Bloggogriff

While the past week or so has been mainly a downer - first Owen with pink-eye, then me with flu, then Eric with flu, and tonight Owen's eyes looked suspiciously crusty again - we have had some fun new toddler developments. Tonight, for the first time either of us had seen, he started spinning in place until he would fall down (laugh maniacally, repeat). He's delighted by "IIIIIce!!" - his favorite new word and concept. He will fetch his towel and washcloth for his bath and carry his dirty clothes to the hamper afterward. And, most exciting for the English major here, he has constructed his first two-word sentence and story! It is actually told in sign language: first his sign for "alligator," (hold arms out and mime gator jaw snapping shut, like a UF fan), followed by smacking himself in the back of the head (yeah, I know). This sequence recounts a thrilling episode we witnessed at the Cal Academy of Sciences over Christmas break, wherein the albino alligato...

Happy 2010! The biggest surprise I have had about how growing up changes one's experience of Christmas (not counting the truth-about-Santa year) was sometime in my teens when I awoke Christmas morning to realize that I had not had any trouble sleeping. The second biggest surprise was a little more gradual: the metamorphosis by which taking down the decorations ceased to be terribly sad and came to induce a feeling of serenity and un-cluttered-ness. Usually by New Year's I am starting to crave the empty space on shelves, but this year I just hadn't been feeling it. Alas, Eric mentioned a few days ago that the tree pickup date for our apartment complex was on January 2, so today I set about un-decorating the tree while Owen was napping. I figured Owen was not going to be thrilled about the ornaments going away, and I was right. He woke up as I was finishing the job. Immediately he grabbed a box and starting putting ornaments back on the tree. The conversation for the next few...