A decade happened

Ok, I will participate in the delusion that decades go from 0 to 9 instead of 1 to 0. I will pretend there was a year 0, just for you. (Actually, I am ok with counting decades from 0 to 9 because that way they all have the same 10s digit and it looks nice and can be referred to more easily. It just makes me kind of sad for the first decade AD in which there were only 9 years, since there was no year 0).

Since I have blogged all of 2 times this year, I have been given the task of writing the end-of-year, end-of-decade summary post. Sharayah gave me the idea of listing of some of the major events over the last 10 years. We were married this entire decade, you guys!

2010: I finished my Master's at TU and Sharayah finished her Bachelor's at ORU. We gallivanted all over the country visiting possible PhD schools where I'd been accepted. We moved from Tulsa to Delaware to start my PhD program there. We tried to buy 4 houses but ended up in an apartment that we really liked. We went to NYC for the Thanksgiving parade and stayed up all night on the streets.

2011: We started this blog. We became ping pong masters (actually, only Sharayah did). We lost Amber. I first started seriously studying graph theory and which graphs are determined by their spectrum. Sharayah started her medical transcription job.

2012: We got the seedlings for the two trees we planted (which are still growing in our yard! We had them in planters in Delaware and moved them with us to Missouri, where we planted them in our back yard. Sharayah's is about 8 feet tall now.). We (and the tiny trees) survived our first hurricane (which was just a lot of wind and rain where we were, no property damage). I taught my first full class as the official instructor.

2013: We went on our amazing 5-year-anniversary cruise. We went on our 26-hour road trip to Wyoming for a 2-week summer math conference that I attended. We got super sick for weeks when we got home, so we ate a lot of TV dinners and watched Merlin. We wrote a ton of blog posts. At the very end of the year, we created something life-changing.

2014: We pretended for a long time that everything was still the same. Eventually we revealed grainy pictures of the life-changing thing we made. We waited a lot for the life-changing thing. We prepared ourselves (as if that's something you can do). We wrote a ton of blog posts again. I finished most of the research for my dissertation (though I hadn't written it yet). Lucas was born.

2015: We continued life with a baby. We wrote far fewer blog posts. I finished my dissertation in the wee hours of the night between diaper changes. I got my PhD and we moved to Missouri for my new teaching job at MBU. We bought a house and moved in. Time continued moving quickly.

2016: My parents took us (and their other kids and kids' spouses) on a cruise. Big Bear got his name. Work kept me super busy the first couple years in the evenings doing lesson planning. The blog posts started being mostly only from Sharayah.

2017: Finley was born. Life became that much more chaotic and busy. I only wrote 2 blog posts (so I guess I beat that this year!). We barely slept for months courtesy of Finley. He was an easier baby in almost every way, but night sleep was awful for a long time. We went to Branson 3 times. We watched Lucas turn from a baby into a big kid overnight. It's hard to describe a lot of the complex emotions that go through my head while being a dad (whereas normally I'm so good with emotion...?) I love that Lucas and Finley are friends, and I think kids should have siblings when possible, but I spent a lot of time in 2017 (and from time to time since then) feeling like we robbed Lucas of something by bringing someone else in to take some of our attention. But, we adjusted to life as a family of 4.

2018: We went to Disney for our 10-year anniversary. The kids don't remember it. We started and didn't finish a cool series of anniversary blogs posts. I bricked my phone changing the battery. The boys grew into something resembling friendship. Finley adored Lucas and Lucas tolerated Finley. We decided two kids was not so difficult. Maybe we could handle another.

2019: Sebastian was born. Two kids is not chaos. Three kids is chaos. There are just kids all over the place. We went to Branson and slept Lucas and Finley in the same room. We just pulled the big mattress off the bed onto the floor and had them both sleep there. Watching the two of them talk and go to sleep in the same room on the monitor caused very strange feelings. We know I'm not good at describing emotions. I honestly couldn't tell you what I felt but it was a mix of a lot of things. I was really happy for their friendship and proud for some reason that they took to it pretty well. I also had those really sad end-of-an-era feelings. Lucas started informal homeschooling (he won't even be old enough for kindergarten until next year) and has done really well. I can't believe the things he knows and understands at such a young age. Finley still emulates Lucas at every turn but has also developed his own likes and personality. Sebi finally started crawling forward today (usually he just uses a combination of rolling and crawling backwards to get around, or not get around, as the case may be). He also sat up from lying down on his own, but it may have been a fluke. Then, finally, I wrote a blog post.

It's been quite a decade. Some years are stuffed full of lots of memories. Some years we were just kind of cruising along, living. I am filled with gratitude that my life is full of so much love. I can't imagine life without my family. Being a dad is incredibly difficult and time-consuming. Sometimes I feel like my responsibilities are eating me alive. But I wouldn't trade it. Life with Sharayah and the people we make is the best life there is. Here's to the 2020s being just as action-packed (although maybe I'll try to actually blog more than 3 times per year again).