Where to Begin?

Part 1: Life and such
So, we both began our first week of class this week. Andrew is teaching his new Planetary Science class and has a nice handfull of students. I'm teaching 101, which is our version of "Rocks for Jocks" to 160+ mostly freshman non-majors. I spent the week answering emails concerning the following [note, my desired responses are in parentheses...but I didn't actually respond that way even though I REALLY wanted too]
1. Do I really have to go on the field trip? [Yes, that's why it says "mandatory".]
2. Do I have to buy the textbook? [I couldn't care less if you do or not.]
3. Why don't you post the lectures online? [Because I'm not an idiot, and I know you won't come to class if I do. Yes, shockingly, you actually have to take you own notes.].

Sigh. Someday I'll get to teach a class I actually want to teach.

This of course has kept us all very busy, day and night. Riley is now at "school" 3x a week, which seems to be going pretty well. The other 2 days, Andrew and I will each take one day as our "Riley day", and get to spend the whole day with the little man. I think we will all benefit from that in the end. We have a pretty well organized morning and evening routine down, which helps us all get out the door on time, and some of us get enough sleep [you can guess who].

Also, my kid brother and his girlfriend have moved to Taiwan for a year! Check out their adventures in their blog ["Dane and Stacey", link at right].

Oh, and I got my hair chopped off. It was taking too much time to deal with. I think they call this the "Mommy cut".



2. New Fixins!
We had our backyard professionally landscaped last week. This included rebuilding our patio, and putting in some beds. We finally just decided that if we left it up to us, it would never get done, and we would like to enjoy our outdoor space more. We also had them put in some shrubs and a tree, but we will put in the perennials, etc ourselves. This will give us some constructive/creative outlet, at a time and place of our choosing! We are already enjoying the space very much, and are trying to plan for a couple of BBQs this fall [although there are precious few available weekends!]. We spent some time the last couple of weekends buying and putting in some things in the beds around our patio. This has been fun, but a lot of work; the soil is poor and needs improving before anything can go in.

out with the old [Rew and his Dad tore out our old patio]...

....in with...

the new!!

3. Riley!
Is mobile! He started shuffling along on his knees on Thurs, and by this morning he was practically racing. I've seen it before, but I will always be amazed at how quickly little ones aquire new skills. We spent the day today planning, purchasing, and executing babyproofing. Long way to go, but I think we at least have the living room safe for him to wander about. This of course marks the end of our happy days of freedom. Woe to us, but Riley is having a blast!

We're also beginning to plan his birthday celebrations. Can't believe he's almost been with us for a whole year. I can't really remember what life was like before this [I think there was probably more sleep involved], and I wouldn't have it any other way [although Andrew, who is currently rocking the little monkey back to sleep, may disagree].

monkey on the move!!! [note grass clinging to his chin]

Peaceful Morning Playtime

Some quiet moments this morning while going about our day. Riley was having a good time dissecting the canvas bag full of toys from our trip this weekend that had yet to be unpacked [he was helping!]. The peacefulness belies our impending fate as parents of a mobile infant. Riley's getting up on all fours now so we don't have long. The little guy turned 10months today- unbelievable.

Katsup

Well, our summer is quickly drawing to a close. Andrew and I are frantically trying to get ready for our classes this fall. Riley has finally turned a developmental corner and is working on becoming mobile. We returned from Yellowstone last week, but things have been a bit busy. We were only there for 4 days. Rew and Riley had a blast together, exploring the park and visiting a wolf and bear adventure center. I missed out on all the fun, spending my days in the field.


We did a lot of waiting in parking lots for the rest of the team to show up in the mornings. Somehow, even though we had an infant with us and were traveling in from outside the park, we still always beat them there by at least an hour. Anywho, here're my boys early one morning near one of my field sites.

Rew and Riley set off on their own adventures during the day, as we deemed the wilds of Yellowstone to be somewhat inappropriate for an infant [given the abundance of predators and hot liquid ouch]. Meadows are a good place for tactile discovery!

Passing strangers took this pic of the guys out on a little walk around the Old Faithful area. They took several short hikes together, and Riley seemed thrilled with the whole situation.

In fact, he found it so stimulating that it was nap-worthy!

This one's from home- he suddenly decided that tummytime was not as evil as he previously suspected while we were on our trip. He started rolling and scooting all of a sudden one day. We're hastily baby-proofing our house here...

Our Chicago Weekend

Ok, so I'm a weekend behind. LAST weekend [not the one we're now recovering from], we had a Chicago adventure weekend. We went to the Brookfield Zoo on Saturday and the Cards vs. Cubs game on Sunday [courtesy of my bro]. It was nice to be home! Home weekends have been precious and few this summer. ANYwho, we enjoyed both adventures very much. The Brookfield Zoo is pretty nice, and it was a warm summer day. I mention that part, because warm has not been in our meteorological vocabulary of late. It got down to 54 last night! The weather for the ballgame was fabulous, and we enjoyed our ballpark hotdogs ;)

I thought this shot was funny.

As with our last trip, Riley enjoyed watching colorful birds flit about. He was much more animated about it on this occasion though, as he is now 3 months older!

Should've cropped this pic, but my favorite animal of the way was the wombat in the Australia house! They're very silly creatures.

My boys, with camels.

Out front of Wrigley Field. Our Cards lost [again, see post from Aug 11, 2008]. But we had a great time. This was Riley's first baseball game! You can't tell but he's wearing his Pujols Tshirt.

Moooommmm...I want a chipwich!

The experience was apparently exhausting.

Check Out My Garden!

You might remember back on a very early morning in early June [see 09June09 entry...can't figure out how to link], Rew cut a nice bed in our yard by the garage for use as a vegetable garden. I had started little pots of various squashes and beans [see above], and planted them there along with some tomato varieties and my poor strawberries [trabidies!] from last year. Then we went away to Yosemite, leaving them as little sproutlings in a big patch of dirt. When we returned, our garden looked like this.....!!!!!!!!

Those are my squash and cucumbers threatening to take over the fence. Clearly I needed more room for them- live and learn. Everything is even bigger now of course. This week, we had our first harvest. We enjoyed the fruits of out labor immensely!

Little or Big?

So during our trip to Yose-mite, we put the LM down next to this Redwood. K grabbed this great pic. I think it's fun to think about scale- we have this 9month old who is coming close to tripling his birth weight, and doubling his birth length. Next to this tree [which, mind you is probably an infant itself], this all seems so insignificant. Just think of the biomass being created in each case!

Summer Travel Take 2.1

So I've been meaning to update with a post about our vacation to California, but I seem to be short on time. Riley started "school" last week, and we're getting revved up for our next trip[s]. SO here're a few pix to tease you - I'll post more later!

Here we are geared up for one of our "hikes" in Yosemite. Riley thought the umbrella was funny [and I bet everyone else on the trail did too!].

Turns out, rocks ARE interesting!

On a walk in a Redwood grove.

weeeeee!

Back in SF, some interspecies communication.

In the city for dinner, Kristin snapped this family shot of us.