Our summer is wrapping up here. It's hard to believe that it's coming to a close. Eva's still in the 7.5/7.6 range, which shows great improvement. She is a pretty happy baby. She and Sam seem to have a special bond and she lights up when she seems him.
Sam is a very funny toddler. Last night two girls on campus (ages 5 and 7) came over, and he had a great time playing with them. Sam has now inherited a large horde of toys. It began with an old friend, who passed on many blocks and toys from his son, then the neighbors who added various vehicles and trains and whatnot, and then Sam gets little gifts from time to time and his mom is a sucker for a puzzle, book, or motorcycle. Now Sam is a one-man entertainment enterprise. I think we're resigned to the fact that our living room probably will be a baby-feeding/toddler-playing room for another couple of years.
A few nights ago we started explaining the baptism to Sam. I'm a little nervous because the sanctuary seats probably four or five hundred people and I don't know what he'll make of so many people. Last week we went up and peeked in. We've been trying to explain what will happen. We started showing him pictures from the blog of him as a baby, and at first he insisted that they were Eli. However, as the baby added hair, walked, and looked more like Sam he accepted that it was him as a baby. We explained that he is already baptized but that it will be fun for the whole family. We'll check back in to see what he makes of it. We try to talk to him a lot and he loves to talk to people. He is getting a better vocabularly, although he still sounds like a toddler.
To lure him out to the car in the morning the last few days, I've been promising him that we'd look at bugs. Today we saw two spiders, one of the very large "golden orb" spiders that (counting legs) is probably six or seven inches in length, as well as a hunter spider, some millipedes, and blue-tailed lizards. It made him very happy and it gives him a conversation piece when he gets to school. Next week he officially moves up to the "strawberry" class. We always feel a little guilty about having him in nursery school, but he likes it a lot and it's let him really be a part of things here. We want him to feel at home in both cultures for as long as we can (I know eventually we may move home or to the American school). The timing is working out well, since 2-5 seems to give a good basis.
Eli is coming along also. It was funny to look at the old blog posts because Sam was a better cruiser and took steps earlier, but I don't think he was such a strong crawler or quite so fast going from his knees to his feet. Eli has the balance and power to stand up directly now, without holding anything. He is also very smiley, with his six teeth. He's still a little harder to get to bed, and more resistant on giving up nursing. Oh well. They both like looking at books, and they both enjoy watching Sam play. They enjoy each other also.
Otherwise things are okay. I'm starting three weeks off from language. A week needs to go to class prep and probably two weeks need to go to finishing up various projects.
And just regular life takes time also. We need to get the car inspected, do dental check-ups, should probably do physicals, etc., etc. Emily's working on a paper submission and dissertation. She paid tuition on-line yesterday. Today's her last day of class. I'm trying to decide a little bit what to do on language. I may try to get an on-campus tutor if our langauge won't give us its discounted rate (since we're taking fewer hours). This might actuallyl be better, because it would give me more church-y vocab.
This semester I'm teaching three classes. I'm trying to figure out how to set them up well. Our campus doesn't have course software, so I may use one of the google programs. I want to do something where I can ask a question and have students post answers to an online course discussion group. I also want to invite some other teachers to talk about topics of interest. I'm still working on courses, but they seem to be coming along slowly.
That's the news from here. I'm writing this having dropped Sam off, and am now getting coffee. Part of the reason I started this blog is that my memory has never been great. I lose names and details fairly easily, so it's nice to have something like this to jog my memory or remind me of how a time felt. I find I've already forgotten a lot of the specifics on baby Sam--his teething, how the transition to walking went, etc. So it's nice to have this place to look back and see how things were. I'll try to post pictures of the baptism soon (I think there may even be video). More to follow....
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