First, apologies for the long delay between updates… The skiing video was a tough act to follow but I feel these photos fit the bill. The letters on top are mine. Wilder copied them below and was understandably quite pleased with himself.

Wilder actually did another 3 ski lessons after that first one and finished out the season with a trip up an actual chair lift and down the Daisy run.  I spent the whole afternoon chasing his lesson around the mountain, trying to catch up with him so I could take photos but always arriving at the lift or the lodge just a few minutes too late to get any action shots.

February, March and now most of April have flown by in a complete blur.  I’ve already had a couple of work gigs this year, plus jury duty, plus the flu. 

I also managed to get out of town on my birthday weekend in February for skiing in Bend. I rode down with friends and so didn’t have any keys with me.  I spilled water all over my cell phone the week before and hadn’t yet gotten it replaced.  And Wilder stayed in Seattle with Matthew so I didn’t have a child to keep track of or any of his accoutrements to haul around.  It was liberating, disorienting and I spent much of the weekend feeling like I had surely misplaced something important.

Matthew has been steadfastly prepping for the MCAT which he takes tomorrow.  He has been juggling about 10 hours of class plus an additional 15 or so hours of homework on top of his regular 40 hour a week job for the past 3 months.  We had our friend Paul over for dinner some while ago and he brought along a friend of his. When this friend asked me what I did, Paul jumped in while I considered how to answer and said, “She picks up the slack.”  Suffice to say, we are all very much looking forward to the end of this particular phase of the application process.

My mom has thankfully come into town a couple of times to keep him entertained in the morning while we catch up on sleep and to help dig us out from under a small (or not so small) mountain of laundry.  I guess I only have been picking up so much slack after all.

Wilder has been weathering all this stress and pressure fairly well, all things considered. There’s been some kind of rough behavior, but its hard to tell how much is Wilder being his usual exuberant, challenging self and how much is a reaction to not seeing much of his dad and both of us being stressed out and worn down. I guess we’ll know next week.

I’m uploading 3 new photo albums; one for each month. 

In addition to becoming a proficient downhill skier, you will notice that Wilder has become quite the soux chef. We’ll set him up with a (not very sharp) knife, a cutting board and a head of broccoli and 10 minutes later the stems are in the compost bucket and the rest is ready to cook.  Most evenings he does the majority of veggie chopping for dinner. He also flips a mean French toast.

Miss you all!