Welcome, 2022. Please be kind.

Less than a month after my last post, we became a family of four! We welcomed Cyrus Stone Bruce just after midnight on Saturday, September 4th. He was just a little guy at only six pounds, and he had to fight pretty hard those first few minutes, but he's doing really well now. He's alert and happy and loves to watch his brother get up to all sorts of shenanigans. Cohen turned two just 23 days after Cy was born, and we had so much fun celebrating him with friends and family! If I could tell you nothing else I would say that I am eternally grateful for our sweet little family. Cohen loves his little brother, and I know they will be creating all sorts of mischief together soon.

A few weeks before Cyrus was born my sister and sweet friend threw us a surprise baby sprinkle at The Tempest, our favorite restaurant, with our parents and my grandmother. It was a really special time to celebrate the new gift coming to our family! Our parents and friends have been so supportive and loving as we've embarked on this new journey.

After Cy was born I had six weeks off for leave and to get used to having a newborn and a two year old at home. I had a wonderful TA cover my classes, and she did such a great job! I jumped back into the semester in week eight. I had two sixteen week classes running, ENGL 210 and ENGL 306, and then a third class, ESL 370, that started in week nine. My students were hard working and understanding in my absence, and they produced really wonderful projects even with the shifts in instruction. I had another TA working with me in the second half of the semester, and she was really wonderful as well. I couldn't have survived the fall semester without my TAs, that's for sure! As it was, it was difficult to parent a newborn who had silent reflux, and I spent many hours working from bed holding him or having him strapped into a carrier at my standing desk. Thankfully he's feeling better now, and I loved all the snuggles.

In October I was still able to help host our Bloom Women's Retreat, which was our first retreat in two years. We hosted the retreat at our church this year, which was really nice. We had more women than we've ever had, and we had a guest speaker come in from CA. We also celebrated my Nana's 91st birthday at the end of October, too. Very thankful for her and her legacy!

In other exciting family news, my sister got engaged to her boyfriend on a weekend away in Door County this November! We were on a get away with our best friends for a friendsgiving, and Gabe surprised us all by proposing to Hannah on the first night! It was really lovely, and we were so happy to celebrate them.

November did bring some heartbreak, though, as my wonderful, fiery professor, colleague, and friend passed away on November 14th. She had been battling cancer and within weeks of learning the treatment was no longer working she passed away. It's honestly still hard to believe; I've known few people so full of life as she was. Thankfully, our colleague Kristy Ingram organized a Zoom call with her and her teams that she had taken to Africa on Saturday, October 30th, so I got to talk to her and introduce her to Cyrus just two weeks before she passed. She was, as always, talking a mile minute, planning for the future, and laughing at memories. She was a force.

The holidays were sweet, and we enjoyed dressing up with the boys as sharks and lifeguards at Halloween, eating delicious food at Thanksgiving including baking my first ever pecan pie, wearing matching pajamas with our family at Christmas, and celebrating the new year with hikes and hanging out in a cozy house in Lake Geneva, WI.

And now here we are in 2022! This year has started out very sweetly, and I do hope that will continue. I have two fun projects coming up at work including a talk on grading for our department Teacher Talks, as well as a poster presentation on grading contracts that I will present digitally at CCCC 2022. This semester I am teaching two sections of ENGL 210, two different ESL courses, and working with two new TAs. I turned 33 this past weekend, and I was able to celebrate with family, friends at home, and friends who met us in Chicago for some sushi and museum exploration. In addition to my mom's birthday celebration (combined with mine), Hannah and Gabe's engagement party, and my friend's baby shower for her sweet baby girl, January was full of celebration!

My word for the year is MINDFUL. I'm trying to be mindful in my choices, my work, my relationships, and my habits. One of my 2022 goals is to read 22 books. I set a goal to read 21 books in 2021, but I actually read twice that-- 42 books! I talked about my top six books more on my Instagram, but I'll include my favorites here, too (the romances are NSFW). I'm already four books into my reads for 2022, and I am currently reading four more books. I'm also so glad to have continued to meet weekly with my college friends in our nonfiction Christian book group that we started in early 2020. We've read about four books a year, and I'm grateful for the continued reading outlet and discussion.

Thanks for reading, if you got this far, and I look forward to updating again here soon. May we "take a cup of kindness yet," and may your 2022 be a year of peace and joy.