Wrapped, Written, and Dumped — a Year in Review
Since no one reads the links, I will forgo this Dump’s typical design and layout and opt for a more personalized journey, looking back on 2022. I’ll hit the highs and lows and maybe drop some links you might accidentally click on as you scroll. You probably will not cry, you may chuckle once or twice. But ultimately by the time we get to the end of this thing, none of you will be able to say: I wonder what that’ ol Hasler family is up to now?
You’re going to find out, and see*
Giddy up.
*Some of these photos pertain to what I wrote about, others are just some of my favorite shots of the month. I didn’t caption them because often times the caption would be: Roman doing something hilarious, or Eliot not wanting his photo taken. Enjoy
January
The first photo I took in 2022 was a screenshot of a coat rack I wanted from Wayfair. Big news, and a bit of a spoiler, I got it a few months later, which really kicked off a year of sprucing up how we hang coats and store hats and mittens. I spent the first part of the year teaching Eliot incorrectly about trapezoids and parallelograms before I reached out to my high school math teacher to get the inside scoop on which shape was which.
Then we got Covid.
It was mostly bearable for most of us; Roman got red cheeks, Eliot had a runny nose, I was fine, and Leen felt like absolute butt for multiple days. Along the way, I broke two pairs of sunglasses while trying to get the boys COVID tested at a drive-up site and got Eliot a haircut that made him look distinctly like Lord Farquad from Shrek. Pretty incredible stretch, looking back on it.
I capped off the month by falling down a flight of stairs while carrying Roman. I blame this on having steep wood stairs and cold feet. I am always in socks. Luckily, he was still small enough that I was carrying him like a football, and I lifted him up, took the brunt of the fall on my butt, and slid down.
February
For my birthday on the 9th, Leen and I went to a very fancy restaurant. Recently, The New Yorker called it the best new restaurant in the country. I told you there might be links! Ultimately, my meal was too meat-centric and I wish I had been guided on a different path, but that was my error.
It made for a nice night out and an excellent way to turn 35.
February also must’ve marked the start of the war in Ukraine because I randomly have a lot of photos of me in Ukraine in my google photos from this time. A downspout near the back of my house started giving me grief, which started a ten-month process of finally getting them replaced later this month or early next year. February, as you are sensing, was a slow month.
March
I went to an NBA game on the first of the month! Joe and I saw the eventual champions, the Golden State Warriors, beat the Wolves.
Days later, Eliot started potty training, and oh boy, so much fun. If you ask me, the key is to hammer home a routine in the first weekend. We’d set a timer and plop that kid on a potty just about every hour for a full two days. Finally, by Sunday, we had some success. The kid hasn’t really looked back. What an accomplishment for a 2.5-year-old.
I ordered some high-quality wool hats from a store in France just as the weather started to turn. I hardly even had a chance to wear them before we started going to the park at the end of the month! I also dabbled with different lengths of facial hair this month. It’s a work in progress, maybe it always will be.
April
In April, my book club met to discuss a book called Interior Chinatown. “You’re in a book club?” you may ask? Yes. We’re pretty serious about it. Everyone legitimately reads the book and brings their opinions to the club. From characterization to setting, we bring a real literary chat to books that perhaps do not deserve it. I don’t know that it’ll make the cut for highlights of the month, but after we read Interior Chinatown, we read Crota by Owlgoingback, and boy, did we have thoughts.
Anyway, April also was the month I met a new plumber. His name is Rex and he has some problematic views, but he’s incredibly prompt. So good with the bad. He replaced the toilet, installed two butt hoses, and upgraded a sink fixture for me. Always good to have a prompt plumber.
This was also the month daycare announced a $7,000 annual fee increase, effective immediately. That one hurt.
May
Let’s recognize May as the beginning of the end of my life as a regular sleeper. You may recall that we spent the last month of 2021 doing a costly but worthwhile sleep training course for Roman. It worked and more or less is a good sleeper now. I will not document how good because I believe if I say any specifics, it will jinx it. On the other hand, Eliot used to be a great sleeper, and in May, we said: let’s get this giant out of his crib and into a toddler bed. He was too big for the crib anymore, plus potty trained, so it was only natural to move him into something else. Well, that has mostly gone poorly for us.
