Back in the Saddle

[Shhhhh, it is actually May 19, 2010]

Well. What was initially a blog hiatus of a few weeks while Mateo and I made our trans-Atlantic move back to the U.S. became a break of a couple of months while I began my last year of medical school in New York, which then became a bad habit of blog neglect lasting for several seasons and motivated by the general fullness of our days, and so on, until I find myself racing to make my self-imposed deadline of reviving this family journal before letting one full year pass since I last posted. It is remarkable how much change has come about since last May and I hope to render some semblance of justice to it all here in pictures and brief words.

In short: We are now four where once we were three and we wonder how we could have even continued on without the blessed arrival of our littlest one. Our once nascent walker is now a big-brother blur of blond hair, red shoes and laughter as he tears around Central Park wielding stick in hand, an image of pure boyhood joy. Our beloved Papá, who arrived to NYC last summer as a music therapy intern with a freshly printed Masters degree in hand is now the newest faculty member in the Department of Music Therapy at Beth Israel Hospital! (We are so immensely proud of him.) And this Mama tracked through her last year of medical school with Bernardo by her side, Mateo on her hip, and Xulian in her womb and eventually, with the invaluable help of family and dear friends, came out as a fledgling doctor and re-newed mother on the other side. It has been quite a year. I will do my best to capture the broad strokes, as well as some of the more endearing details, in the next few posts.