a few Theo stats

City Boy with Sword (that was promptly lost)

Favorite number: 10

Hobbies:  assessing the moon’s phase, tying back the curtains

Games:  playing teacher, or anything with numbers on it (rules can be made up)

Books: Runaway Bunny, Goodnight Moon, Corduroy

Toys:  kitchen, trains, marble runs (mama's favorite too)

Interests:  knowing the first letter of words (for show and tell), the machinations of the city, being bossy

raspberry fingers

Tomorrow is the most sacred of school holidays, for it is COFFEE CART day!!!  I would be more excited, except that I am sick and single parenting for a few days and that combination is hard, yo.  Today I started reading the Laudato Si, the pope's encyclical about the destruction we humans are wreaking on our sensitive home.  It's a pretty easy and quick read.  My students are creating a global change infographic and I'm giving them extra credit for incorporating Laudato Si quotes where appropriate.  BAM--science and morality--together forever as we spiral down this crazy techno-wormhole dystopia we call modernity.

This little guy thinks it's funny when he puts raspberries on his fingers:

And this little guys is happiest in the early, early morn:

Sometimes clothing a child is a real drag

How many pairs of shoes is appropriate for a toddler boy?  Currently, Theo has three pairs--crocs (standard), sport-sandals and tennis shoes.  Only one pair is really appropriate for colder weather and today that pair broke.  When you have only three pairs of shoes, breakage necessitates an immediate mall run to pick up another pair.  So, we went, and it was unbelievably crowded for a Tuesday night.  We had a lot of fun, though, and Theo did some arm dancing that you might want to check out:

it's finally winter

This NaBloPoMo is not going well for me.  I feel very uninspired to blog because I spend all of my free time writing for various other things.  In years past I have not had a huge workload in addition to my job, so it has been much more fun to actively blog.

This fall, all of my big words, complex sentences, and coherent thoughts are spent by the end of each night.  I have a limited amount of writing/extra working/reflecting power each day, and by the time I blog, it is gone.  Today, for example, I woke up to despair over the state of our world (which was then compounded by this awful article on the motherlode blog, which has made me cry three times today already.  Note to self: do not ever read comments.), spent two hours plotting up what I hope will be my last ever black hole graphs, then wrote for two hours about the job of a teacher to manage classroom emotions. I also have two children to interact with and dishes to do.  I will be done with all my other things in December, so maybe I will make December a do-over month?  My writing taper month after this hellacious fall?  Maybe I'll just try to post a cute picture of my kids each day and give up on writing until next month?  We'll see where this goes!

this little light of mine, in the neighborhood, wherever I go

I walked in the kitchen this morning to find a king dining at my table!  This is the birthday crown his teacher made him last year.  I guess I'd better make him a nice felt one this year!

I wore these new shoes today.  They are CROCS, which is outrageous yet comfortable and I will never apologize for being a wearer of plastic shoes!

My application pile grew by one last week when I was asked to submit an application for an award that has a lot of money for lab supplies attached to it.  At this point, I feel like an award application robot pony.  You basically point me in the direction of an award or program, give me a writing prompt, and off I gallop.  There are just several letters of rec on file with multiple people at my school at this point.  It is ridiculous and feels like it came on due to an avalanche of good luck and inspiration.  It's sapping all of my desire to write anything else and wearing me down.  I feel like I'm in school again, but with no guarantee of a degree at the end.

This week's been a big one.  In Tuesday I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, as I have in November for the past five years, on a field trip.  When we returned I gave a overview of my black holes project to the school board, which made me very nervous (and my mouth very dry).  Today, I talked to a research team from Sweden about my views on technology in the classroom for about an hour and a half (all teachers did).  And tomorrow I teach with no breaks!

Like a lone jellyfish, floating in the abyss......

Brothers

My baby-daddy's phone picture quality leaves much to be desired, but I do appreciate it when pictures of hugging brothers appear in the middle of the workday. 

Cal Academy

We live one block from Adobe, and were awakened this morning by the sounds of a helicopter moving large air vents from the ground to the top of the building.  Helicopters are SUPER loud in downtown areas due to the multitude of surfaces available for funneling the sound waves.  Of course we had to investigate the haps with our binoculars.

Then we went to the Cal Academy, where many things were seen and many battles of the will were waged.

