I know. I haven't been posting lately, at least nothing of import. I guess I've just fallen into that hazy, low-speed mode that characterizes my academic breaks. I always have grand plans for my free time, things like organizing the closets and reading for fun and baking with Charlotte and sorting Sam's outgrown clothes, but instead I somehow end up getting from sunup to sundown without doing much more than loading the dishwasher and playing a round of Candy Land, the world's most inane game, with Charlotte. Then somehow I'm tired and just want to while away the evenings watching something humorous and not too taxing in the internet. Today I managed to summon the energy to place two important phone calls, one of which was to make an eye doctor appointment. I'm about to confess something very shameful to you, something that is really embarrassing in that it tells you quite a bit about where "taking care of my own health" ranks on the scale of Important Things in my life: I have been wearing the same pair of contact lenses since before Sam was born. These are disposable lenses, meant to be worn about six weeks at max. My son, Sam, you might recall, celebrated his first birthday last week.

Now, granted, I don't wear them very often...only when I need to leave the house. Because I have glasses, but the prescription is old. Very old. As in "unsafe to operate my car, really, wearing these old things that make my vision only slightly less blurry" old. So I wear my glasses around the house, squinting to read the print on things like the microwave and book jackets that are more than a foot away, and I "save" my contacts (which, let's face it, are beyond saving at this point, they're so old) for "special" occasions like days I need to teach or go to school or grocery shop. And they are so old and scratchy that I am inevitably red-eyed and scratchy-eyed after I wear them.

So! The eye doctor! Long overdue. And I hope (fingers crossed!) that I can also find a pair of specs that I find moderately attractive to replace my current glasses, which are from...um, 2000? I think? And I hope that these glasses are really, really cheap, so that they will be affordable to me and I won't have to suffer from crippling guilt for spending money on myself, for something that most people, I think, would find to be essential. You know, seeing? It's important.

Well, let's stick with the rambling thing I have going and move on, pell-mell, with no transition, to my next point, which is: the children! Aren't they delightful? Yes, they are. But...can I say this without calling down wrath upon my head? I love being on break, but being home with my children all day is...rather boring. I try to be game about it, because I know it's what Jeff does when I'm in school all the time, but still...I have to admit that I told Charlotte that I needed some "mama magazine time" today when Sam was napping to preemptively strike against another request to play Candy Land or Chutes & Ladders or Memory*. It bought me twelve minutes of time to sit in a chair and read the same page of a six-month-old magazine over and over while Charlotte asked, at thirty-second intervals, if my magazine time was over yet. Totally worth it.

Sam is adding some new words to his verbal arsenal. He now "meows" when he sees the kitty on the cover of his Baby Animals book, and his meows sound exactly like his sister's do in this video, when she was about the same age. He started making monkey sounds today, a shrill "ee ee" that he emits with enthusiasm. He's started saying "uh-oh" within the past couple of days, and now deliberately drops food from his high chair just so he can coo "uh-aaaaaaaaooooooh" in response. He waves, he kisses, he combs his own and others' hair. He likes to hold a fork when he eats, and even attempts to stab at food with it on occasion. He likes to drink water out of a cup, but despises a sippy cup.

Charlotte is every bit of three-and-a-half. She spends every waking moment, it seems, talking and singing. Her entire life is a musical theater event. Inaniminate objects are personified and talked to and about. Clothing has personality. Her toys have feelings. She has feelings, an inner life to which her father and I are not privy. When we were at my parents' house over the holidays, she asked my mom to get down the photo my mom had up on her bulletin board of Charlotte and her preschool class. She spent a chunk of time studying it, quietly, carrying it around with her, remembering her friends she hadn't seen in a couple of weeks. I wondered what she was thinking, then realized that was something I'd be wondering for years to come.