Chiang Mai

More than halfway through 2016.   What a privilege to have been able to call this place home for a few months in our life.  M has thrived.

2016

I am averaging one blog post every 6 months. Nonetheless, I'm thankful for this space.

We just completed our longest trip as a family. We took a month off for the holiday and flew to California, Taiwan, and the Philippines.  Again, I made the mistake of booking too many flights.  I believe we counted 10 in a month, two of which were 10-13 hours long.  Oof.

Despite the tantrums, shifting sleep schedules, and awful jetlag, it was worth it.  2015 was a big year for me in terms of adjustment to motherhood and work-life balance.  It was not easy.  There were rough patches and more than a handful of times that I wanted to quit my job.  But we made it through the year. In some ways this trip felt like a celebration of what we have been through and what we can do as a family. While this trip, along with the others we made in the year, did not help my precarious daily balancing act, it reminded me that parenthood is what we make of it and M will be a happier, healthier child if her mother is thriving.

I have not made resolutions in years. For the year ahead, I have two concrete goals, apart from the "usual" (i.e., respect boundaries between work and personal life, travel, own my work).  The first: to navigate an international move with my family, which will happen in a little over a month and which I am trying to do very carefully.  The second: to grow into my new role at work, but in a way that allows me to carve out more time with my family.