Tuesday was the University's Festival of Excellence. Dan was presenting and volunteering as a moderator, and I was--well, trying to get to as much as possible to write up an article for the provost's office. Overall, I think it went pretty well. I enjoyed the sessions I went to (including a fabulous percussion concert from some music students and faculty), and I'm more impressed than ever with our new president, who seems to be a thoughtful, capable individual. I made my students attend, too, and their responses amused me. One student hated it, but several had comments along the lines of, "I didn't want to go, but I'm glad I did . . ." True for a lot of things in my life, too.
Wednesday was the over-booked children's day (or felt like it). Since it was early day, Evelyn had a birthday party at 2:30. And then, on Tuesday, we found out Andrew had a birthday party at the same time. We dropped her off, took Andrew to the park for his party, and played at the park while waiting for Andrew (Oliver loved it). Evelyn had dance class at 4:30, but we'd made arrangements with a friend in the class for her mom to take Evelyn from the party to class. Around 5, we headed out again: to get sandwiches from Jimmy Johns, then to pick up one of Evelyn's soccer buddies, and then to pick up Evelyn and her friend from dance class. (Good thing we have a mini-van). We dropped off her friend, and made it to her soccer game at 5:30 only a few minutes late . . . I'm told this kind of thing only gets more chaotic as they get older--and I'm not really looking forward to that! Luckily scouts was cancelled that night . . .
We headed up north again for the weekend, for two family baptisms: Dan's niece and my niece were both baptized the same day--luckily not at the same time, so we were able to make it to both of them, sort of. After Oliver waking up repeatedly with a croupy cough on Friday (yes, again!) we decided to keep him away from the other children. So Dan went to his niece's baptism, and I went to mine. And then I came home and collapsed (one of the downsides of a toddler's dubious generosity is that they share all their diseases with you: I was feverish and achy and went to bed at 8 p.m.). Today, it's Dan's turn to be the sickly parent: he even took a nap, which tells you something (he hates naps).
It's not all onerous, though. Oliver continues to astound and delight us with his linguistic prowess (the other kids do, too, but their progress isn't as dramatic). Last week, on the way home from getting the kids at school, he informed Andrew "I throw ball Jack." (He threw a tennis ball to the neighbor's dog, Jack, on the way to the school). His first real sentence (I don't count "need dat," or "want dat" which are essentially a single idea), and it has a subject, verb, and direct *and* indirect objects. Sometimes my students don't even get all that into a sentence.
And today, he had me read Neil Gaiman's Chu's Day about a dozen times. The story is cute--about a little panda with a disastrous sneeze--but Adam Rex's illustrations are much better. But Oliver has decided he loves it (hence the repeated readings). And after reading it about five times this afternoon, Oliver went, "ah, ah, choo!" which must be about the cutest thing he's said. (Which says a lot).
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