And this evening there was chili!  Our good friends came over with their kids.  Their daughter is 1.5 years older than Theo and he absolutely adores her.  Every.single.time. she is here they spend some quality time on the toilet together...he on his potty and she on the real toilet.  It is adorable and completely strange, as going to the bathroom was never a play date activity for me.

hairs cut

I got my bi-annual haircut today and took a selfie with Charlie--it looks more stylish in real 3D life.  My hair vacillates between short and shorter, and has done so since I was 8.  I am much too impatient and easily bored to have long hair.  I crave rapid change in all things, including hair length.

Natan is currently watching the third Hobbit movie, a decision I see as completely unnecessary.  Though perhaps I should not be one to speak about the choices an individual makes within an HBOGo account, as I watched "American Sniper" recently under the impression that it was supposed to be a good movie.  It was absolutely not and made me even more annoyed with Clint Eastwood. I think it might be impossible to separate an artist from their political leanings.  Now when I watch one of his movies, I'm constantly looking for artistic decisions that might be driven by his politics.  Maybe that just makes me a bad audience member?

trunking your anus

Last night, Natan read aloud an outstanding paragraph from one of his NYRB...a paragraph that I think can only be appreciated whilst in the middle of toddlerdom:
 
"Sometimes it is the small things that best reveal shared life experience.  When baby elephants are weaned they throw tantrums that rival those of the wildest two-year-old humans.  One youngster became so upset with his mother that he screamed and trumpeted as he poked her with his tiny tusks.  Finally, in frustration, he stuck his trunk into her anus, then turned around and kicked her.  "You little horror!" thought Cynthia Moss as she watched the tantrum unfold.

Today, while Theo was behaving in a particularly colorful way, Natan said, "He's trunking your anus."  It's a good thing the visual is delightfully tied to cute baby elephants.

Theo, trunking my anus since 2012.

In exciting work news, I have been invited to speak at a workshop!  Invited, invited...like didn't apply or submit an abstract, just got an unexpected e-mail about my summer project on Jefferson (or TJ, as I like to call him).   Of course, before I accepted I checked my calendar to make sure it wasn't on a weekend or a break, because I am done with that noise (while I have tiny humans in my house).  Since it is firmly in the middle of a long work week, I will happily do it.  It's also on the east coast, which makes it even more fun and exciting.  I am, of course, ignoring all of the work it will require in favor of planning neat excursions and yelping restaurants in which to eat.  

Wordless Wednesday

pumpkin jams

We didn't celebrate Halloween because there was no preschool shindig and it's just not my jam.  I feel like an alien species when I see other adults getting into dressing up and going out.  Halloween has always been just a day to get through so that you can concentrate on the real holidays--Thanksgiving and tree time (Christmas).  Theo and I happened to be at our local Whole Foods on that day and he requested that we take a picture together, to which I happily obliged.

When we talked about halloween (before I knew that his preschool banned it), he told me that he wanted to be a pumpkin.  He wore his costume to speech tonight, which was obviously a huge hit. I mean, COME ON!

hotline bling (AKA baby's first Drake video)

I've been singing Hotline Bling to Charlie and Theo.  Theo likes to sing the, "You used to call me on my cellphone" part, and then I chime in with, "late night when you need my love".  Kind of like a call and response!  Tonight, we all watched the video on my phone.  I am nothing if not determined to make them into lovers of pop culture.

I also submitted my super-big-hardest-of-my-life application tonight, so that monkey is finally off of my back.  Now I just have to tackle a bunch of other applications that should feel relatively easy in comparison, so silver lining?  I would also like to note that I spent 4 hours working on black hole research today, in addition to my full-time job.  I've been practicing a lot of self-soothing lately.

Here's a cute one:

Doin' it

It’s November, which means it is officially NaBloPoMo!  This has probably been the most stressful, over-scheduled, over-application-ed fall of my entire life, but the good news is that it should all be over by December (?).  I will push on, and try to blog a little something every day.  

Daylight savings time means nothing to small children, as they are not likely to marinate in their bed sheets for an additional hour like any reasonable adult.  Instead, they are eager to greet the world (and their mommy) at the ungodly 5 am hour. 

 Packed up for a day out.

Learning how to use a computer.