Lots of News

There is lots of news to report, most of it good. There is so much, in fact, that I'm going to resort to bullets.

• Despite my own paranoia, I am making good progress on my second chapter. I emailed my advisor last week to tell her I'd get her a draft by the end of the month, and she said that since she couldn't get to it until after she gives her final exam to work on it until the first week of May and send it then. That gives me just enough time to have a complete draft, including some sort of conclusion (I'm not always great at conclusions!).
• C received 2 job offers late last week. I'm not going to go into specifics right now because he is in the very early stages of negotiating. We do have a preference, but with so much to work out, I'm going to wait to blog about things more specifically. This comes as a big relief to C as he was beginning to wonder if he'd ever get an offer. I can't express how proud I am of him--he has worked so hard for this moment. He truly was like a different person this weekend, or rather, he was back to normal, not scrambling to get things done or feeling guilty about having to leave again. All of the stress and frustration of the past several months was worth it to see the look on his face when he realized that he had not one, but two offers.
  
• Now that he has these 2 offers, he has decided not to go to his last on-campus interview, which was scheduled for this week. It isn't a school he is very interested in, and even if he did get an offer there, he wouldn't accept it over the offers he does have. For the first time since the beginning of March, both of us will be home all week long! That is almost as exciting as the two offers!
• For the past 2 nights, Wild Man has decided that he did not want to nurse before going to sleep. In fact, last night he asked to be put in his crib. He got somewhat upset when C left his room, but after a few minutes, he calmed down and put himself to sleep. It seems my boy may have decided to wean himself. I have mixed feelings about this; I'm not altogether ready for him to stop nursing. I still like having that as our special time. That said, I was planning to wean him before my research trip this summer, so if he decides to do it himself, that will certainly be much easier than forcibly weaning.
• Going against what I thought made the most sense, C has decided to discuss these offers with his family. He isn't soliciting their opinions, and he has made it clear that the do not get an opinion. They have, however, had opinions, none of them good. They don't like either offer as neither moves us considerably closer to them. It seems they all, particularly Yetta and Pita, forgot how to say "Congratulations! We're so happy for you! I can't imagine how good this must feel." Instead, Yetta rattled off a list of questions about how often we'd be able to visit and why didn't he get any interviews at schools closer to them. For her part, Pita immediately burst into tears and said "Now I'll never have a relationship with Wild Man." I must say this statement really, really irritates me. They have no concept of how lucky they are to live in the same state as their entire family for so long, and they also have no concept how lucky they are to live in the same city as C's older brother, his wife, and their two boys. But it really irritates me because of my own familial situation. I never lived in the same state as any of my extended family, but I am very, very close to my maternal grandparents, my mom's youngest sister, and several of my cousins. Yes, it takes a bit more work to have a "relationship," but it isn't impossible. So I'd like to thank my in-laws for, as usual, making life all about them.