Brief

I have 3 or 4 posts rattling around in my head, but I spent an hour tonight reading a hilarious blog instead of either working or updating our own rather mundane little piece of the blogosphere and there are still roughly 8 trillion dishes waiting for me.

So, here are the brief snapshots, since I may never get around to the actual posts:

• I have all sorts of great pictures and videos and stories from Louisville and Chicago. Some day I'll upload them. For now there is one at the bottom of this post to hold you over.


• Nicholas has gotten awesome with letters. I don't know if I ever mentioned it in an earlier post, but about a month ago he figured out spelling his name. On our trip (thanks in part to a bag of letter stickers for the plane) he figured out that the ABC song was the letters in order and started working on putting them in order, left to right and then starting a new row below when he ran out of space. (Although still only upper case.) There is probably a technical term for that, but I'll just call it pre-literacy work.


• Thanks to preschool UNO, his numeracy has improved. Not only has his counting objects gotten consistently reliable, but he can recognize how many pieces are there with a glance, to within 1. (i.e. if he has to pick 5, he'll pick 4, 5, or 6 without counting. When he got it at x-mas, he would have to count at 2 to see if he needed more.)


• Nicholas started a new school today. This has been accompanied by lots of anxiety and guilt on my part. This could be a 10-page post, but boils down to him having to readjust and the fact that this is a 1-room preschool where he is the youngest by far and there are kids up to 5 all together. He loved it, although I am still somewhat anxious about all the potential ramifications.


• I felt like Supermom at airports on this trip. Nicholas and I had a system and we were working it. That is a guarantee that next time we will fall on our faces, but man were we impressive. My proudest feat was getting me, him, a stroller, a suitcase, a diaper bag, a backpack, a pack n' play, a carseat, and of course Elmo from the airport to long term parking with no help, no cart, and no shuttle bus available. We totally rocked it! Oh, and also devising a system whereby I kept medicine "refrigerated" for the 10 hours of travel.

There may be more, but it will have to await another random list blog post. But, for now, a picture from Louisville:

From 2012 January