This was also the month we had a big-ass decorative wall taken down in our backyard. The people who lived here before us wanted to build an outdoor fireplace, but the neighbors narc’d on them for a code violation. So instead, they made a wall and some pillars. It was really harshing my patio space, so we hired someone with a sledgehammer to Gorbachov that thing.
Our hot water heater also crapped out on us, but thanks to that April phone call to Rex, we had a new one installed about 4 hours later. Problematic but prompt!
May also marked the month I started to ponder most seriously: what if I should just shave it all off and embrace the bald. Roman turned 1 and started walking. As I type this out, Roman walking should probably get more prominence than the wall coming down, but what’s done is done. All in all, BIG MONTH.
June
Summer kicked off in style. We made a trip to the family homestead in Reedsburg. We celebrated with extended family, and Eliot went to the park. Roman showed off his walking skills and displayed an allergy to cats.
When we returned here, Uncle Joe informed me that the bus rodeo was happening, so we watched the best bus drivers in the metro compete in a skills competition, and explore buses. For a guy who had spent most of the year singing Wheels on the Bus, you’d think this was a bigger deal, but mostly I think he was overwhelmed.
July
We drove to Iowa to meet Leen’s family, who flew in from Abu Dhabi. I spent a lot of time on the deck watching Top Gun and RRR. Roman cried the entire way home. It was intense. Like, other things happened as well, but mostly I will remember driving home from Des Moines as Roman cried for three hours and watching RRR.
Upon returning home, we searched for a new/different couch in the living room. Part of this was because of the aforementioned Eliot sleep issues and my needing something different. Another aspect was that Roman would break the other with his enthusiastic entry to walking and jumping.
I went golfing for the only time in the entire summer, with the book club boys.
When we returned from Iowa, the school moved Eliot from the toddler room into the preschool. This change may not be a big deal for some, but for Eliot… it was. He struggled to find his place there, telling us that the room had no friends, toys, or fun. Rough. Unfortunately, this move coincided with the move from the temporary toddler air mattress to a full-sized floor bed. For a child who struggles with transitions, they came fast and furious this time of year.
August
Speaking of transitions…Leen applied for and got a job teaching. I am pretty certain she didn’t want to hop back into the classroom, but the school is very cool (despite being far away), so it was an opportunity she couldn’t say no to — plus, did I mention they raised the prices of daycare by $7,000? Of course, this meant we had to buy a car to make the commute, so we got her a CRV because, deep down, we love Hondas. I don’t know if you’ve paid any attention to the used car market in the last year, but it’s been wild. Rates are high, dealers aren’t really into negotiating, and cars come and go basically in one day.
This was also the month our garden popped off and started showing out.
One of the year's surprises was that last winter, I tossed 5 or 6 decorative gourds around the property, and the squirrels devoured them all winter. That resulted in us having an incredible collection of decorative gourd plants that really grew with reckless abandon. We left them on our front steps until the first snowfall in November before donating them to the squirrels.
September
This was the month that the momentary sleeping woes became what I guess I’d call crystallized. We could explain away a lot of the issues and blame them on something else. But now, after about four months of struggles and 6 weeks of the new bed, it was just sort of draining.
(Update: it still is. I will happily chat if you ever want to talk about 3-year-old sleep issues. I’ve grown accustomed to Eliot waking at about 2 am, coming into our room, asking me to carry him downstairs, and sleeping either a) with him, b) in the hallway c) on the couch. If I go back upstairs, he will just come and ask me to sleep in one of those places and carry him down the stairs, so I relent to save my knees. Pick your battles, especially at 2 am and in the dark.)
It was also the month I took over solo parenting in the AM. Leen started work, and so it’s just me and the boyos in the after she starts her commute to the north. We do breakfast, play, and then move toward school.
Shoutout to solo parents. That shit is hard.
Leen and I got boosters and didn’t feel like garbage for the first time in a minute, and I spent a lot of the month planning for Eliot’s 3rd Birthday party.
