Life in Amherst

Returning to the blog

Hello friends...

After a long absence, in which I spent much more time on Facebook than on this blog, I've decided to return to blogging.  Don't get me wrong--Facebook is great, and its been fun to catch up with old friends and spent countless hours looking at pictures of friends' kids, but I've realized that part of the reason I started to blog was to give my kids an accounting (someday) of what their early lives were like and some of the things we did together as a family.  I don't think that's something that can be captured on Facebook.

So, I'm going to try to return to blogging.  It won't be as easy as Facebooking, but I'm hoping it will be a nice way to tell the story of the kids and all the great things we do together as a family.

Before I begin with the narrative I'll post some recent pictures of the kids, as they have grown up so much this year and are simply amazing kids that I'm very proud of! 

Ella at Governor Duvall Patrick's fundraiser (Governor Patrick's daughter, Katherine, is our babysitter!)

 

Maisie, in all her glory...

Sisters...

 

Ella in her first school play (costume courtesy of my amazingly talented mother!)

Maisie on the morning of her 4th birthday

Its not about us, its about the kids...

Its been a long, long time since I've updated this blog, and have since started a new blog.  But I was sitting here looking through some old blog entries about the kids and realized that maybe I haven't finished telling their stories yet.

Lots of good and wonderful things continue to happen to us here in Amherst.  Moving to this community has been the best choice we've ever made, both personally and for our family.  We have felt absolutely embraced and loved here, and are almost dumbfounded by the degree of friendship and community we have felt in the four short months we've lived here.  Its been heaven on earth.

The girls are thriving.  Ella, in particular, has made huge advances in all ways, and everyday I look at her and realize how much she is growing up and what a great kid she is.  Yesterday was one of the best days in memory.  She has joined the pre-swim team at the Hampshire YMCA (the pre-team is for kids between the ages of 4-8).  Every Tuesday and Thursday, I take her over to Northampton from 6:30-7:15 and let her do her swimming with the team.  Its not an easy jaunt, and takes us at least 30 minutes to get there.

But it has been well worth it.  This swimming has boosted her confidence enormously, and she really is an outstanding swimmer for her age.  She had a swim meet yesterday, and I'll be damned if she didn't win BOTH the freestyle and backstroke events for her age.  The freestyle race was particularly impressive, as she swam with older kids (I think they were closer to 8) and she started out somewhat behind as other kids dove into the water while she did a dive right off the deck of the pool.  In the space of 25 yards, she passed the kids that had jumped off the diving block and proceeded to win the race.  It was absolutely thrilling, and both Kim and I had such big tears in our eyes.  I was delighted that my parents could be there, too, so they also got to witness this great event.  Ella did even better in the backstroke--she swam so fast that she was out of the water and onto the pool deck before the other kids even finished.

Its that time when you realize that your life really isn't about you anymore, but rather about wanting your kids to be the happiest, healthiest kids they can possibly be.  Sure, both Kim and I still like to pursue our various athletic activities, but its in these kids that I can really see the future.  Its really the best thing a parent could ever hope for.

And, its not just swimming that Ella has progressed in.  She is absolutely loving her new school here...no more complaining about how much she hates school and doesn't want to go.  The school is small and wonderful and really focused on great things like anti-bullying and respecting families of all types.  She is doing well with her reading, and making some good friends at school.

I know I've said it before but I really couldn't be happier.  This move was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and now that we're here, I can't imagine that we could have ever had second thoughts about moving out of New Haven in the first place.

Pictures without words

Just a few more beautiful shots of our area (morning hike with Kim)...

Buffam Falls, about a mile from our house

Buffam Falls

Kim at the falls

The view from our road (Amherst in valley)

Maisie at swimming lessons

Maisie, thinking mischievous thoughts...

The bliss continues

I hate to be a glass half-empty type of gal, but things have been so wonderful up here in our new surroundings that I keep wondering when the bubble is going to burst and we'll be unhappy about something.  I guess it has to happen sooner or later, so I should just enjoy this little happy bubble we're living in now.  Life is good.

