A few days ago on New Years Eve, I wanted to reflect on 2012 and realized that I remembered very little of it. It was a haze of physics, travel and drool. So, so much drool. The drool has to stop sometime, doesn’t it? So, with the help of my photo folder and Facebook, here is a little of the fun that happened to my little family this year.
It all started pretty quietly. Eli couldn’t walk yet, it was really cold, and we got lots of colds. Here is a photo from one memorable day when I was trying to work from home while he was home sick. In desperation, I stuck him in a chair and piled a bunch of toys on top of him:
At some point, we watched the Superbowl, which featured another guy called Eli, and my Eli’s first introduction to popcorn, now one of his favorite foods:
(Do you see those curls? Already he is a big boy with straight hair and I miss those curls!) Actually, by “favorite foods”, I mean the short list of foods that Eli is actually willing to consume. He is really picky. But when we celebrated passover, he found Matzo to his liking:
And then, all of a sudden, it was spring, and we got to go outside again!
Following in the footsteps of many kids in my family, Eli refused to walk until he was good and ready. But when the warm weather arrived, he really wanted to play outside, and that was when he decided he really wanted to walk. There were a few months when he always wanted to hold our hands. I miss those days too:
This year, Eli also became obsessed with all things that involve plugs and wires. The more plugs the better. When I am working at my laptop, he searches the house for cords that will fit into *every single* hole in my MacBook Pro.
When summer arrived, we started a garden. It was sadly ravaged by critters this year, but we did get a bunch of delicious tomatoes, basil and cucumber. So, so many cucumbers. It was the year of the cucumber.
During the summer, we also started traveling and pretty much didn’t stop. Our first trip was to Arkansas to see family:
(That one was taken by my lovely cousin, Jessica Johnson). Then we were off to upstate NY to see more family:
And a really fun trip to Ithaca, where Eli and I got to play while Howard worked:
After that, we got a little bit more relaxation at home, with more outdoor fun:
In the Autumn, I started a heavy-duty series of trips, starting with PIC 2012 in Slovakia. While I was there, I started feeling a unique kind of nausea that I’ve only experienced once before, which is how I knew Eli’s little brother was on the way:
He’s due in May, and we think he might be called Leo. That morning sickness kept on going for the rest of 2012 and so did I, with a conference in beautiful Rio De Janeiro:
and then more trips to Buffalo, an LBNE collaboration meeting in Houston, and a conference in Pittsburgh. Since Howard’s sister lives in Houston, he and Eli accompanied me on that trip, and had lots of fun. Eli particularly enjoyed riding on the airplane. His parents enjoyed it a bit less, spending most of the ride trying to explain to him the meaning of the seat-belt sign. Somewhere in there, Eli turned two, and my pal Leah took some family pics to commemorate the occasion:
We finished off the year with a trip to Little Rock for Christmas. We got out of town just as a blizzard was hitting the Chicago area. Although we thought we were in the clear, an ice storm hit Little Rock on Christmas day, stranding us in my mom’s (teeny tiny) house for three days.
Also, just in case things weren’t crazy enough, we decided to buy a house! We started looking a few weeks ago, had a signed contract just before Christmas, and are planning to close at the end of the month. This is a little crazy, since we are planning to leave Batavia in the not-to-distant future, but this baby has got to go somewhere, and I’m kinda really tired of having a kitchen in the basement.
So, 2012 was busy but happy for my family. We are looking forward to lots of new fun in 2013 and wish all of your reading this the same!
