October
Kicked off this month with Eliot’s birthday party. We didn’t want to risk a Mid-October blizzard, so we decided to host this party on the first, two weeks before his actual birthday. It worked out perfectly, if not with too much food, too many drinks, and just the right amount of fun. I followed up on the birthday party by redoing the back hall hanging situation. I removed the 50-inch, very aggressive wooden hook we inherited and purchased a little bench and shelf unit with some hanging space. Really spruced up the area. I love it.
We ended the month with Halloween. It was touch and go if we were going to make it with the whole family. Eliot showed NO interest in going until I loaded Roman in the car to set off alone. He rallied, and we all went. We went over near my brother’s house, and the boys really enjoyed themselves. Eliot has been eating the candy one bag of M&Ms at a time since then. Roman has no idea why we dressed him up like a ghost, but he liked the running and being outside part.
November
This was the month of the mouse. During one of those nights of sleeping on the floor, I thought I heard something shuffling back and forth a few feet away. Still, I couldn’t be sure if it was the radiators that needed bleeding or if it was a mouse that needed killing. It was the mouse. We started finding droppings and, more horrifyingly, saw the mouse on the baby monitor wandering around in Roman’s room at night. I think this image will haunt Leen forever. After a few visits from the Orkin men and a lot of poison and traps later, we stopped finding droppings. I was really hoping we’d get a body. Some of me definitely wanted to catch the mouse, but we will have to assume it consumed enough poison and died somewhere. One of the visits from the Orkin men had them telling me that the number of traps and poison we’d set up was ‘overkill,’ and I looked him dead in the eyes, and I said: that is the exact point.
The other pivotal moment in November was the two weeks I took off to watch the World Cup. On the second day of my PTO, we ended up in the ER with Eliot because he had a fever of 104 and very shallow breathing. After about six hours, they sent us home, telling us he tested negative for everything and that we should just monitor the situation. The fever went away, but he still had some belly aches. We celebrated Thanksgiving with family, and then a few days later, Leen started feeling ill. She tested positive for strep 8 days after Eliot’s trip to the ER. Roman and I showed positive 9 days later, and finally, 10 days later, we confirmed that what sent Eliot to the ER was strep. We ended November on antibiotics and started December as our course was nearly finished.
December
We got strep again. About five days after we finished our antibiotics, Leen tested + again. Days later, Roman, Eliot, and I did too. Did you know we’re amid an antibiotics shortage here? Hard to get amoxicillin, but I think we’re on the mend. That period between Thanksgiving and Christmas was mostly just spent trying to see a medical professional, track down antibiotics, and convince my children to take said antibiotics. It was not a relaxing holiday season. It also snowed a lot. We watched a lot of the World Cup and said: ELIOT, LOOK, IT’S WHERE YOU WERE BORN A LOT as a tool to keep him engaged and have him not ask us to change the channel to put on videos of construction vehicles.
Christmas was a success, and at this point, like two days after Christmas and three days before the end of the year, I think you understand my takeaways from what was 2022.
If you made it this far, congrats. There are no prizes.
Let me see if I can do the briefest pop culture run-down to round out the year.
Most Enjoyable TV Shows — Not the Best, just the ones I enjoyed the most.
The Rehearsal, Andor, Reacher, Bad Sisters, White Lotus, The Bear, Slow Horses, Survivor: Season 31
Books I Read —Book club in bold:
Memory Police, White Noise, The Lincoln Highway, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Crota, The Dark Forest, Use of Weapons, Beautiful World/Where Are You?, Cloud Cuckoo Land, Rules of Civility, Interior Chinatown.
Music—I continue to not listen to music.
Old movies I saw for the first time: Filling out my blind spots.
Hunt for the Red October, Terminator, Terminator 2, Copland, Chinatown, Fear, Midsommar, As Good As It Gets, The Untouchables, Blade, Minority Report, Something’s Gotta Give, Heathers, Any Given Sunday, Fifth Element, A Few Good Men, Boogie Nights, Gangs of New York
And here’s to a few more updates in 2023.
Don’t be a stranger, y’all.
Happy New Year and all that jazz.
