I suppose I should explain the subject first. Most children choose something to drag around the house with them, usually referred to as a lovey. Normal kids choose a stuffed animal or blanket or some soft thing. What, you ask, has LB chosen? Well, some of you may have figured it out from the Tick reference. Yes that's right, LB insists on running around the house (well walking actually, he hasn't figured out running yet) with two spoooooooooonnnnnnns. Actaully they're just spoons, and rubber coated ones at that, but that's his choice of lovey. He often times walks into the kitchen and over to the dishwasher and asks for his "buh" which is how he says spoon-he can't say spoon yet-but on a separate note we are working on dragon, then we'll move on to treasure and then, well, you know where it goes from there... But anyway, he asks for his spoons and isn't satisfied if he only gets one, he needs two, and often times asks for more-I usually refuse, I think one for each hand is enough. Woe be to the person who leaves the dirty dishwasher open, he'll get his spoons from there, even if it means crawling onto the door to reach them. Luckily the dishwasher is almost always closed.

Just today I was lying on the floor and he came over and burried his face in my belly, it was way cute and got both of us laughing pretty hard. He rolled off and I rolled him away from me, then he either got up and came walking back over or just didn't bother getting up and crawled back over again and snuggled with me some more. This sequence of events continued a number of times, then he stood up, signed finished at me and went on to his next plaything.

Speaking of playthings, for Hanukkah, his great aunt and uncle (Phil and Sandi) got him a toy train to play with. It came with four molded plastic figures (which were an instant hit) and the train itself contained the engine with places for the figures to sit, a cannon with human cannonball, and a small ferris wheel that the figures could sit in. On the engine, if you push the conductor down, the engine plays some music, then moves forward then plays some more music. When he first got it, he was terrified of it. He would cry when he heard it (even though more often than not, he was the one who pushed on the conductor). It seems that he's finally conquered his fear. Now he loves the thing and will push the conductor as many times as it takes for it to go clear across the living room, then he'll push it some more even though it doesn't move. He hasn't quite figured out that he needs to pick it up and turn it around when it gets to the end of the room. Soon he'll figure that out too.

Lately he's also been able to identify both Phil and me in pictures. The thing that surprised me is that he can identify me from just the back of the head, or with only a bit of my leg and forehead showing. I was totally floored when he did this. We have a computer program for him to play with and in one part of it you can submit pictures and then they get covered up and he has to hit certain buttons on the keyboard to uncover the various pieces. There was a big covered square in the middle and only the corners were uncovered and yet he knew it was me. And I don't think he just recognized the picture, because it had been a while since we'd played with the game. He just never ceases to amaze both of us with what he can do.

Swim class is fun, now he doesn't want to sit on the edge of the pool and wait for me to call him into the pool, he just wants in, now that may be because he's cold, I don't know, but he seems to have adjusted to swimming classes pretty well. Hopefully he'll even learn to swim, eventually!!

I'm trying to remember what the other things that are new lately. Oh yes, he's getting molars, they're just peeking through right now, but soon enough they'll be through and he'll be grinding away at the food-wonder when he can get raw veggies.

As for me, I'm finally really really really free. I finished my week of working at Oxy, which was lots of fun. Kat, who came on last summer was lots of fun to work with. I'm disappointed that I didn't get to know her better before I left. I think she and I would have gotten along great. Oh well. I'm still in contact with TOPS at least.

On Thursday of my week at Oxy, I was made aware of a cool grant, funded by BP. The uncool part about it was that the proposal was due today. That gave me not nearly enough time to work on it. But I got it done, thanks, in no small part to Kristen McInnis, our local professional grant writer. So hopefully in a couple of month's I'll have $10,000 to spend on some nicer equipment for my classroom. We'll see, but I think the proposal looks pretty good. So now when I say I'm done, I mean I'm really done. Now I can start on all the stuff that I want to do around the house!! Let's see... Really, you all don't need to see the list, do you?

OK, enough from me tonight. I've been taking lots of photos of LB and other stuff lately, you can go see my wordphoto stuff here. I'm having tons of fun with it, still. Just need a nice compact digital that I can carry in my purse so I can take pics when I'm out and about. I'll get some other photos up at ofoto soon, and when I do I'll be sure to post the link.

G'night.