Happenings

Well, I just finished a 1-hour midterm test in 15 minutes so I'm out a little early and actually have time to write a little bit for once.

School had been keeping us uber busy. I've had so much reading and studying that I barely have time for any leisure activities. Alyssa has had some major projects to work on so we've both just been juggling our course load, work load, home life, Odin, eating, and sleeping as best we can. Last night I was reading for 6 hours until 1am to prepare for this test and just as I started to lie down around 1:05 is when we accidentally woke Odin up and he wouldn't go back down until about 3 am. I don't know if I'll make it through this next class and then off to help Dad clean his house.

A few days ago I bought a bike trailer for Odin to ride in. Now we can take him riding with us and we can carry groceries home in it instead of walking them home. He really loves it; he threw the biggest fit when we took him out the first time, he wanted to keep riding.

Odin's been getting smarter every day. He understands basic commands, and he puts things together. When he asks for something and he sees what I do, he does it himself the next time. For example, every morning when he wakes up, I get him out and tell him to wait while I pull on some warm pants to go into the kitchen, so now when I get him out he goes and finds my pants and brings them to me so we can go out there. We also got him his own set of plastic plates and silverware so now he'll only eat if he has them. (A good habit to have learned if I do say so myself.) He even cleans himself off when he's done eating. He's adding new words to his vocabulary every day, and he makes interesting connections, like knowing where we are when he sees certain buildings pass by on the same bus route we take every day. His pronounciation has gotten a lot better as well, with less mumbling and more actual words.

My guitar instructor things I'm high level enough that he tought me how to play Money by Pink Floyd, Sunshine of your Love by Eric Clapton, and Johnny be Goode by Chuck Berry. Interesting stuff, and he challenged me to play Enter Sandman by Metallica at the next lesson.

Alyssa has been working feverently on her compositions for class, it's realling interesting to see what she comes up with. She works so hard and still finds time to be with Odin and me and an help me get my work done by watching him.

Anyway, it's almost time for class and I wanted to review some notes before it starts, so I gotta run. More later.

What's up....

It's been a while since I put anything in the blog, so I decided to just talk about everything that's been happening lately.

School has been going good for Alyssa and me. We have a good schedule that makes it easy for Odin to be watched, and the homework only piles up a little bit.

Odin went with Grandma Paula and Grandpa Larry to a pumpkin patch and picked out one to carve and bring home. He apparently had a lot of fun running around and all over hay stacks.

While they had him, we took the time to to something together and went shopping for a few things we wanted. We figured we ought to get Odin something so we went to Children's Place, our favorite clothing store. They had this huge sale so we got him a winter coat that has a removable sweater that zips to the inside so it's double layered. It also has a matching hat and some really nice gloves that clip to the sleeves so he wont lose them. It's the second time we've gone in that place for a really decent winter coat and found it on a huge sale.

We also got a cute little beta fish and named him Achilles. He hangs on our wall in a bowl that looks kinda like art. We have a few more like that and if this one lives longer than a week or so, we'll get a few more to put around the house for fun.

I haven't been taking too many pictures lately, so I decided that I should do that more often. I just have to dig up the camera and find a good way to upload them from a mac since I used to use a PC.

We're trying to find some time with our school schedule to make a trip to Portland and see some family. It'll probably have to be around Thanksgiving to take advantage of the holiday off at school so we don't miss anything.

Well, that's all for now!

Classes begin!

Alyssa and I started our classes. She had Analysis of Music, Midi for Musicians (which is about electronic composition), Physics of Sound and Music, Composition I. I have Greek and Roman Epics, Humanities, and Latin 101. For my 3 classes I have 14 books to read. Yikes! It's really fun though; we're both enjoying it immensely and our schedule is really nice. The only conflict is Monday and Wednesday from 10am to 11am and Ethan watches Odin then, and Fridays from noon to 2pm and Ann and Emily watch him then.

Odin has been learning lots of new words. He's good at telling you what he wants. He's also got habits, like pointing to the kitchen light for you to turn it on to tell you he wants food, or getting his shoes so you can put them on him, or finding the keys he hid when you ask for them (yes, he can do this!).

We finally got our money (half of it anyway) so we each got new shoes (much needed), and we're going out to get Odin's new crib soon and a training potty to go with the book he picked out about learning. Speaking of crib, he's been waking up early lately and we think it's because his pack-and-play is too small to sleep in because he likes to thrash around a lot. Also, the mattress isn't very comfortable. So we got him a toddler mattress and a crib that transforms into different beds as he grows amd we get to pick it up as soon as they call us to see how he likes it. We can't wait. The potty training didn't do so well because he didn't have a potty to train on. But when we get it, we'll get the training pants again and read him the book so he can learn how to do it.

It's nice to have all the outstanding bills payed and now we have some money for emergencies. We're all relaxing into our new schedule and workloads, and it's finally starting to calm down.

I'd write more but I have to read 100 pages of the Epic of Gilgamesh in the next half-hour so I'm prepared for class....