I don't think many people in life get the opportunity to live in exactly the type of community and environment that they've always dreamed of, but I feel like we are living our dream life.  Its not just the community, which is friendly and liberal, but its this amazing house we live in, which is surrounded by more trails that I know what to do with.  The house is beyond my wildest expectations for a place I could hope to live, not because of its size, but rather because of its history and its location in the woods and the fact that the kids absolutely adore it here.  In some strange ways it feels like we've known this house forever, even though we've only been here several weeks.  We've become such different people in the short time we've been here, and the best thing is that we are engaging with our kids in a way we've never engaged with them before.  These nightly walks that we take with them, coupled with the fact that we haven't had a tv to rely on when we are too tired to deal with them changes the dynamics of our relationship with them in so many ways.  And, I'm getting to spend so much more time with them than I did when I was going into work five days/week.  I get to take them to swimming and gymnastics, and we also all just have so much time to spend together doing nothing but hanging out outside, or going to Kim's work to soccer games or whatever.  

This weekend was particularly great because my parents came up on Saturday and we got to take them to a few of our favorite places in Amherst, including Atkins Farms and the Amherst farmer's market/craft fair.  It was an absolutely perfect fall day, and we had a great time with mom and dad (mostly eating all day!).  My parents bought us a beautiful picture of a nature scene in Amherst taken by a professional nature photographer who is the father of one of Ella's kindergarten classmates.  Later in the day, some friends and their kids came over to our house for dinner and play, and the kids had a delightful time running through all seven floors of the house (or at least it seemed that big to them).

Today was a bit more laid back, as it rained all day.  Both the girls took late afternoon naps, but we also all went to Northampton and did some swimming and had some yummy mid-afternoon donuts.  We wrapped up the evening with our wonderful after-dinner walk, as we try to get out each night and look for frogs.  I think tonight the kids must have walked at least a mile in our evening walk, and I'm really so proud of them and how much they love nature and love exploring.

To close, here's a few fun pictures of Maisie.  I wanted to capture her little spirited and mischievous self, and I think I did that in these pictures.

Life with no television

Not much time to post this morning, but thought I'd add a few photos from the past week.  The first is from Kim's dad's visit last week (along with his friend Jolynne).  The second is of Ella in our big new bay window, all wrapped up in a blanket on a chilly fall morning.

All is well here.  We're loving the house, loving Pelham, loving Ella's school, and the broader community of people that we've been meeting.  We are still taking nightly family walks, which the girls look forward to and request every night.  I recently found them combination flashlights/whistles, glowsticks at Staples ($4.99!--Ella is holding hers in the 2nd photo below), so the girls love to take these out on our nightly walks, as its getting dark earlier and earlier each evening.

We've gone without a tv for over two weeks now, and they NEVER ask about it.  On occasion they'll mention a video, but we haven't even hooked up the DVD yet.  I think it was absolutely the best decision in the world for us to forego tv for the next year.  I can't exactly describe how its changed and improved our lives, but it has.  I think its almost that there is less pressure for the kids to be watching tv.  Every morning, they used to come downstairs and want the tv on, and then there would be nothing really to watch, and they would be disappointed in that.  Now, they spend more time playing together, and I have filled the house with library books, so wherever they are (bedrooms, kitchen table, bathrooms!), there are library books for them to read.  And, its so nice from our perspective not to have the tv in the background.  We've been reading a lot more books, and just sitting down and having a glass of wine and talking with each other at the end of the day.  Its a beautiful thing.

I also can't even begin to describe the amazing trails around here.  There are trails that begin immediately behind the house and go for miles and miles.  The trails are part of the Kestrel Land Trust.  Each day, I've been able to head off in a different direction for a nice long run.  Its heaven.  The other thing that I've started to do each day is take advantage of the fact that I get up so early and I take a 2-mile walk down Arnold Road each morning around 6:15.  Its nice to be up so early, and all is quiet and peaceful and gorgeous.  I'm beginning to love my early morning walks as much as I love my runs.

All for now.  Back to work, and then off to pick up the girls for the first day of swimming lessons in Northampton!

