Fall fun!

I should be doing a lot of other things right now. Progress reports are due tomorrow afternoon. There is a pile of shirts to be pressed (cheap clothes do come at a cost -- it's called ironing). Yet for the third night in a row, I am waiting for my little nocturnal creature to close his eyes and fall asleep in his swing. It's going at high speed. I'm writing to pass the time until he falls asleep. Peter is now looking at me with widely alert and attentive eyes. Crap. Go to sleep, little fella. Mom has grades to enter, a kitchen to clean up, comments to code... Ooh, his eyes are glazing over now and looking just a bit heavier. Now they're looking a lot heavier. SCORE! I will NOT stare at my 5 month-old and will him to fall asleep so as to accommodate my fully loaded agenda. I will not project my neurotic anxieties on to him. Yawn. Good sign. I'll keep on writing.

This past weekend, we went to Depiero Farms, which proved a bit more fun, in my opinion than Demarest Farm. The parking was a lot easier, for one, but the prices were no better. I snuck in some juice boxes for the boys, who can't drink cider because it isn't pasteurized (read: diarrhea). That, and the cost of said cider was $2 a pint. $10 per person for a hayride. Bratwursts for $5, etc., etc. I'm all for the "Rocktoberfest," but really? As it turns out, the free activities were really the only ones we could manage anyhow: the hay maze, those little "poke-your-head-in-for-a-picture" thingies, and roaming the pumpkin patch ($12 per pumpkin). We bought a dozen very greasy but delicious cider donuts, set up camp at the picnic tables and then ran once more through the hay maze. Half an hour at the most, but worth the trip.

His hand is doing that "curl around the hair I'm so tired" thing... More yawning...

Nicholas, these days, is absolutely into what we in the education world call cueing. He knows that one thing comes after the next. My aunt used to say that her German Shepherd started to sulk as soon as he saw a suitcase. Well, Nicholas sees me head for the door and goes to get his shoes. He screams "SHOES SHOES SHOES SHOES." It's cute. The first fifty times. On Monday, Nicholas and Owen paid a visit to Grandma and Grandpa A while I took Peter to the doctor with me. They could not get over how much Nicholas is talking, how he knows letters and numbers. I can't get over it either. In the car today, he said three new words: sunshine, pumpkin, and choo choo train. And that's just in one day. I can't believe he's going to be two soon. It went very fast...