Getting chilly around here

The weather has set its pattern for the darker months - cold, damp-to-soggy, and all around bleakness. I actually like this type of weather in small doses. Perfect for knitting in front of the (gas) fire, hot chocolate excuses, and without all that blinding sunshine my house looks less dusty. But it is making the boys suffer from cabin fever already. J wants to be out there digging and running and jumping and tricycle riding - drawing letters just doesn't cut it for him. We try indoor dancing and how-many-can-you-run laps around the living room/kitchen/hall circle, but that gets old quicker, and unfortunately Mom can be really unreasonable about long distance couch bouncing. D doesn't mind as much, he's content to follow J around and copy him (shirt off? me too! hopping on one foot? me too! crying because he can't eat Halloween candy for breakfast? me too!) but that can be dangerous for him. If he gets too close or bumps some important J project, D is liable to be punched. We're working on that, but it would be a lot easier to work on it if the sun was shining!

D has started daycare for real this week, after visiting multiple times over the last couple weeks. Three days a week, same as J, and overall it is going as well as can be expected for such a big change in his days. He is very sad when being left, and cries when Roni shows up to pick him up, but phone calls during the day have assured us that he's playing and eating and napping with everyone else in a generally happy manner. Roni picks the two of them up earlier than when it was just J. We'd both like to have him home longer before starting daycare, but Roni has no other options if he is going to go to job fairs and interviews, and we really need Roni to have a job!

Belated Halloween pics for the grandmas:

Yes, the woods again.

I'm thinking that I need to change the name of this blog to "We camp, I buy fiber, nothing else happens." Really, we don't have anything else to report.

J and I went camping. Deception Pass this time, with my L.U. (loyal underling - though she's looking for a different job ((weep)) that might offer more benefits such as hours or money, but that is a lengthy aside for another day) and her son. We told everyone it was to give the boys time to bond, but since her son is 18 and J is 3, the chances of lifelong friendship developing are smallish. He was great for sharing the piggybacking though, so we like him.

It was a great place for J. Lovely sandy & rocky beach to dig in and a lake just steps from the sea shore in case he wanted to swim. Next time we'll rent lake boats. The adults were happy too - fairly private spot, the bathrooms not too far away, red & pink wine and some rum for the more difficult moments of wilderness life, such as the times when the L.U. drives clear back to civilization for a job interview that turns out to be scheduled for a different Tuesday.

J is reduced to bliss by marshmallows and fire-poking-with-stick. There was a little trauma the second night when he had first a nightmare and then a catastrophic night diaper failure an hour later, so Mom was a bit groggy by the end of the trip, not to mention sunburned and deeply in need of eyeliner, but I'm still counting the trip as a success. Roni got to a casino in his absence and got back out only $7 down so his time alone was also a happy one.

And I came back to a delivery of alpaca-silk-camel fiber combos, so all is right in the world.

After getting up this morning, J asked me what we were going to do today. I told him (with secret delight) that he was going to "school." There was a brief pause, then an ecstatic intake of breathe, and then he proceeded to tear around the house, getting ready as fast as he could shove his little body into superman underwear and his little feet into the wrong sandals. His love of daycare is a little amazing to me, given the turnover in adults there - we arrived this morning to find another letter in his file telling us that the director was gone. Again. This one lasted only a month or so. He's on his fourth teacher in the same classroom. And he hasn't been there a year yet! I know that corporate daycares tend to have a lot of turnover, but surely this is excessive, and should send up some red flags. But, he is so very happy there. He only cares about the kids anyway and they don't turn over the way the staff does. And the people who do stay are very nice to us, his vocabulary has grown in leaps and bounds, and he can tell his colors apart now so my worries about him being colorblind have been alleviated. So he gets to stay, even if no one else adult does, as long as he's happy and safe. That's really all I expect from a daycare anyway - they aren't required to get him into Harvard.