Its a wonderful life

We've lived here in Amherst a full week now, and I continue to be amazed and delighted with what a wonderful place this is.  Its surreal, almost.  We seem to have landed in a place where the people are nice, the food is delicious (huge focus on farming and locally grown/produced items), and the landscape is gorgeous.  Our previous neighbor problems are things of the past:  our current neighbors have brought us a bottle of champagne and dropped of a trail map (showing all the trails that begin directly behind our house!).  Ella is in an outstanding elementary school.  I went to the first Parent Teacher Organization meeting tonight, and it was more like going to a meeting of old friends rather than anything else (small funny note:  at one point during the meeting, the PTO members were arguing (gently) about whose barn the school sign should be stored in.  They ALL have barns!).  But then again, we live in a barn.

The trails are so unbelievable, and so close (backyard) that I'm not even sure I can put words on how wonderful it is to live in a place where I can be on trails so easily.

The one thing shocking to us is how much we seemed to have morphed in only one week.  Here's just a few of the major changes we have found ourselves making:

1.  Perhaps most shockingly, we have decided to go without any television service.  We had planned on getting it, but we have been here a week and have thoroughly enjoyed not having a tv, and the kids don't really seem to miss a tv.  So, rather than pay lots of money each month for tv we don't watch, we have decided to go without.  Instead, we will just let the kids watch videos when they have the urge to sit down and veg out in front of the tv.  Its surprising how easy it was to make that decision (though we did have moments of second thought when the Comcast guy was here to install the internet, but we remained firm in our resolve).

2.  Instead of watching tv at night, we have begun to take nightly family walks.  We live at the end of a very long and mostly empty road, so the girls, the cat, and sometimes Lucky and us go out for a walk at night (or dusk, rather).  The girls have been loving it, and so do we.  Its so beautiful, and so peaceful at night.  Amazing.

3.  I'm fully functional now in terms of working from home.  So, when the girls leave at 8:30 for school (the bus picks Ella up and Kim drops Maisie off), I am able to just go back into the house and work in this amazing environment all day.  I'm absolutely shocked at how much I've managed to get done when I don't have distractions.  I can spend nearly all day writing, and then stop working around 3:00 in time to go pick up Maisie and meet Ella's bus.  There's something so wonderful about being able to spend time with the kids at the end of the day, and I'm delighted that I can do this now (at least three days/week, when I'm not in New Haven).

4.  Also, because I'm home, I've been cooking more.  We used to NEVER eat dinner with our kids, except maybe once one weekends, because we would get home way later than they were comfortable eating dinner.  Now, we get to eat dinner together nearly every night.  What a huge difference that makes.  I love to cook, and am getting more adventuresome all the time.  Plus, with all the fresh vegetables and cheeses and fruits around here, cooking is interesting and fun again.

5.  I've been able to get out my camera again and begin to take pictures.  It seems like for awhile there I was relying on my iPhone, which takes good, but not great, pictures.   The girls and I went out for a walk tonight down in Hadley across the converted rails-to-trails railroad bridge over the river, and I took some great shots of them together.

Here's to this wonderful life that we've just made for ourselves...

This first picture is actually of Ella relaxing at our house with Lucky:

 

Maisie, dangling her feet in the water after our walk

Here's the old railroad bridge that we were on that was converted to a walking/biking path

Pelham Move

We've moved!  Actually, the process was pretty seamless, and its hard to believe it went as smoothly as it did.  We rented a 16-foot UHaul trailer and moved the 'necessities' on Saturday/Sunday (i.e. something to sit on, something to sleep on, stuff to work, and stuff to eat on/with).  It hard to believe that that minimal amount of 'necessities' filled up such a large UHaul truck.  UMass is coming in a few weeks to move the rest of our stuff (which I've decided can mostly be thrown away, as we've been living without it now for several days).

I really couldn't be happier that we've made this decision.  Everything is just falling into place so perfectly, and I'm having a hard time believing I ever second-guessed the decision.  The girls are both extremely happy in their new house, and in their new schools.  Perhaps best of all, though, is that they love their new environs.  Because our rental house is at the end of a road in the country, there are few bounds on where the girls can play.  They've got an enormous amount of space to roam about, and there are rocks to climb on and trees to climb.  Perhaps to accentuate her newfound freedoms, Ella even rode a bike without training wheels for the first time yesterday!  We've done some family hikes in the evening (instead of watching tv), and have been going out for bike rides, too.

