Friday, June 8, 2012

The challenges 1, Jennifer 1


Nope, I haven’t been able to post all that frequently. Almost all my computer time these days involves work exclusively (yes, with a glance at Facebook here and there). We have been planning our summer vacation – our upcoming trip to Italy – and seeing the budget that we will have to have available is a great incentive, let me tell you, to make some extra money. So I work as much as I can. Sometimes it’s exciting – I just read about something in the news that I had translated the presentation for – and sometimes it’s a little less stimulating and very technical (heavy machinery equipment maintenance manuals, anyone?) but it’s really a great job - it is! - because I can work when and where I want. Also, my new laptop is being quite cooperative, which makes everything a lot easier.

Well. Other things happen in our lives too, of course.

Prof. Husband went to Turkey for a conference for a week. Now he’s giving exams and writing a paper that is due around the time we get back from Italy (which means he has to finish it before we leave). This means he has been and will be pretty much OOO these weeks. Sigh.

The boys (and I with them) are working hard to finish up this academic year’s school work; finalizing projects, filling out gaps, reviewing. We’re of course also going over the history of Italy –covering all areas, including art and music - extra carefully, in anticipation of our trip.

Abraham has gone through a few weeks of some kind of Terrible Threes Project, where he spends a lot of time trying to make a mess, as big as possible, and then when you start cleaning it up, he takes off and makes an ever bigger mess, somewhere else. We’re not talking little spills of milk in the kitchen here, but more exciting endeavors such as soaking an entire clean and folded but not yet put away batch of laundry in the sink, or pouring out a big tub of wooden blocks and then running through them, kicking them and spreading them all over the house in under 10 seconds. Another favorite is opening as many packages of pasta as possible before mama finds out, or getting a juicebox out only to pour its entire content over the couch. I’ve therefore spent a lot of my time lately cleaning up messes and trying to entice Abraham with more appropriate activities, like painting, play-doh, duplos, peg art, or I sit with him and his toys, and show him how to play nicely, by example, and put things away afterwards. The boys are also teaching him the first pumsae, which I think is good for his body-mind connection and coordination. In all, I don’t think it’s an attention-thing (he gets a lot of attention from all of us), and I don’t think he’s bored. I think he has just been exploring his independence and testing borders, a bit, to figure out what he can get away with, what is appropriate, and what will put him in the much-dreaded time-out. Whatever it is, I hope it passes soon, because I’m getting tired out… 

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