Taking the Scenic Route

happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to meee-eeee, happy birthday to me.   

Now, when I get pregnant, I will be “of advanced maternal age”

Well, I have obviously been neglecting my blog for a while.  Seems like we have been terribly busy.   Zach’s last day at Boeing was yesterday.  He got a card signed by all his coworkers saying how much they are going to miss him and his manager seemed like he was almost in tears saying good-bye to him and kept reminding him that he could use him as a reference and that he could always come back.  It is just a shame there were no benefits to that job, it would have certainly made a difference if he had been a permament employee with the better pay and benefits.

On Tuesday classes start.  He got the key to his office and the building this week.  It is sort of strange to have the keys to a campus building.  We talk to the HR department on Monday and find out if there are any benefits like health insurance.  I hope so, but I am not counting on it.  It looks like you have to be assigned to teaching a certain amount of hours (which nobody is assigned to btw) to get those benefits.

We have enrolled Zane into two classes at the Y for the winter I session.  One is the tumble tots class that he went to early last fall (for walking – 3yo) and the other is a new arts class.  We haven’t been to the arts class yet due to the ice storms and then just plain forgetting about it last Tuesday because we were running around at the college all day.  The tumble tots class went better than it did last fall.  It is very clear his receptive language skills are much more in line with were they should be. 

Speaking of language skills, when we took the tree down this week we realized the immense strides his verbal ability has taken since we put the tree up.  It is just astonishing.  His interest in books has just blossomed too.  He liked looking at books by himself before, but wasn’t all that interested in having them read to him very often and I felt like I was giving a recitation to a not-so-attentive audience when I sat and read to him.  Now he runs and gets books (all the time saying “book, book, book” as he brings it to me) and insists I read to him.  He responds to what I reading, and just gets totally into it.  We got him “Harold and the Purple Crayon” on Tuesday and I think I about have it memorized now from him requesting it so many times.  He is also REALLY liking his Maisy books, his Thomas (“tos-mos”) books, and “My many colored days” by Dr. Suess.  (although he doesn’t like the “purple day”, and his favorite is “orange day” and the “weeeeeee” on the yellow day. lol  That might be because his mama spent too many years in forensics and theater and is *slightly* expressive.)

I am gonna go…speaking of books, I just got a request for “Maisy goes shopping”.  lol.  We will celebrate my birthday tomorrow and I will try to post some pictures from this last week with the birthday pictures.