Catching up

Well, I've been pretty terrible at blogging lately, haven't I?  My apologies. 

Things have been pretty crazy here with school getting underway for all of us (except Tom of course).  Tristan started daycare during the second to last week of August.  It's been a transition for him, that's for sure.  He still doesn't like it when I drop him off and he makes sure I know it.  I think I've only had one successful day where I was able to leave without him crying.  But usually he calms down pretty quickly, often stopping by the time I get to the center's door.  And by the time I pick him up, he's his usual happy self.  He's only there three days a week, so it's a good balance.  Most of the teachers in there remember Ronan, though there are new faces there as well.  Next week he'll start transitioning to the toddler room.  Hard to believe he's almost 18 months!

Speaking of which, he'll have his 18 month check up on Monday.  I'll be interested to see what his doctor has to say about his speech, or his lack thereof.  Tristan doesn't really have any words yet.  He'll say "mama" occasionally (rarely) and he says something close to "wait!" which comes out whenever Ronan or I move out of the room he's in.  He's talks a lot in his own baby babble, but nothing I can really understand yet.  I'm not sure if I should be concerned or not.  Late speaking apparently runs in Tom's family and somewhat in mine, plus the general principle that second (and subsequent) children speak later.  In all honesty, I'm not that concerned about it at this point.  But there is a nagging part of me that worries that if I'm missing something, I'm also closing the window on the best time to get help.  So in other words, hooray for well-checks. 

Meanwhile, Ronan started pre-K at the same school as two of his cousins.  So far, he seems to like it, though it's hard to get much information out of him.  I figured it was going to work though when I walked into the classroom and saw that the theme was frogs.  For my toad-catcher, what could be better?  His teacher did tell me that Ronan doesn't talk much, but he did pipe up to share some information about how frogs eat spiders.  We'll see how he does as the year progresses.  One thing he's started doing though is asking me a lot of questions at bedtime.  Lately, he's been asking about the planets, like what their names are.  It's been hard for me to remember not to include Pluto in my recitation! Poor Pluto.  We'll have to go to the library soon and check out some books though I think. 

As for me, school's been keeping me very busy.  This is my first semester teaching an online course, which is a very new experience.  It's a version of the U.S. Modern history course I've taught before, but it needs to be changed quite a bit to work in the online format.  So I've been busy re-working my lectures, coming up with new projects, and finding ways to make sure students are doing the work.  As a result, I've also decided to change up my in-person version of the course.  I'm also teaching a class at the University of Akron on the history of the Middle East, which means another batch of new prep work.  It's been incredibly time-consuming, but I'm happy to be back in the classroom.  I just have to figure out how to work in dissertation research and writing, along with parenting, into the mix.  I'll let you know if I ever figure that out.  (Don't hold your breath!)

Meanwhile, we also did some renovation work in the house over the summer.  It all started when we had some water issues in our basement and decided to go all in.  I'm really happy with how things turned out, especially our kitchen.  It was crazy having everything torn up and out of sorts, but definitely worth it in the end. 

All in all, I'm glad school's back in session.  Here's hoping I can keep up with the work though!  And I'll try to pop in here once in a while too.