On June 28, 2011, I wrote the last line of the blog that cataloged our one-year, around-the-world honeymoon – Our First Year Everywhere. I felt that once that story was wrapped up, so was my blogging. No one needed to hear the mundane details of everyday life in Los Angeles.
And I felt this way until three weeks ago when I shared a page or two of the blog with a friend. And I remembered. There was the awe of the first day in Bali. The shame of being molested by a whore in Hanoi. The time Emily was sure we were going to die in a fire. One of my favorite birthday meals of all time. The time we ran for the bus in Crete and barely avoided being stranded. And so many more memories.
I began to wonder if we had come to the point where our story was tellable again. Not the story of the details of our day. Certainly not the story of our children's diapers and the funny things they said that day (which of course are many, everyday). But the story of how the people on that one-year international adventure decided that settling down and raising a family didn't mean the adventure was over. In fact, I believe the adventure is just get going.
So let's catch up. When last we left a very sad Emily and Eric in their friends' condo in Boston where they were visiting before attending a wedding in Vermont, they had no idea what would come next. They went to the wedding, flew back to Los Angeles, stayed with Emily's parents for five months, Eric took a contract-to-hire position with a small startup in Santa Monica and they got a very nice, townhouse-style apartment off Fairfax in the Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles.
That contract-to-hire job turned into something very different than it started and Eric ended up managing the development of an online product for the next four years – both for Docstoc (the startup) and later for Intuit who acquired them. Meanwhile, two stable jobs and a nice place to live, Emily and Eric had their son Sennen in June 2013. Seven months later they moved into their first house in Westlake Village – adjacent to the lake and a mile from the house in which Eric grew up.
In June 2015, they had a baby girl, Ailyn. Three weeks later, Eric found out Intuit was laying off the entire Docstoc unit and that he had 7 months left on the job. Luckily, he fell-in with the company with a competing product and since they were in New York, they agreed to pay of an office in Westlake. Eric's commute shrank to 2 miles each way per day.
As the online education industry experience regulatory changes, some of Emily's online colleges didn't survive. However, traditional on-ground schools began to get healthier budgets and in 2015, Emily found herself increasingly back on campus for about half her class load.
In July 2016, Emily and Eric almost unexpectedly simultaneously bought a new house and sold their old one – and moved a mile down the road to a more family-oriented neighborhood (the same one in which Eric grew up) and a bigger house.
And there is the broad-stroked, very boring, adult version of the last six and a half years. Mixed into all this are other births, losses, friends, tragedies, miracles, bills, cars, stresses, worries, doctors visits, nannies, au pairs, poop, diapers and MANY, MANY words.
And in conclusion, we're very fortunate people who count our blessings in a world that seems so full of tragedies, struggles fears and ugly politics.
So, that's the quick update.
Oh, but we've also traveled. In December 2012, during Emily's second trimester with Sennen, we took a couple of weeks in Nice and Paris. In August 2014 we took a 15-month-old Sennen to Patmos, Greece where he gorged on tzatziki, spanakopita and gelato while spending much of his days on the beaches.
In December 2015 we took a six-month-old Ailyn and a two-and-a-half-year-old Sennen to Bali for three weeks. And then we remembered that we don't usually spend all day, everyday with our children. So that was a very rewarding, but not reenergizing trip that taught us to next time bring our au pair. Which we did when we returned to Bali in December 2016 – and a more relaxing time was had by all.
From these Bali trips our kids have come to expect that getting places takes about 21 hours in the air and are overall very well behaved on the flights. They have also learned to adapt to new places, absorb other cultures, and accept that monkey forests are a thing. And building on Sennen's experience in Greece, they believe gelato and vacation go hand-in-hand.
Now it's December 1, 2017. In 16 days our family will undertake its next travel adventure to Thailand. This time, Jesper our au pair from Sweden can't come along. In the second/extension year, au pairs don't have in-and-out travel privileges from America. So, my 24 year-old cousin Arielle – whose I used to take care of when she was young – will be coming with as Jesper's stand-in.
Also different this year – we will have multiple destinations in our three weeks. Instead of plopping down in one place as we have done since Sennen's trip to Patmos, we'll visit Chiang Mai, Koh Chang and Bangkok – as well as a brief day-stop in Singapore on the way to Thailand.
This year feels big. We're branching out. We're moving around. The kids are ever more aware of travel and what it means. They have expectations of Pad Thai, coconut sticky rice, bathing elephants, beach days, sleeping on overnight trains from Chaing Mai to Bangkok, seeing Daddy speak Thai, long flights – and of course, gelato.
And now we have our blog – back to document our journey, only at a different stage of life with new and added meaning. We hope you the reader, will come along or as Daniel Tiger (our kids favorite TV character) says, "Won't you ride along with me….?!"
