Well, the reading is coming along, slowly but surely. I still have a little over 100 books to read, but I'm making progress.

Ronan has been making some big changes too. On Wednesday, we moved him into a regular bed. It's been really nice in a lot of ways. We now make a habit of all laying in bed together and reading bedtime stories. He likes to have the dogs come in too. The other night, Tom was working and so Ronan and I tried to get both dogs up on the bed with us. Well, when one got up, the other would get down, so it wasn't working very well. At one point, Loki was on the bed and we were calling Shadow. After I called him, Ronan yelled "Shadow!" and then start counting down, like we do when he's about to be in trouble. It was pretty funny. When Shadow didn't show up, Ronan got down to go find him. He didn't have much luck getting him back there, but it was a good effort. He also continues to try to whistle, namely by just shrieking.

Ronan's also been doing pretty well with going to my in-laws twice a week so I can get reading done. It's been a lot of fun for him and it's nice for me to be able to work. (Though I must admit I've been getting burned out lately and haven't been reading at the level I need to. Oops.) He's also at daycare twice a week. I'm hoping that because he's used to not seeing as much of me four times a week, he won't have a hard time getting used to me being gone next week while I'm in Israel. I'm really looking forward to the trip and I think Ronan will have a great time with Tom, but of course I'm still a bit nervous about it all.

We had a fun day today though - we went to the Cleveland Zoo with a couple of friends of mine and my one friend's two kids. One of them is almost exactly Ronan's age and the other is almost 9 and Ronan loves hanging out with them. In fact, I was having a slightly difficult time this morning getting him out the door - then I mentioned that his friends would be there and bam! He was up and out. He had a little bit of a melt down when we got there. He doesn't really do tantrums, but he has the civil disobedience/nonviolent resistance thing down pat. He just lays on the ground and goes limp. But eventually he got over it and ended up having a great time (as did I). I think the highlight for him was watching the elephants poop in front of us, although he was also quite fascinated by the gorillas, tortoises, and fish. It was our first time there, and it was pretty impressive. We didn't even get all the way through because it closed at 5 (we had to start a bit later because of weather). So we definitely want to go back and do it again.

Other than that, it's just been a whole lot of reading for me, so not much to report. I hope my Minnesota friends are managing to stay cool! I'm hoping it doesn't get too miserable tomorrow here, though I suppose I could use the practice before my trip. I'll try to update this as soon as I can when I get back. Till then, shalom!