Transitions

As I type Mattias and Magnus are driving cross-country to our new homes in Arlington. I have to admit that I'm starting to feel excited about our move, and definitely relieved that the hardest part (packing and leaving ) is now over. But many times we felt like we were being swallowed by a giant monster (illustrated by Mattias below!)

Linus isn't taking the change so well either, and has gone on a bottle strike. You can see the disatisfaction in his face. I guess there's no comparison to my boobs...

And Gus is still trying to assert his position as our first born, and does so by playing with Linus' toys.

The biggest and most exciting thing that happened in the midst of all the chaos is that Mattias earned his PhD in Neuroscience on Sept. 5th. The title of his thesis was "Network Dynamics in the Hippocampus during Spatial Learning." He did a great job on his talk and fooled all of us into thinking he is smart!



Here is Mattias with his PhD advisor Loren Frank, and his new postdoctoral advisor Alla Karpova, who flew out from DC to see his talk. It was a big relief for Mattias to graduate, and I'm especially proud of him because he did it while taking care of Linus and me.


Even though we've spent a lot of time working, we've time for fun too. We found out that Linus loves hanging out at the motorcycle garage (taking after pappa.) And we had our very first family vacation in Santa Cruz- here we are at Natural Bridges State Park.

I was shopping one day and saw this art exhibit- this piece depicts Linus of Peanuts slowly dying at the piano. Creepy...

On a brighter note Linus likes to vogue in his sleep.

And mamma has already started the habit of dressing her child in animal costume. What did you expect from a vet? I'm sure Linus will learn to love it. Or not.

On to the not-so-happy part: Packing up our home had to be one of my saddest moments. So much happened in that little apartment and I had a hard time leaving. I only cried for 2 hours after closing the doors for the last time :(



We celebrated our departure with a bottle of Dom Perignon given to Mattias by Tricia on his graduation. We really didn't want to share it with these mofos but we didn't have any glasses to drink it in.

And I had to cook just one more dinner with the gang- so many great memories made at their place. Like the time Mattias threw up in their living room and ripped the towel rack off the bathroom wall...

We even made the time to stop by the De Young Museum to check out the Chihuly exhibit. Linus loved all the colors and lights.

And here we are, in the quintessential San Francisco photo. I think that we will always think of San Francisco as home. I'm pretty sure we'll find our way back.