Eva and Eli are now a year and a half. They seem more exuberantly happy and energetic lately. Eli's a little slimmer after being sick. Eva has developed a piercing screech that she can do for a long period of time. It seems to mean "hey, look at me," or "isn't this a fine voice I have?" or "what a nice day!" or sometimes "almost time for a nap." Emily's not taking to it well. I remember that there are little kids that like the hypersonic screech. I hope they don't develop the ability to do this in tandem.
Sam is becoming quite a drawer. He now uses crayons, paint, fingerpaint and oil pastels (I think that's what they're called). He's also big into blocks. We've been buying the duplo ones, which are good for little kids. The babies are just starting to get to like them. I may buy some more blocks before we come home. Sam has his piano lesson today. He's now working on playing notes with all five fingers. With one finger, he can sometimes do "twinkle twinkle" perfectly. I was trying to take credit for upping the musical life of our little family unit, but now that Eva's started screeching I know I might be to blame. I was a fairly tone deaf kid. We can't figure out if this was just genetics, or if it's because I was never in choirs and didn't show a particular interest in music.
Church was fun yesterday, although we realized that the congregation will have a fair amount of turn over just by the fall. I think it'll probably be fairly different by the time we're back in January or February. People are always nice to us there, and Sam likes the Sunday School.
Otherwise we are plunking along. I'm getting plans laid out for the fall. Emily's made some progress recently on diss. She's now going through the fairly tedious work of checking citations.
These next few weeks should be "medium busy" before we get to the retreat and then the last weeks of the semester. We're skypable and will try to keep in touch with everyone.
