We cannot believe that she is so big (and that we have been parents for so long)! Of course, as her parents, we cannot help but take every opportunity we can to brag, so here goes:

Simona is funny. Just ask Maria! No one can make Maria belly laugh the way Simona can with her silly dances and faces. Simona is also amazingly good at math. She can figure out basic multiplication problems (four times three, etc.) on her own, and she recently was able to tell us that half of sixty is thirty. She is learning some basic reading but is much better at it in German than in English. This not surprising, since we speak German here at home and since it is a much, much more phonetic language than English. Simona also has a kind heart and overall is quite empathetic. She is creative, artistic, and far more graceful and girly than I’ve ever been. She balances this with a love for swimming, bike riding, digging, and climbing. We delight in watching her grow into her own person.

(Just so you don’t think that all of the preceding praise is made up, I will throw in the honest truth: she can be harsh with her little brother, sometimes lies to avoid getting in trouble (bad move!), and doesn’t quite yet get the nuance between being proud and excited vs. being proud and boastful. But she tries so hard to please us and to be a “good person.”)

We celebrated her fifth birthday twice. The first event was a pool party on Saturday at our apartment pool.

Her second party took place on Sunday, her actual birthday, in “Berbree City,” as Andreas calls Oma and Opas house. Opa took the kids swimming and kayaking in their pool (yes, he put the kayak in the pool. . .) and then went on a bike ride to the elementary school playground. Simona got her requested meal of “hamburgers and mac-n-cheese,” supplemented by some tolerable green beans, followed by presents and ice cream cake. Sounds like a successful day by any 5-year-old’s standards, I’d say!

BIG NEWS
Our big news is that . . . we finally know where we’ll be moving! We had planned on “knowing” by graduation, but graduation came and went back in May. Lest you think Caleb was dragging his feet in the job search process, let me assure you: He was not. He spent many, many hours over the past year drinking gallons of coffee at various “meet for coffee” networking meetings throughout the Atlanta area. I think he knows every individual who has ever been even tangentially involved in the real estate industry in this city.

Along the way, we learned that a job search like this can be a bit of a geography bee. There were MANY places we considered moving during this job hunt process. Some of these were serious considerations, complete with actual interviews or job offers, Google map geography lessons, elementary school research, etc. Others ended up being long-shot scenarios– job postings to which Caleb deliberated applying, job leads that quickly dried up or ended up not being the right fit for us, etc.

A few of the cities we considered:
- Piscataway, New Jersey
- New Delhi, India (yes, the country!)
- San Antonio, Texas
- San Francisco, California
- Chicago, Illinois
- Birmingham, Alabama
- Charleston, South Carolina
- Charlotte, North Carolina
- Boston, Massachusetts
- Hanover, New Hampshire
- McLean, Virginia (near Dulles Airport)
- Baltimore, Maryland
- Atlanta, Georgia

But in the end, we are moving right back where we started: Washington, DC! Caleb has accepted a job in Baltimore, Maryland. We have been deliberating whether to move to Baltimore or DC, but for a variety of reasons, we have decided that at this point, DC makes more sense for us. We are very open to the possibility that the commute will be too much, so we plan to reconsider our situation after 6-12 months. In the meantime, however, we are excited to return to the District!!

We will be moving out of our apartment here in about 1 week and will spend time in Germany before beginning our next adventure: Round 2 in the Nation’s Capitol!

5)  So what do you do?  . . . Oh.  Hmm.  Interesting. 

4)  How’d you decide to do that?

3)  I could never be a stay at home mom.  I would get so bored.

2)  What do you do with all that free time?!  Do you wish you worked?

 . . . and, my personal favorite (seriously- someone asked me this!) . . .  

1)  So, have you always been a stay-at-home mom?

First, I am a typical “Northwestern” girl- ambitious and performance driven, with a desire to define myself by what I “accomplish” in a career. Mothering is not highly regarded, especially in a career-driven city like DC, but it is of infinite value.
Second, being a SAHM is hard! In addition to adjusting to unstructured days and loneliness, Simona and I are in the midst of a difficult transition from nursing to eating more solid foods. There are no rule books or procedural guides to help me troubleshoot.

So here’s a tip of the hat to all those SAHMs (and SAHDs!), especially with more than one child!

(If you’ve made it this far, thanks. Now you can go browse the updated photos.)