Not Quite Humdrum - New Year's Resignations

As in, I'm resigned to some of the facts of my current life...

I've been quite silent lately. It must be the exhaustion of routine life mixed with the added strain on free time (read: toddler in our midst) - oh, don't forget cold weather, a downer in any place unless you're cross-country skiing for your commute. To summarize: my wife and I are both working full time jobs in New York City - the geographical specification is somewhat important as it denotes long working hours, on average. Combined with a 2-hour commute, work days leaves something to be desired...

We currently live in the top floor unit of our two-family house. My wife's parents live on the bottom unit with my father-in-law's grandmother, and my brother-in-law's daughter. The in-laws take care of Lizzy during the day, and prepare meals for us as well. We all eat dinner together most weekdays. Despite the lack of privacy, I find the arrangement congenial and it is hard to imagine another kind of life without one of us quitting work - something we'd both love to do if only for a few months. I've already had my taste of that forbidden fruit and I've found it delicious.

Still, work has, on the whole, been rewarding. I work in a small development team in a mega-bank. We work on several complex problems and there is some hiring, some production maintenance, and some mentoring to keep us all busy and entertained. The group has become tightly-knit over the past year and I spend some time off work with one of my colleagues - an older, kinder gentleman whom I'd love to see get his due (in general).

Besides getting sick occasionally, we've spent the past couple of months indoors when not shoveling snow. It only really snowed once, but it has been arctic-ally cold. Home time is almost completely dedicated to entertaining, feeding and caring for Elizabeth - another rewarding job. Her first birthday has come and gone with some fanfare. First (experienced) Halloween. First major flu. First week of teething-augmented tantrum mania. First words - in 2.1 languages (Cantonese, English, and 1 word in Hebrew).

Connie's grandmother has been sick in and out of hospital and much free time has gone towards nursing her back to home, which I am glad to report is where she's at! Cable-free for some time now, we've spent TV time on Netflix movies, the Good Wife, the Yankees, and now the Jets...

We have some vacations coming up in the next 2 months we are excited about - one Caribbean getaway, and a wedding in the UK (we have not been back there since 2005, after living in London for 2 years).