The other thing that reinforces our decision to move here is the generosity and kindness of the neighbors.  One of our neighbors left a beautiful greeting card in our mail box welcoming us to the area and saying that they were really looking forward to meeting us and the girls, and to call anytime.  The neighbor closest to us is actually a professor of education at UMass in the same field of study as my dad, and he has been walking me around the property showing me the trails (!!!) that start directly behind the house and giving us a history of the area.  I really often have to  pinch myself, because, as most of you know, our neighborly situation in Hamden was not so loving. 

Back to the house, momentarily:  the girls are delighted by it.  As I mentioned earlier, it was originally built in 1905 and it was the main barn for this large farm/estate.  At some point in the mid-1900's, somebody turned the barn into a home, and now its a 4,000 square foot house with all kinds of nooks and crannies and secret doors (not clear where some of them lead).  There are two staircases in the house from the first to the second floors, and the girls (especially Maisie) have had a hard time figuring out how to get from point A in the house to point B (Maisie often says 'Mommy, how do I get to the bathroom?").  Very cute.  Its fun to live in a such a great house, and I think that at the end of this year, we'll have a really hard time giving it up (the owner is going to put it back on the market next spring).

Well, I'm beat, as today was my day to come down to Yale for a conference, and I'm staying overnight here for more meetings tomorrow, and then heading back to Amherst tomorrow afternoon.  I'm amazed and delighted at how quick of a trip it is between the two towns (Amherst and New Haven).  Even today I hit a good amount of traffic in Hartford and it still only took me about an hour and 45 minutes, which wasn't too bad for rush hour.  Its just so nice to know that I can continue working at a job I love, and yet live in a place that's beautiful and very family-friendly.  Its the best of both worlds, and I feel so lucky to have all of this wonderful stuff in my life.

A few pictures from yesterday, as we were all waiting for Ella's school bus (isn't Ella gorgeous?!?!):

Last day in Connecticut

I joked with Kim earlier in the day that as I age, I think I'm becoming increasingly unsentimental.  This whole move to Amherst really hasn't rattled either of us too much in terms of sentimentality.  I think it was actually harder for us to move from our previous house in Hamden (with great neighbors) to our current house than it is for us to move across state lines.  I think there's several reasons for this.  First, as most readers know, we've never fit in well in this particular 'neighborhood' (if you can call it that), and even after two years of living here, don't know the first thing about any of our neighbors, except for a few of them seem to be anti-gay. We do have one neighbor family down the hill that has been kind to us, but the others have either ignored us completely or have openly scorned us.  Hence, I can't get too sappy about moving.

Second, Amherst is only 90 miles or so away from New Haven, and Kim has been making the commute for the better part of nine months (several times per week), so I don't feel like we're really going that far away.  Third, given I'll be coming back to New Haven for week once or twice each week, I don't feel like I'm leaving my friends or work colleagues.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I've been living in New Haven since 1997, when I started my master's program at Yale.  I've been here for 12 years now, and its been a great 12 years.  I got a wonderful education, I met an amazing and wonderful woman, I had some cool and beautiful children, and I've got a great job and a promising career (I think).  I feel like I'm leaving on a great note, and I'm leaving to live life in a community that is more accepting of our family, is a great place for the kids, and is good for Kim's career.

So, we're leaving, and I didn't think I'd be too sad about anything.  I did, however, get quite flustered when we had to say a temporary good-bye to our fabulous nanny, Amy.  The girls have absolutely adored her for these nine months, and Kim and I consider her a wonderful friend and great influence for our children.  Ella, in particular, had a hard time saying good-bye to Amy today (who generously babysat for the girls for the whole day while we loaded our moving truck).  I don't expect to replace her in Amherst, as part of the joy of this new arrangement is that I will be able to work all day from home and then be there for the kids when they get off the bus, which is something I really want to do, especially as they get older and more involved in school activities.  But, I will miss her dearly, and I'm hoping that she and the girls will continue to maintain a relationship by seeing each other every month or so.

So, tomorrow is the big day.  Our house is about half packed in the UHaul, and the UMass movers are coming in a couple of weeks to move the rest of the stuff.  I feel good about this.  I think its a good move for our family, and I'm looking forward to starting this new chapter of our lives.

