye, ub (up) and of course dada and mama. She also points, waves and enjoys pounding on keyboards.

December ’00 -- Cassie is almost a year old. She doesn’t walk yet, but yesterday she figured out how to climb stairs. Her favorite toys are balls and board books, and she carts them with her throughout the house. Are we planning on doing a big blowout bash for her first birthday? Not really. We’ll probably just have a few friends over but hold the main celebration to her half birthday in June.

Please stay in touch. Give us a call, send us e-mail, or even write a giant form letter like this one. We want to know what is going on in your lives, and we’ve been way too busy and tired to ask you ourselves. We hope you all have a joyous holiday season and the happiest of New Years.

Hugs,

Hmm