A long December...

Happy Solstice? Merry Christmas? Meh...

But: Happy New Year?

Yes please, December 2015 can end now thank you.

The year hasn't been entirely awful, but it's probably one of the toughest years I've had in awhile.

Signing a new 13-month-what-were-we-thinking?! lease was a huge low for Michael and I.

There are friends and teachers I'm never going to see again and am not sure I have properly mourned.

We've missed out on new additions to friends families, but also been able to help new parents here.

So, it hasn't been all bad...

My sister was visiting over Christmas/New Years and Michael's mum visited just as I was starting my new job. Plus our trip to Chicago was timed so that we could catch up with close friends from Brisbane and meet their son.

Our nearest daycare turned out to be a really good match for Jimmy - he loves it there.

My work is good, but I'm having skin issues like never before (I'll tell you about it sometime).

Michael's work is frustrating but funded...

But December has been the pits because I've been sick for more than half of it and I can't believe that I only realised this the other night. Between some very nasty gastro and very aggressive conjunctivitis, plus a cold like thing I came down with around Christmas Day, I have had to take a huge chunk of time off work and wasn't able to enjoy Chicago half as much as I would have liked.

So, bye-bye December, bye-bye 2015. I know 2016 will not be without its challenges but as I write this, coughing up my lungs (it's linked to the conjunctivitis or a cold - I no longer care), I realise that I am so totally over 2015.

Call me an optimist, but I'm hoping that "maybe this year will be better than the last..."

(Both photos were taken by Jimmy, who is starting to take photos that are not his feet or the carpet.)

I'm not sleeping...

When we first moved here, Michael and I were both terrified about the prospect of being in Tornado Alley, in the middle of tornado season. It didn't seem to matter that people kept trying to reassure us with statements like "I've lived in Manhattan for nearly 30 years and the only tornado to come through here was the one in 2008". Michael and I still created a small stockpile of food and used empty milk bottles to store emergency water, I even put together an evacuation pack with nappies and spare clothes and our passports.

And every night that it stormed I would wake up and stay awake until the storm passed. I would listen to the thunder as it rolled over the hills, around the town, and through the sky. I would watch Michael sleeping and prepare myself to wake him and scoop Jimmy up into my arms and run for the storm shelter.

Between that, the mugginess that resulted from having to close the windows, and a little boy who had returned to breastfeeding like a 3 month old baby, I wasn't sleeping very much.