Happiness

There are moments in life, probably not as often as we'd like, when you realize you are really, truly happy.  These moments are fleeting, and sometimes the moment can pass in an hour, or in a day (or hopefully) can last a little longer than that.  I had one of those moments on Sunday afternoon, and though it really only lasted a couple of hours, it was a perfect happiness where everything in the world seemed right.

We had given Ella the option of staying another week in Hamden and starting school in Amherst after Labor Day, or going up this week, living with Kim, and starting this week.  We were both surprised and delighted when she opted to start school this week, as, for the first time this summer, she has become excited about school again (as would I, after having seen Pelham's playground and meeting the kindergarten teacher).

We decided to pack our bags and head to Amherst on Sunday morning so we could get Ella settled in for school.  The plan was for Ella to stay with Kim at a friend's house for the week (no dingy apartment for Ella!), attend school for the week, and then head back to Hamden on Friday afternoon so we could pack up some of the house and have us all move to Amherst on Sunday (of Labor Day weekend).  Since Maisie's school doesn't start until the Tuesday after Labor Day, we figured Maisie and I would stay in Hamden for another week while Ella and Kim got started in Amherst.

Our first stop after arriving in Amherst around noon or so was our friends' Meg and Sheila's daughter's birthday party.  Meg and Sheila are old friends from New Haven (spanning nearly 10 years back) who relocated to San Francisco shortly after adopting Banti (their daughter) in 2003 (just days before I gave birth to Ella).  Sheila just got a faculty position at Amherst this summer, so their entire family (along with little sister, Ruta, who is Ella's age) relocated to Amherst a few weeks ago.  This is the first time our girls have met, but given how excited we are to spend time with Meg and Sheila, we figured it was good for our girls to get to know each other.

Here's Ella and Banti together:

Our next stop was our home away from home in Amherst, the Holiday Inn Express.  Its actually a great hotel, with a nice pool and hot tub and a free breakfast in the morning, so our girls think they have died and gone to heaven every time we stay there with them.  As it turns out, the daughter of the manager of the HI Express is in Ella's kindergarten in Pelham!

While Kim and Ella splashed around with the girls, I got to go out for a nice trail run on my new favorite trail, which traverses the Holyoke Range in Hadley and Amherst.  Its a challenging trail, but the payoff is that you climb to the top of a small mountain and are rewarded with a gorgeous view of the valley. To get to the trailhead, you get to drive through some of the most gorgeous farmland I've ever seen (remember, I'm a sucker for farmland, and love the smell of cow manure).  This is all in Hadley (bordering Amherst).

After my running adventure and their swimming adventure, we headed to downtown Amherst for dinner.  Its a wonderful college town that's got a lot of charm, and its also very kid-friendly, so you never feel funny about being at a restaurant with boisterous children (as mine tend to be).  Ella got a hold of my camera and actually took some nice pictures of Kim, Maisie, and me (and that giant margarita in the foreground in Kim's, who needed it desperately after an hour and a half of swimming with the girls while I was frolicking on the trails):

To top the evening off, we decided to take the girls out to a wonderful little working dairy/creamery we discovered in Hadley, called Cook Farm.  Its a great place because kids are free to explore the farm and meet the dairy cows, chickens, cats, etc that live on the farm and then eat ice cream from said dairy cows afterwards.  I have this ridiculous love of cows (and hence my refusal to eat beef) so I spent most of my time petting a little calf I fell in love with (picture below). 

Maisie found her own favorite calf:

And of course we played and ate lots of ice cream:

I love the late afternoon sunset on Ella in this picture:

Mischief, as usual:

Eventually we had to drive back to our home away from home, but we caught an extraordinary afterglow from the sunset on the way.

The magical afternoon finally came to an end, and we tucked ourselves into our HI Express beds.  Ella got up and marched off to school this morning with Kim, while Maisie and I headed back to Hamden for our last few days of living at 4 Frazier Road.  I did get one nice picture with Ella before her first day in Kindergarten in Pelham:

Kim reports that Ella's first day of school was great.  There were a few tears at drop-off, as expected, but Ella came home from school happy and chatting about her new friends (whose names she can't remember, of course).  I think all is well up there, though I must admit its hard for me not to be there this week as Ella starts school.

