Looking back on the year of escaping hell

Quick recap:
I spent August 2010 laid up from a mysterious condition. I finally got a diagnosis in the new year: degenerate disc disease between cervical spine segments 5 & 6 (and got a nice set of MRIs to go with). I did physical therapy for a while, which helped, but mainly gave me a set of exercises I continue to do. At the end of this year, I started to get a massage every few weeks or so. I still spend most weekends laid up, in pain, but now that I know what it is, I find the situation more bearable.

In January, it was pretty clear that my company was going to close on the purchase of Transamerica Re in Charlotte, and that they would be moving operations there... so I started to quietly look for a new job.

Until the end of February, at which point we had several people resign over a relatively short time period, and ... it was pointless to be quiet about the job search. It was an ugly couple of months before I finally left for my current (day) job.

D has had several breakthroughs this year, including being potty-trained (well, partly), chewing food, and increasing his expressive range. His latest thing is to come up to Stu and say "Hi, Daddy!" and then come over to me and say "Hi, Mama!" - his usual thing was to parrot back "Hi, Diarmuid" to us... he just spontaneously started doing this a few days ago. He has been going around reading stuff, too. He's pretty good at it, but it's not clear how much he understands what he's saying.

The girls keep on keepin on. Bonnie got to go to camp for the first time this year, and she also stood down the group's con girl. They've been doing well, education-wise -- Mo is up to a 6th grade reading level now, and Bonnie is on a 2nd grade level. Mo is up to adding and subtracting fraction, and Bonnie is subtracting numbers up to 10. They both got a bunch of comic books from Santa (Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine, Foxtrot, Calvin & Hobbes, and The Far Side), amongst other things, but those books are getting the most use right now.

We've had multiple power outages, and Stu got a generator that really helped with the last one.

It's pretty quiet... relatively. I like it that way.