Spring 2022

This spring started off with sad news that Rachael’s cancer had returned.  We battened down the hatches for 3 months of chemo during tax season, and Gramannette came to our rescue once again to help out with the hearth and home.  The treatment this time didn’t seem to be nearly as awful as before; though Rachael was pretty wiped out for a week afterwards, she then had two pretty good weeks to enjoy life.  She was able to get in lots of friend time, and some good karaoke on the weekends.

Josef has been learning viola this year and we got to attend his first strings concert.  He also played Thor in the 4th Grade play.  He is really maturing quite a bit these days.  He still loves to argue and debate every decision I make, but I can see he is now genuinely trying to understand things as opposed to just fight against them.  We had some pretty challenging conversations, but I could tell he was making a good faith effort to listen and understand.  It’s exciting to see this new way of relating to the world emerge!

He is also becoming much more diligent about remembering to do things on his own–he chafes at any implication that he might need a reminder.  Even though this is often not the case, it’s welcome to see him striving to handle things on his own.

Starting in January we initiated the Saturday Night Movie Night project.  This was received with much delight by Josef, given that I’ve never really let him watch movies until now (though he’s seen plenty with other folks).  We started off with some Buster Keaton classics, and then worked our way up through the chronology of hits.  Some of his favorites included Jason and the Argonauts, Singing in the Rain, Star Wars, Tron, and Willow.  It’s been a fun little project to curate all my favorite flicks for him, and an easy way for me to spend a Saturday evening with him after all the tax season exertions for the week.

Here is a video of some delightful chamber music.