The hard part of moving (the physical stuff) will be this weekend, but hopefully we will be done moving a majority of the essentials by Sunday evening.  A UMass moving company is coming later in September (hopefully not too much later) to pack up and move the rest of the house, so we're just renting a UHaul this weekend to get our beds, counches, clothes, cooking stuff, and a few other essentials up there.  I think our new rental house will be wonderful, and our landlord (now a professor at Princeton) has been nothing but remarkable and generous in terms of acquainting us with the area.

I have to end by saying that one of the reasons I feel so happy is that already, in our extremely short time there, we have been made to feel more welcome (and we haven't even moved in yet), than we felt the whole 2+years we have lived in our current home.  As I mentioned many times earlier, we have been living on a small cul-de-sac the entire time, with neighbors in close proximity, and yet because we are two women living together (I'm guessing) nobody has ever welcomed us or knows anything about us.  There is still one neighbor just two doors down that has so much as waved at us, and she's got two daughters our girls' age. 

And yet, here we are in a new town, and it feels like people have shown us more generosity and kindness than we've seen here in years.  Between the welcoming school community, reuniting with our old friends and already developing solid friendships with new folks, and people just generally being nice when you pass them on the street (strangers say hello!), it feels like some sort of wonderful mecca for nice people.  I'm sure the bubble will burst some day and then I'll think we're back to the mean old world, but for now, it feels like heaven.

We're moving to Amherst!

Its been a long couple of days and I'm exhausted, but the great/exciting news is that we've accepted an offer on our house and we're moving to Amherst!  And, not only moving, but moving in a week (over Labor Day weekend).  Its all crazy.  I was pretty much undecided until the last possible moment, and had found various ways to delay signing the contract (including lies regarding the whereabouts of Kim as the third signer of the contract).  I went back and forth nearly every hour as to whether we should stay or go.  The smallest (and silliest) possible things changed my mind.  If it was sunny outside, I'd think "oh, its so sunny.  I bet Amherst is sunny.  We should move there".  Conversely, if the house was feeling particularly comfortable, I'd say "Oh, I love our house and I'd hate to have to move all this stuff somewhere else".  I would go back and forth every hour, on the hour.

Once we got the offer on our house (after a terrible weekend of price battles between us and the potential buyers), we finally got a reasonable offer on Monday night, and I decided to do two conflicting things:  visit the private school in New Haven (with Ella and Maisie) I had mentioned on Tuesday, and take Ella up to Amherst on Wednesday to visit the school there.   The private school visit on Tuesday went well--I really liked the staff at the school and thought Ella would do well there (and Maisie).  However, I couldn't get past the fact that the school was more or less located under a major interstate in New Haven (I95) and that the only playground the school had was across the street from the school and there were drunk and homeless people lying on the park benches around the playground.  The school itself was extremely small (the building itself) and on more than one occasion the entire building shook as a police car drove by with its sirens blasting.  It just didn't seem to be what I was looking for in terms of what I want for my kids, though I loved the teachers and staff there.

In sharp, sharp contrast, the moment we pulled into the school in Amherst (actually, its a small town next to Amherst called Pelham), Ella was in heaven.  They have an enormous playground surrounded by a big green, grassy field.  The school itself has a relatively small population (around 125 kids in the entire school) and there is only one class per grade (each class has about 16 students and TWO teachers!).  I've never seen Ella so delighted by a playground (and, yes, playgrounds do mean a lot to kids).  Kim and I had set up a meeting with the principal and kindergarten teacher to learn more about the school and decide whether Ella should be in kindergarten or 1st grade (the cutoff for kindergarten is that the child has to be 5 by September 1st, so this is the first year she would technically be eligible for kindergarten in Massachusetts).  After a talk, we all decided to give Ella 'the gift' of another year of kindergarten (their words, not mine).  Kim and I were fine with this, as the kindergarten teacher is quite dynamic and is a 25-year veteran of teaching kindergarten at this school, so we figured she knew what she was talking about (and the principal has been there that long, too). 

Ella seemed fine(ish) with the idea of repeating kindergarten, though I did notice she got her hackles up if somebody (accidentally) said "So you're going to do kindergarten again!" (not the right thing to say, in case you are somebody who happens to see her).  Kim and I have framed it as though this school doesn't let kids go into 1st grade unless they are already six (which is technically true) and Ella is fine with this.

