snow-eating

School has ended for me and for P; j has school until tomorrow, the 23rd. These are some pictures from this weekend, when we were pretty much snowed in for three days. As in years past, there was much snow-eating. Snow-eating, I’ve found, is the outdoor equivalent of paper-eating, which is j’s indoor fascination. He’s even found himself a corner of the room, behind the living room curtain, in which he crumbles, munches, and then disposes of spitballs in one of my many plants. Yes, this is my amazing, spectacular child.


The snowflakes have been my project with j, who has learned to use scissors quite well at school. Scissor-wrangling was not even on my radar screen (What do you mean, scissors? He’s only 3!), so I’m glad that he’s been learning at school. So the snowflakes you see on the window are my creation; however, j will do quite a bit of cutting on his own (mostly ribbon). He’s also been helping me tape as I wrap presents--since I recycle catalogs for wrapping paper, this usually means putting tape over the models’ eyes--and he’s also been monitoring the Christmas lights that are taped to the windows. They inevitably fall off (loudly, too--as a family we’re just starting to learn not to jump when they unexpectedly drop), so it’s good to have someone eager to tape them back onto the windows.

We’re headed to Michigan this weekend just after Christmas, and are very excited (yet completely unprepared, as usual) for the trip.

holiday decorating

We just pulled out the holiday decorations, which we haven’t seen since December 2006. Last year we closed on the house in December and moved here in early January, so we didn’t bother decorating our apartment. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of holiday decorating, but even an old Scrooge like me can appreciate making holiday decorations part of a home. We have not spent two Christmases in a row anywhere since we lived in the Bronx (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003). When we lived in the house in Easton, I remember being very excited while putting up the decorations, imagining that each holiday the tree would be where I had placed it for years--nay, decades--to come. And then we moved 5 months later.

Since P likes his job, I (mostly) like mine, j is doing well, and the economy is going down the drain, we plan never to move again, so I got that same feeling when opening up the box of decorations this year: I will always put the tree here. We only have a baby tree (given to P by a students a few years ago); we also don’t have many decorations, which is just fine by me as I try to simplify and declutter. Two years ago I made the commitment that if the decorations can’t fit into the designated box, we have too many. P is more than fine with this. :)

I haven’t been blogging this semester mostly because my commitment to work has taken over my entire life, and this week I became chair of my department, which is a commitment which will last until June 30, 2010 when I hope to pass off the responsibility to someone else. I’ve sort of been doing the chair responsibilities this semester but getting paid much less, so the pay bump starting next month will give us some more money in the bank--or rather, the student loan coffers. Also, now that I have a better sense of what the job requires, I hope that things will calm down next semester as I settle into a routine.

And with that, I leave you with an interesting picture of j. Discuss.