Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

I recently came out of my teaching cocoon after 6 months within it. Now my life is much more flexible until September. It hard to teach a class and keep up with everything else in life. Other things obviously slip---my contribution to the blog being one of them! I do enjoy teaching and I get a lot of personal satisfaction from reading my evaluations, which generally show that the students think that I know what I'm doing! Or at least that I'm enthusiastic as we stumble along together.

The boys are growing up. Graham is 2 1/2 today! Graham has started to pee in his little potty from time to time, so we'll see where that goes. The swag (stickers, fruit snacks) are far more important to him than any sense that this is what one is "supposed to do." With Finn, it was a long process, and I don't expect anything different with Graham. Only my brother Justin's kids potty train themselves in a week. (Grumble, grumble.) Graham is now in his terrible twos, as he complains about what we're having for dinner and often will lay face first on the ground when he doesn't get his way. But he is still effortlessly cute and snuggly.

Finn is nearing 4 1/2, and about 2 moths ago he told us that he wanted to learn how to read. Katie has been doing nearly daily lessons on reading and writing with him, and he's getting really quite good. Here he is on a "sick day" (he got better fast!) on campus with me. He got to see the room and I teach in and he played with the chalk for about 45 minutes. And he wrote my name pretty well, I must say! Organized soccer practice (Soccersaurus!) just started, and swimming lessons, after a 2-year layoff, in May as well.

My mom came out for a few days earlier in the month, and everyone had a great time. I occasionally daydream just how nice it would be to have more of the family close-by, and then I think about how the life of an academic scientist rarely allows for you to work where you grew up, which is at least possible (if not the norm) for most other jobs that exist. So there is that. Santa Cruz of course has a number of other wonderful attributes!

The boys play together a lot these days. Finn told Katie yesterday that Graham is his favorite person to play with! Graham, being Graham, is usually up for anything that involves Finn, even when it is getting mauled a bit. They had several cute moments on the couch this morning. I promise that Graham was having a good time.

Happy Birthday To Me

I turned 31 yesterday. Woo.
Finn and I celebrated by going over to Jessica's to see Caitlin and Liam and eat cake, and by just generally taking it easy. Taking it easy meant that I arranged it so I didn't have to cook, wash dishes, or do laundry while Jonathan was out of town. It did not mean Finn was any less of a maniac. I didn't take any pictures there (part of "taking it easy," maybe), but here's one Jessica took last week of Finn telling Liam... something very important.


Here's one of our walk yesterday. Finn decided to walk half of the way to downtown instead of riding in the stroller. He looks kind of like a muppet when he runs - arms extended and bobbing randomly. But with more wandering. See where the sidewalk disappears in the background? He covered all that ground and then some.


And I don't have any of him eating cake yesterday, but here's a video from a week or two ago where Finn demonstrates his newly discovered love of rhubarb cake. He wouldn't even try the rhubarb custard pie I made, possibly because I was eating it for breakfast and I usually eat things like oatmeal for breakfast, which he won't touch. He did yell "cakaaaay" again yesterday in pretty much the same voice.

Cake from Katie on Vimeo.

Completing the video backlog (you can probably stop reading now if you're not a grandparent), here's a couple of Finn reading his favorite books. Normally everything else gets ignored when these come out, but apparently not even Head to Toe is a match for the video camera. As you can see, though, even with that on, he cannot resist the compulsion to do the required actions or animal noises. Eric Carle rocks his world.

Head to Toe from Katie on Vimeo.

The Very Busy Spider from Katie on Vimeo.

And the sweetest thing ever, from Mother's Day last month.

Happy. Mama. Day. from Katie on Vimeo.
Thanks boys!

Standing and smashing and reading and sleeping

Hey, look at Finn!
Tuesday (and part of today) the only way he was happy was standing, so the only way I could get anything done was to get out his play pen and prop him up. Then he stood while I did dishes, until he fell over, and then he'd play for a while, until he got bored, and then I'd have to stand him up again.

Speaking of playing, for the most part Finn interacts with his toys one way: smashing! Smashing them into the floor, his lap, or his favorite, another toy. It's best if this makes a good noise, like smashing a maraca into a tambourine, or a rattle into ... something hard. Like my head.

There's also chewing, but mostly it's all smash around here these days. A few things escape the smash. First there's a balloon Jonathan bought him a few days ago ("he promised me he'd be really good all week if I bought it for him") - too floaty. But he did do the smashing motion with the balloon string, and there's a two-minute video of that and him demonstrating how he doesn't know how to crawl yet at Vimeo if you want to watch it.

The other non-smasher (usually) is his books. He LOVES fun textures, like the thick corduroy of our couch or the fuzzy throw pillow that's on it, so he loves his That's Not My Monster book (thanks Jessica, Daren, and Caitlin!). He'll paw studiously at its pages ("Its paws are too bumpy" "Its eyebrows are too hairy") for surprisingly long stretches of time. So of course we bought him That's Not My Dragon, but so far have resisted the temptation to get That's Not My Robot, That's Not My Monkey, or any of the other Touchy Feely titles. Now he feels the pages of all his books, and seems mildly confused and disappointed when they're just flat.

You may have already noticed, but the crib cam linked over on the right is now the living room rug cam. Finn's usually there at least a little while every morning and evening, and doing more interesting things than sleeping. If we forget to turn it off, you may see Murray or Mona wander by. Did I mention they both may have urinary tract infections? Yeah, so that's fun.

Oooh, and our other exciting news: we managed to go to the Beyer/Mastrapas' last night for dinner and a gathering of out-of-town friends and put Finn to bed in his play pen. This was a first for us (the previous attempt was a giant FAIL), and may open up all sorts of exciting possibilities. Not that I mind staying home for dinner usually - I'm actually kind of a decent cook these days. You should stop by sometime. :)