Though the meeting with the principal and kindergarten teacher, as well as Ella's enthusiasm for the school, had pretty much sold me on the idea of moving, what really nailed it for me was the all-school picnic we attended after our meeting with the teacher.  We came about 30 minutes after the picnic had started, and walked around shyly for about 5 minutes, as we didn't know anybody and were trying to pick out other potential kindergarteners to introduce Ella to.  We must have looked like newbies, as a woman named Amy introduced herself to us, and within about 30 minutes, she had taken it upon herself to introduce Kim and I to every other gay and lesbian parent in the school (there must have been at least 10 other parents).  She also introduced us to seemingly everybody else in the school, as well as the entire membership of the Parent Teacher Organization, and nearly every teacher.  I didn't see Kim for nearly 45 minutes as Amy was introducing Kim to parents, and then when Kim got talking to a particular parent, she'd take me in the other direction and introduce me to a different set of parents.   It was unbelievable...I've never felt so welcomed anywhere my whole life.  It was exhausting, but wonderful.

After the picnic, we asked Ella whether she would prefer to stay or move, and she felt pretty strongly about moving, as did we, so we decided to take the leap and do it!  I took Ella back to the school this morning for kindergarten orientation with her other classmates and she had a good time, though she was a bit more shy today than she was at the picnic yesterday.  Though school officially starts for kindergarteners on Monday, we've decided not to rush things for her, and we'll all plan on moving up (at least some of our stuff) over Labor Day weekend and then Ella can starts school the Tuesday after Labor Day.  Or, at least I thought this was the plan until after orientation today, when Ella said she wanted to start school on Monday with the rest of the kids (this from the child who has been dreading going back to school).  I think we'll wait and see how she is feeling later this weekend, and then figure it all out on Sunday.

We also got a chance to see the house we'll be renting for the next year.  Its a big, giant house (I think over 3000 square feet), and its owned by a woman who was a professor at Amherst College but took a faculty job at Princeton just a few weeks ago.  I think it was built in the early 1900's.  It reminds me of the house featured in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, with all kinds of magical hiding places for children.  Its not a perfect house, but given we really can't buy a house right now, it will be fine for the academic year.  She is giving us a lease until the end of June, so that will give us a chance to get the lay of the land and figure out where we'd like to buy.  Best of all, its in a beautiful location and has hiking trails surrounding the house and a (old) playscape for the kids (and is pet-friendly), so I think it will be a great place for us for the next year.

But, one of the best things about moving to Amherst is that we feel that we are already starting to build some pretty good friendships there, and renew some old ones, too.  Our good friends Meg and Sheila, and their two daughters, just moved to Amherst from California about 3 weeks ago, and it will be great to be reunited with them.  We've also made some new friends with kids (Jane, Kathy, and their kids) and some nice friends without kids, too (the women's basketball coach at UMAss and her partner, Cookie, are really tremendous women).  This all makes the transition so much easier.  We're also closer to my parents, and (selfish me) surrounded by miles and miles of trails for trail running.

Not all is perfectly rosy.  We're leaving the girls' father, Howie, behind in New Haven, and I think we all know that we need to make a strong commitment to the girls to have regular weekend and weekly visits, both in Amherst and in New Haven, with him.  We are also going to leave behind our dear nanny, Amy.  We all adore her beyond words, and it makes me a little sick (and extremely sad) to think of how sad the girls will be without her (and it also makes me wonder if we can ever find another babysitter who will tolerate Maisie as much as Amy has).  Finally, I'm really going to have to be disciplined with myself to work at home on the days I'm in Amherst.  My plan is to work at home 3 days/week and drive to Yale 2 days/week, though this can obviously be modified in either direction depending on the week.  I'm going to have to be strict with myself in that once the kids are out the door to school, I work straight until school is out for both of them at 3:00.  I'm pretty sure I can do it, and even be successful, but I'm sure it will take some adjustment.

So, that's that.  What was supposed to be a short post has dragged on and on.  But, its a big time for us...exciting, a little sad, but really something we've been wanting for some time now.

Ella's first day at school (I should have brought my real camera instead of my iPhone):

Our rental house in Pelham: