April (snow) showers

This last week has been crazy, and not simply because of the workload. (Dan's load, of course, remains fairly constant.) Since this was the last week of classes, I was literally swimming in final papers for a while, grading frantically so I could return them to my students at their final exam yesterday. (I more or less succeeded). We also had our final meeting/social of the semester for Writing Fellows, where I told my students I would be leaving this summer. That was harder than I expected--I didn't expect to get choked up, but I have really come to care about these students (I wonder if that's partly a measure of how much I have put into the program). At any rate, I cried a little, and they gave me a standing ovation--which I hadn't expected (and which made me cry harder, truth be known). I hope that someday I learn how to graciously handle appreciation.

This is what we woke up to on Thursday (the first reading day): snow. This picture was taken about 9:30 a.m., when the snow had already started to melt (to give you some idea of how much there was). Of course, by that afternoon, the snow was mostly melted on the south side of the house. But it gave Andrew an excuse to put his snow gear on one more time, so he was in heaven. (Not literally, of course, although he did tell me this week that he needed to go to heaven to tell Heavenly Father and Jesus something.)

And yesterday, the backyard (on the north side), looked like this:



Evelyn has discovered the sit-n-spin. She thinks she's pretty hot stuff when she sits on it, as you can tell from both the picture and the video. We just think she's cute.





Our final update for the week: we are finally gritting our teeth and sleep training Evelyn. We've started a gradual training two or three times in the last several months--we usually get four or so days into the program and Evelyn gets sick, so we end up abandoning our plans. So this time, we decided we just need to let her cry it out. I have a hard time doing this, but from all I've read, this is the fastest, most effective way to do it (apparently the crying actually helps babies unlearn their bad habits). And a bad habit she definitely has. At her age (even if we adjust it for prematurity), she should be sleeping through the night, not waking up every 2-3 hours. All night.

So last night was our first night. I was braced for a horrible experience, but it actually wasn't that bad. She woke up about 40 minutes after we put her to bed, and we let her cry. She managed to sit up in her crib (something she's just mastered) and then couldn't figure out how to get herself back down to sleep. After listening to her cry on and off for an hour and a half, I finally went in and rescued her, promising myself I'd let her go the next time. She didn't wake up again until one, when she cried for a few minutes and went back to sleep until 5 (when I fed her and she slept until 7). All in all, *much* less painful than I'd been expecting. We'll see how tonight goes!