I know, it’s been a long long time. Five months and five days, or something like that.

Anyway, I’m good. How are you? Good.

My first term of seminary was great. It kept me a bit busy. Just a bit. I did really well in all my classes, but in order to do that, I had to develop tunnel vision. I did school and kids and home and that was it. I allowed nothing to derail me, and I am so proud of myself. Sick kids? Not thrown off track. Not enough time or energy to work part time? Quit my job, not thrown off track. Miscarriage #3 in less than two years? Lay in bed reading for a week, not thrown off track. Nasty virus stealing my voice and making me physically miserable? Not thrown off track.

Maybe it’s odd that I’m so proud of not being thrown off track, but I have a history of starting things. This is a big thing I’ve started. This is a big thing that I put off starting for ten years, actually, so continuing with the starting is kind of a big deal for me.

Unfortunately, one of the things I did not allow to throw me off track was the internet. So if anything really important has happened to you since August, and you think I should know about it, send me an email, or call me or something. I haven’t been reading blogs any more than I’ve been writing them.

I have an important thing to tell you. If, that is, you’re even still there after all this time. I am going to tell you the same thing I told you in the very first blog post I ever wrote. I probably have about as many readers left as I started out with, namely, my husband. That was a little over six years ago, on a whole other blog. I started this process when I was twelve weeks pregnant with Rowan, as a way of documenting the exciting journey to parenthood and staying in touch with far-off friends and family. I had no idea how this would become so central to my life and parenthood. Through both Rowan and Lilah’s infancies, this (and the previous) blog were essential to my survival and enjoyment of that time in my life.

And it looks like we’ll be doing it all again. Yes folks, at long last, I’m twelve weeks pregnant. It’s taken us two years and a lot of false starts and tests and stresses to get here since we started trying for another baby, and it finally seems that we might have one. On Monday, we had our third ultrasound for this pregnancy, and saw a little alien with a good heart rate and good measurements waving and kicking and basically seeming to thrive.

It looks like la Troisieme Banane may finally be on its way.

My daughters spent the morning playing Lesbian Dinosaur Wedding. They ran around in froofy things from the dress-up box teaching each other different skills, according to the types of dinosaur they each were. Lilah explained that they were preparing to marry “girl by girl”.

I’m tickled. They’ve picked up some paleontology from books, preschool and The Magic School Bus; they’ve picked up some left-wing politics from family, friends and pride parades, and they may have solved the mystery of extinction.

Things are going pretty swimmingly, being an endorsed candidate for ordained ministry. I registered for my classes yesterday. Can I get a Wee hoo!? I thought so. And Mum got accepted to an art program at the university. Can I get another Wee hoo!? I thought I could. But in the midst of all the happiness about the decisions people have made about us, we have had to make a difficult decision of our own.

We have found a new home for our dog.

When we got Nozy, we were very specific about what sort of dog we needed for our family. Nozy seemed to be that sort of dog for about three days. Once we got him dewormed and eating healthy food, his demeanor changed considerably, and the mellow companion we sought was nowhere to be found except when he was sick. We don’t want a sick dog. Or an unhappy one. We have spent almost a year trying either to make the dog we have into the dog we need or to make ourselves into the family for this dog. Neither attempt has proven very successful. We’re all of us too stubborn.

We’ve really really really tried. But the last straw fell upon the camel when we had to put a muzzle on him to take him for a walk. In the city, with all the litter and untended dog shit, it is impossible for this dog not to eat something that will make him violently ill if he goes out. And our yard isn’t big or fenced enough to keep him in. And he needs a lot of exercise. And we can’t live with needing to muzzle a dog regularly for years. We can’t be that cruel. Or cruel enough to let him eat himself to death.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but it was really the right one. I advertised on kijiji, and found a family. They live in a small town with a big fenced yard. They want and need a dog with a lot of bounce. They have an eight-year-old boy who is high-functioning autistic and will have to wait years to get a service dog. I think this will be a good fit in a way that we really weren’t.

Nozy went to his new home today, and it’s been tough, in some ways. I (not to mention my mother) don’t like to fail at anything we set our hands to. We don’t like the loss. It’s a similar loss to the miscarriages, because we really wanted to add a member to our family, but it wasn’t meant to be.

There’s been some sad, but to balance it, we’ve been moving furniture around and getting plants and making our house what we want it to be and undoing the “temporary” changes we made a year ago for a new puppy that we were never able to rectify when the dog grew to be not-so-new.

The girls are coping incredibly well with the change. I think they liked the idea of having a dog far more than the reality of this particular dog. I’d also like to give a shout-out to Jane O’Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser because this book and our children’s love for it totally saved the day. God-bless Fancy Nancy.

In conclusion, while this may not have been our first charity of choice (if you’d asked) to which we’d like to give a year of time and many many thousands of dollars, there is no doubt that preparing a companion for an autistic child is a very good cause. And we feel mostly good about that.