Awhile ago I wrote about Ryan having to turn down a job in Washington, D.C. because of high taxes and ridiculously huge health insurance costs. We were kind of at a point where we were realizing that being able to move out and on our own wasn’t going to be as easy as expected. The job search was also becoming quite depressing. He’d apply to I don’t know how many places per night and would never really hear anything form any of them. However, about a month and a half ago, one of Ryan’s friends sent him a message about a corporate/charter job posting for a place close to where we live right now. Coincidently, this is also a place he’s been trying to get a job at since we’ve been living here. We pretty much dropped what we were doing and headed home so he could update his resume and get his suit ready so he could go in and talk to somebody in person. Fast forward to the middle of last week and he gets a call, saying he has the job. What’s good about this new job is that he’ll be home a lot more. It looks like he’d be doing mostly day trips which means he’d be home nearly EVERY night. The long 4-day stretches of him being away will be a thing of the past! The money won’t be much different for the first year (a little bit of a raise, but the higher tax bracket will eat up most of that), but there will be a lot of room for advancement. He’ll have two captain type ratings within a few months – something he wouldn’t see at the airline for at least the better part of a decade. I’m somewhat scared of him leaving the airline because he’s doing okay there right now, but looking into the future, neither of us can really see much good coming between the Pinnacle-Mesaba-Colgan merger and the fact that he’s not going to be a captain for a long, long time. For our future’s sake, this new job can only be good for us and we’re both really excited about it!
I’m just not looking forward to the two weeks of training he’ll have starting September 20th The longest he’s ever been away from home is about 5 days so I can’t even imagine how long it’s going to take for two weeks to pass. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were just the two of us (heck, then I’d probably go to training with him), but I don’t even want to think of how difficult it’s going to be to take care of a baby by myself for two entire weeks. I’m definitely dreading this, but I can’t have him turn down this offer because of something so stupid. I just hope we can figure out something in terms of getting me some help for at least a few days during this time.
We’re definitely excited, though. A lot of things seemed to have come together right around the same time so maybe this is our time. Maybe now we’ll be turning a corner and finally getting a chance to put our lives back on track.
About a month and a half ago while we were visiting my family in Pennsylvania, he started to get up on his hands and knees and rock back and forth. I was surprised to see these beginning signs of crawling since we hadn’t even seen him attempt to sit up on his own yet. We thought any day he’d be on the move, but it took until a few days ago for him to finally figure out just what he needed to do with his arms. Before that, he started to get up on his hands and feet and also began pulling up on things. He loves climbing. Just a week ago, I noticed that there were bite marks on the crib railing and suspected that he’d started pulling himself up on that. The next day when I went in to get him in the morning, I was met by a baby standing up on his knees, arms dangling out over the rail with paint chips all around his mouth! 
Let’s just say that his crib mattress has since been lowered to the second-to-lowest setting and will, sooner rather than later, be on the lowest setting because he’s now stretching up to get to the rail again. We thought there was something wrong with him because he was doing all of this stuff, but still hadn’t mastered the crawling thing. He could do it vertically, why not horizontally? I’m telling you this baby is weird! I don’t know what changed the other day, but we had him on the floor that morning after he ate and he just took off! We’ve not been able to keep up with him since! So far he loves to go after the cats, their toys and every wire in sight. With crawling, he’s now sitting up wonderfully on his own, a skill I never thought he was going to master!
