First trip to the library

Yesterday Spencer had his first trip to the library. I usually go to the library to pick up books I have on reserve about once a week. I always go on weekends or evenings while Spencer and his papa are hanging out.

I had the car for the day to run some errands and the library was on my list. As we walked into the quiet and relaxing building Spencer was checking out all the new faces and surroundings. We saw the sign directing us to the children’s area. As we made our way through the maze of towering shelves with books, we found the prize at the end of the labyrinth. There was a small table and tiny chairs . . . and the treasure trove.

Spencer wiggled to get down and made his way to the bins overflowing with board books. I sat on the floor and he grabbed a book and brought it back to me, he sat on my lap and we read the book. As soon as we were done he pushed the book aside and went to the bin and brought back another book and plopped down in my lap. This time we didn’t make it to the end of the book, he was so excited he stood up mid-sentence and grabbed another book, this went on until I had a tidy pile of about 10 books next to me. Spencer was in Heaven.

His favorite book, that he kept coming back to, was an Eric Carle book (of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" fame). It was all about numbers and had two sections on each page to turn separately. Spencer was fascinated. I think the book will have to make a permanent appearance at our home. I found the whole set on Amazon.

Life is good at the library, the first of many trips I am sure!

Building a vocabulary

Spence is doing a great job with vocalizing. He loves to “talk” and babble. He has a few words down. He can say, mama, dada, ni-ni, ood (food), dee-pa (diaper) and responds to the words, walk, bye-bye, drink, book, binky and ball. If you ask him where his ball is, he goes and gets it, the same with book, binky and drink.

He loves crackers and we have his snacks in a cupboard in the kitchen. . . if you ask, “Spencer, would you like food?” He gets a huge grin. . . runs to the cupboard and says “boovd” with we recognize as “food.”

He also loves to mimic, if we are laughing. . . he automatically chimes in. If you say a word he tries to mimic it. He is growing so fast, it is hard to believe that he has only been home for 6 months. Yet he has changed so much!

January 2008




July 2008

'When I was your age, television was called books.'

I have developed a new love of the library. I have read more books in the last month then in the last 2 years. It is so strange.

People ask me my hobbies and what I enjoy, and reading is always at the top of my list. I read a great deal for my job. I love to read scriptures and church lessons. I love to read cereal boxes, google reader, The Wall Street Journal. . . but lately (the last few years) reading as a hobby has been on the back burner.

This re-found love has a couple of catalysts. First, my sister got me hooked on the “Twilight” saga this year. I think I forgot how fun reading could be. (Sometimes it seems like a chore. . . aka reading 300 student papers a semester, some good some not-so good.) Second, now that we don’t have TV, I find that I am always reaching for a book. Third, there are so many books I have wanted to read, but never have gotten around to it. (I just read ‘Death of a Salesman’ for the first time and loved it.) Fourth, I love goodreads.com, it is such a cool site to get ideas and see what is good. And finally fifth, my library has the greatest system that makes it easy. I look up the book I want to read online. I put it on hold at my local library and they email when it is ready to pick up. I walk in and there is it ready to pick up. Soooo easy. . . and for the fiscally-minded girl, it is free!

It's been 6 months

We are getting ready for our 6 month post-placement visit. We are so excited for our social worker to meet Spencer. She lives about 90 min. away so she hasn’t met him yet. She has been such a wonderful resource and has been the most kind and professional case worker. (Here is the link to the agency).

Anyway, part of the post placement report is to provide 3 sets of 10 pictures of our little guy. It was hard to narrow it down to just 10! As I was looking at the photos I didn’t see any with his cute teeth, so this morning a snapped a couple more. I thought I would share.

I am going to kick someone in face.

One of the colleges I teach at is transferring all the email accounts to new addresses. You would think that a school with 20,000+ students and myriad of faculty would try to make it simple. All I know is that, as directed, I have uninstalled and installed software on my computer 4 times. The thing still doesn’t work. My calls have been “lost” 3 times trying to talk with someone at the help desk. There are presently 5 email accounts set up for me (that I did not ask for by the way) and I don’t even know which ones (in any) work.

Sheesh. . . at least I live with a technical guru.

Photos from the weekend

We had a wonderful weekend with family in Utah. Here are some (a lot) of pictures. I promise to blog more tomorrow about all the doings : )