Auntie Mae - again!

I'm an aunt again! Ian's brother, Mark, and his wife, Naomi, welcomed their beautiful little girl, Sophia Genevieve Villanueva, last Friday, Oct. 12. We are very excited about the first grandchild on the Villanueva side of the family! We're heading up to Chicago on Nov. 9 for her Baptism.
November is going to be an awesome month for Aunt Mae and Uncle Ian. We'll get to meet Sophia that weekend and then we'll be heading to Springfield, MO, for Thanksgiving and to meet our other niece, Emma Elizabeth Costello, who was born just about a month ago. It's a busy time in the Costello-Villanueva family!

We were in St. Louis last weekend for a job interview. It was such a nice weekend! While Ian was interviewing and putting on a good show for the folks there, I got a chance to spend some quality time with some St. Louis folks. It's really been a few years since we had the chance to be in St. Louis with time to visit many people. Lately, it's been quick, busy trips for weddings and such. It was very wonderful and nourishing to reconnect with old friends. We also were able to meet baby Ava Perez, who was born the day before Emma. She was a beautiful, precious little snuggle bug. It was hard to leave her! Ian's interviews seem to have gone well. We received very positive feedback from everyone. I'm beginning to appreciate how difficult it is going to be to make a decision about what to do at the end of this fellowship year. I guess I've always imagined that Ian would find a good job right where we want and we'll all live happily ever after. I'm learning that real life involves a lot of compromises. We're really going to have to weigh out a lot of variables (location, job security, income, a reasonable schedule for Ian, etc., etc.) to make a good decision. This grown up stuff is hard!

Following our trip to St. Louis, I started my new job and Ian had one of the busiest weeks he's had since he started his fellowship. I feel like I haven't seen him for a month. (That really makes the "reasonable schedule for Ian" variable seem quite important!) My week has been much better than his. I am very excited about my job. I'm exhausted, but it was a good week. I now have a much better idea of what I'm going to be doing... For now at least, I'm going to be doing therapy with clients two days per week, conducting assessments for new clients (or annual review assessments for those who have been in the program for a year already) one day per week, and helping review documentation and other QA-type stuff two days per week. Even though I don't love the QA stuff so much (I think I got my fill at Careerbuilder!), it is work I can do at the Charlotte office, so I'm able to work full-time and not make the hour+ drive 5 days a week. Three days is plenty! It's actually not that bad a drive. There's a country road way to get there that is supposedly faster than the interstate, which has a ton of lights. (Weird, I know.) I'm honestly not sure if it's faster, but it's certainly prettier and there's not much traffic. It's funny how very different driving for an hour to work through beautiful country is from driving in Chicago traffic. Well, of course it's different. When I was thinking before about the drive, I was imagining how I felt when I would drive to work in Chicago - cranky and stressed out by the time I walked in the door. I still wish it weren't so far, but I think I can make it work for me. It should be good reflection time! I also get a gas card from the agency. That makes a long commute on a counselor's salary much easier to take. :)

I really am so thankful to have landed in this job. I think I'm going to learn and grow so much this year. My background is pretty different from the rest of the employees at this agency and I was nervous about how I would fit in. I truly have been welcomed with open arms. My clients are going to be younger than I'd thought. The vast majority of clients are children, so I probably won't be seeing all that many adults. Right now, I have 4 kids on my caseload, ages 5-12. I am pumped about working with the younger kids. I took a class on counseling with children and adolescents in grad school and truly loved it. Working with kids has been in the back of my mind since then, but I really haven't been around kids much for a long time and just didn't know if it would work for me. I've gotten to meet some of the agency's clients (although not the ones I'll be doing therapy with) over the past week and they are absolutely amazing. I sat in on treatment team meetings and heard about all the things going on in their lives and then saw them later on running around, smiling and playing with the other kids. It's incredible how strong and resilient they are. It breaks my heart to think of what they're having to deal with, but I am so thankful to be here and finally to be in a position where I might be able to do some good for them.