Things that are happening:
1. We bought a membership to the SF Zoo, which has already paid for itself, because Theo wakes up nearly daily with the one word question, “animals?” We mainly just hang out in the petting zoo area where he runs around, feeds the ducks, steers clear of the goats (he was head butted once and it left quite the impression) and shouts, “barn! barn!”. It’s been pretty good so far, except yesterday, when a seagull swooped down and took an entire kosher beef hot dog off of Natan’s plate and shoved it down its gullet in 2 seconds.
2. Theo has really warmed up to his friend Piper. There is nothing more heartwarming than witnessing genuine joy and contentment in the face of your child while they are interacting with other children. He’s a little awkward with her--trying to hug her and copy her incessantly--but it’s such a highlight of his day! I can tell he’s going to be a great brother.
3. Speaking of Theo and other kids—a four year old boy at his preschool has taken to Theo (due to positive reinforcement, or so I am told) and includes him in playground time. It started when Theo needed some help getting his glasses back on, and then boy helped him, which then led to all the other kids wanting to help him put his glasses back on.
4. School talk: My wonderful colleague and I are creating a super simple coding project for our chemistry classes where they create a program to tell a chemistry related joke! I am super excited about this mini-project. We’re using scratch, which has good online tutorials and is usable by elementary aged kids to adults. I really like the idea of introducing logical thinking to kids in this way. I think it really does retrain your brain (anecdotal hypothesis based on my semester of html programming in 1997. Science.). On the other hand, I sort of recoil at the thought of making them spend even more hours in front of a computer, though this is the way K-12 education is headed (wrongly, in my view, and not based on what the research actually says, which is that reading real books and handwriting are better learning tools than a computer). Sigh?!
5. School talk part 2: Friday was “create a graph with a linear regression in excel” day in chemistry, my favorite day of the year! It is so satisfying and always a little shocking at how into excel they get, these future business leaders of America (fbla—remember that club from 1990’s high school? Does it still exist?).
6. I was reminiscing with a similarly-aged colleague of mine about high school clubs, as we were both in JETs (Junior Engineering Technical Society. DOES NOT still exist.) and Mock Trial (we both won awards! DOES still exist). I have no strong recollection of these experiences, except that JETs was hard and involved many calculus problems and Mock Trial was thrilling because you got to go to a courthouse (and there was a cute boy in it)! Ah, the journey to self-actualization is littered with so many ridiculous experiences! (One time I took fencing lessons, while concurrently volunteering at a retirement community).
7. Sending Theo to Jewish preschool while working at a Catholic high school is truly paying off in the “religious holidays provide legitimate reasons to take off from work” category. I was home from noon Wednesday-Friday with Theo because of Rosh Hashanah school closure (Jewish) and then I’m off from work in a few weeks for Columbus Day (Catholic?). It’s all coming together now!
8. I have only 13 working weeks until maternity leave! (…there are lots of breaks. I’m only 20 weeks pregnant).
9. Real Talk: Natan and I are trying to get ahead of the climate refugee game. It is clear that CA is going to be a dustbowl (and we can’t really afford to live here anyway). We are going northward at some point, but the question has now become, “should we try Alaska?”--see this NYTimes article that I can’t stop thinking about for reference. As an aside, this article is basically the sum of all moving-related conversations I’ve had with my friend Jazmin over the last year (we have indeed talked about Minneapolis, and Detroit just came up last month!).
10. Back to Theo—his eyes continue to improve, though I had to buy a new pair of glasses for his worsening vision, which is an unrealistic rate of glasses purchase so far (2 new prescriptions/year—this is exclusive of replacement pairs and prescription sunglasses!). Obamacare mandates that all plans cover pediatric vision, which makes me want to cry a little—I had no idea that it WASN’T necessarily a part of a health care plan before. It astounds me that we were all just going about our business while people with pre-existing conditions, like cancer, and children with extreme farsightedness were left out of plan coverage. Eyes don’t stop developing until a child is 7! Untreated eye problems can lead to blindness and a permanent lazy eye! This is such an important medical issue (that, admittedly, I never knew about until I had a kid) that I feel very passionate about right now. Glasses for kids are expensive ($250), and with Theo on our vision plan, he is only eligible for one new pair a year. Adult and children have the same coverage on a glasses plan? It makes no sense, given the whole eye development thing. Also, I have finally realized the seriousness of this eye situation, when at his last appointment, I innocently asked if he would be done with all these appointments in a year or so and the doctor replied, “oh no, I think I’ll probably be seeing him regularly until he’s at least seven.”
Zoo pics
Full light.
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