the occasional occurrence

There were some major themes/events that were important for the Wyglendowskis in 2006 - here’s a recap.

New Life
The early months of 2006 were spent getting adjusted to life with a 2nd child. Before Eli was born, we were conned into believing that adding another child would not significantly increase parental workload. It sounded too good to be true, and it sure was! If anyone ever tells you that having another kid doesn’t really add that much more time/effort/cost to parenting, don’t let them fool you. On the other hand, if you have the slightest inkling to have another child, the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Eli grew from the helpless infant stage to a toddling 1 year-old in 2006. He has been a very pleasant baby all along, with smiles and laughs that far outnumber the cries. It is great to watch and listen to him “read” a book in his little baby gestures, expressions and gibberish. He can wave, clap, walk, “dance”, climb stairs, say “mama”, “dada”, “baby”, “bye-bye” and does a really good job with train sounds (”choo-choo” and “chugga-chugga”) thanks to his brother Curtis. We are blessed by God to have him in our lives.

New Growth
Curtis moved from the “terrible twos” to the “much nicer threes” this past year. Along the way, he began doing all of his business in the toilet, learned to ride a bike, got stitches on his chin, was a “ring bear” in Uncle Jeff and Aunt Britni’s wedding and developed a highly active imagination (too active for his own good sometimes, Mr. Monster in the Closet). He is always wanting to be involved with everything that Sarah and I are doing, which I suppose we should enjoy while it lasts.

He loves to watch “movies” (any form of video no matter the length), play trains, ride his bike, talk about his imaginary dogs and sister, wrestle, run, jump and sing. He is a very strong-willed child and likes to do things his way, but he has a good heart and is another of the many blessings in our life.

New Stomping Grounds
We decided to move from Illinois back to our home state of Ohio in 2006. We made the move to Canton, OH in the very end of May 2006. It was a bittersweet experience, as we left a wonderful life, wonderful job and many wonderful people back in Greenville, IL but gave our boys and ourselves a chance to connect better with the many family members we have in Ohio.

New Family Member
Sarah’s mom Roberta moved in with us soon after we arrived in Ohio. We were planning on having her stay with us, as she is fighting a hard battle against multiple sclerosis and her husband left her in early 2006. She has been a fine addition to the family and it is working out better than I expected. We have all had to make adjustments in how we do things, but it has been a good growing experience.

That is not to say that it has been all hurdles and obstacles to overcome. Roberta has been gracious enough to allow Sarah and I great freedom to go out on dates at night while she keeps watch over the sleeping boys, and has many a time given Sarah a much-needed sanity break during the day.

New Routine
Packing up and leaving our “pastoral” life in Illinois meant making many changes to the daily routine for Sarah. Gone are the walks to and from the library, post office, bank, park and grocery store. They have been replaced with the joys of city driving and urban strip mall sprawl. In all of the upheaval caused by the move (new doctors, insurance, bank, utilities, etc), Sarah was on top of everything and made sure we didn’t go from “pastoral” to “panicked”.

She has been doing an amazing job of caring for our expanded family, taking care of two rambunctious boys on a daily basis and running multiple errands per day. Whether it is taking Curtis to a parent-child preschool program a few times per week, shuttling her mom and/or the boys to doctors’ visits or bringing me a sandwich while I am typing away at the computer on a busy day, she does it with grace and the heart of a servant. After five years, I still can’t believe that I ended up with such a great wife, and she is hands down the biggest blessing in my life.

New Job
For me, 2006 and the move back to Ohio meant leaving great coworkers and a job that I loved back in Illinois and finding something new. After some good interviews at a couple universities here in Ohio and a job offer, I opted to instead join Amor Ministries, Inc. as a contract programmer. Thus, I began doing programming using Python full time in 2006. Later in the summer, I got another Python software development contract job with Polimetrix, Inc. in Palo Alto, CA and split time between both companies.

Things with the contract programming and working from home went as well as I could have hoped. I have learned a lot about software development from the guys I worked with at Amor and Polimetrix and made what I feel are worthwhile contributions to both of their organizations. Despite the freedom and excitement inherent in the freelance/contract programming lifestyle, stability and predictabilty won out in 2006; I closed the year by accepting a job offer to work full time for Polimetrix doing software development. I certainly never expected that being involved in an open source project like CherryPy could lead to full time work as a programmer, but I have been enjoying the ride.

New Adventures
Some miscellaneous excitement from 2006 that didn’t get mentioned above:

• 3 trips to the emergency room
• 1 vacation with Grandma and Grandpa ‘dowski to the Outer Banks
• 1 new church
• 4 weddings
• 1 family reunion in New Jersey
• 1 trip to San Diego and Mexico
• 6 new teeth (guess who?)
• many new friends
• many old friendships rekindled

That’s All Folks
It was a good year - let’s do another.

Christian Wyglendowski

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 13th, 2007 at 8:25 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.