Holly and Tom Underwood Family

In just a few weeks, Zach will be two years old! Man, that's hard to believe. The time has flown by and dragged, by turns. Usually both in the same day!
 
Zach's talking more and more every day. He still signs a little bit, usually saying the word at the same time. I am so glad that we decided to use sign language; he was able to sign long before he could talk. Of course, most of his words aren't quite the real thing yet, like mih (milk), pees (please), ankoo (thank you) and oos (juice) but mommy, daddy and bye bye are clear as a bell. He's starting to 'sing' which is totally adorable, and moos, meows or ruffs at animals, as appropriate. We'll, he also moos at pictures of horses, I'll admit.

Zach loves dancing, music and climbing. He likes being outdoors, playing with water in the kitchen sink and blocks. We call him our relocation specialist, because he loves to dump everything out of the laundry basket, pull everything out of drawers, and generally surround himself with mess and chaos. Thankfully, he's usually good about helping us pick it up too...eventually. He's not a very picky eater but we are still having issues with sleep. We intend to try to potty train him some time in the next few weeks. Since it's our idea instead of his it may not work, but since he's eager to please it might. Here's hoping! His hair is in ring curls which are adorable, but tangle like crazy. Paybacks for how little I liked Mom untangling my hair when I was little, I think.

Tom is still working at Dayton Metro Library, thankfully. Times will be rough ahead though, with the big cuts in state funding and an upcoming levy on November's ballot. The Director is figuring out what to do to adust to the state cuts now, and even if the levy passes, more cuts will have to be made in 2010. I'm working for Cityfolk (nearly 14 years now). In October, I dropped back to 8 hours a week, mostly from home. In May, that jumped up to 24 hours a week in the office through our Festival in early July, because a coworker quit. Now I'm back to 8 hours/week. They want to increase my hours, but have not money to do so. Some time in the next couple of weeks, I'll talk to my boss to see what we can work out.

Back in October, we started looking for a house in Yellow Springs. We miss being able to walk and ride our bikes to restaurants and on errands like we could in my old house in Dayton, we like the atmosphere out there, and have lots of friends there. The schools aren't rated as high as Beavercreek's, but aren't overcrowded either, so we're hoping that balances out. Given the upcoming uncertainty with Tom's job, we feel we need to move quickly or wait who knows how long until our incomes are predictable again. We'll see what happens. We have to sell our place to afford to buy, which could complicate things. Luckily, we like our house so we'll be happy if we have to stay a while longer. Either way, we're purging our stuff, boxing up things we'll never miss and doing some simple repairs.
 
Otherwise, we're trying to get back into some kind of exercise routine. We're slowly getting back to traveling a little, though our trips are only as exotic as visiting friends, family and festivals. We love introducing Zach to Lake Michigan and music festivals though! In a few months, we hope to visit Bryan & Leigh in Colorado too. We don't seem them nearly often enough, so that will be a treat.

Pictures of Zach, mostly are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/hollybu/