What's New with You?

[Author's Note: If you follow my .Mac blog you will quickly notice that this is basically a repost of my most recent entry. In anticipation of Apple dropping support for their iWeb application and web hosting, I am working through the arduous task of moving that blog to WordPress. So please pardon the duplication.]My summer has one day left so I thought this is as good a time as any to document several of this summer’s exciting(?) developments.As you probably already know, we (I) did not take the kids out of daycare for the summer so that I could devote my time–when not playing golf–to preparing for my comprehensive exams in January. Nevertheless there was plenty of action and good times–just in September alone.Lola started soccer. This is very exciting for me. Soccer was the one sport I played and enjoyed as a kid and I hope Lola does too. Her team, the Shooting Stars, is an under six girls team with eight players, all in their first year. So that means they are not very “good,” but they sure are having fun–even at practice. I realized early in the season that I need to be patient with her development and grasp of the game. One aspect of soccer that I hope she develops–mentally and physically–is being aggressive: going after the ball, running hard, never giving up. That type of aggressive. Here are some cute pictures.Ollie is potty-trained. Yeah, it took about one week. Amazing. I almost gave up but luckily my partner and balancer intervened (quite forcefully) and insisted we not give up and sure as shit he figured it out that same day. He went from being terrified by the thought of sitting on the toilet to wanting to sit on it every five minutes. Diapers are definitely one of those clear, material markers of having a very young child that we have now left behind forever. (For posterity’s sake, I’ll specify that we started potty training him on Lola’s first day of kindergarten and he was solid by that weekend.)Lola started kindergarten. Yup, the milestones are piling up over here. We decided to place her in the kindergarten class that her old daycare offers. Essentially it is a “private” school, which disagrees with my own convictions about the importance of attending a public school (and my finances as a student), but it was a choice between 9 students or 25+, morning class (which I absolutely wanted) or afternoon, and it’s the same school that Ollie attends so they can stay together one more year. She’s learning to read, and write, and has lots of cool adventures planned for the school year so hopefully I’ll make the time to keep you posted as we go along. You can see a few pictures from the first day of school here and here and here.Ollie had his first dentist appointment. Perhaps it’s not as monumental as the preceding, but Julie takes healthy teeth very seriously and since the hygienist was none other than Aunt Jessica (the best ever), a strong showing was imperative. And, of course, she found no “sugar bugs” and he has fabulous teeth and gums. You can see a couple of pictures here and here [forthcoming].We recently returned from our last camping trip of the season. We went back to family favorite Fallen Leaf Lake in Tahoe. Camping with kids is stressful and exhausting–neither of which are the antithesis of camping–so I am only hoping that these difficult times are an investment for future trips. You can see some pictures here.Well that’s about all I have to report at the moment. I’m sure there’s more. Actually, there are dozens more little things that happen everyday that I wish I could record for the future but there’s only so much time in a day. And, actually, part of my desire to make this enormous transition to WordPress is my ability now to post pictures on the go with much less effort.Take Care!