The times, they are a-changing

Within a short amount of time, Tod started a new job at Amazon Web Services, after 20+ years with his previous job, and we had two kids in high school, including one who needs to stay after 4 days a week for theater rehearsal.

Everything feels pretty discombobulated.

All those years we heard parents complaining about getting their kids here and there, with events several days a week...well, we had none of that. We knew we had it easy, but goodness is this a transition.

Before this year, we ate dinner pretty much right at 6 p.m. every day. Now we are waiting for Amy to get home at 6:50 p.m. so we can still all have dinner together. It's thrown our evenings off by a lot. It's all good, it's just different! And if I have a meeting or Tod has somewhere to be, then some days some subset of us doesn't even really get to see each other at all. I leave for work before the kids are up, and sometimes have to leave for a meeting before Amy gets home. Tod's schedule is also very different now, traveling to Herndon every day...which is a real commute, unlike before when he was in Chantilly and also pretty much made his own hours. Now his days are longer and lengthened substantially by a commute of at least 35 minutes each way, because there's so much traffic.

I think our family equilibrium is a little off right now but hopefully we will settle in soon. Just in time for something else to change, no doubt!

What just happened?!

On Monday, Reed walked in the door after school and said "I didn't ride the bus, I got a ride home."

Excuse me, what?

This is a whole new thing, it took me a little while to process it. He got a ride home from some kid named Jacob, who Tod has seen but neither of us have even met.

So yeah this is totally age-appropriate and normal and completely fine, but it just really hit me hard. This kid is really a junior in high school. He's really a year and a half away from graduating high school. Sh*^ is getting real.