Fenoke Okie

Julia at Mercer Soccer Game

This post was supposed to be about our recent adventure in the Okefenokee (or Fenoke Okie as Grace calls it), but we failed to take any pictures on our trip. Yes, that's our current state...go on vacation with best friends, have great time with girls, take no pictures. Actually our friends did manage to take many pictures, and once we get copies of those we will be sure to add them to the website (Craig also shot a lot of video, so there will be gator footage as well).

I have also given up on reporting on our vacations to Maine and Minnesota. Maine was fantastic, but as each day passes it takes on a more dreamlike quality. Suffice it to say that Craig was lucky to get me back in Georgia after our time there. We went to Minnesota immediately following our return from Maine to attend the wedding of an old friend of mine, and Craig, Julia and I had a very relaxing time (Grace stayed home with Aunt Betsy). The only bad part of any of our travels was flying US Airways (trust me, DO NOT FLY THEM), but again that memory has also faded (thankfully, otherwise I would never get on an airplane again).

So where are we now? Home and busy. Craig is three weeks into his semester. He is teaching two sections of Anatomy and Physiology and handling research students in the department. If that weren't enough, he's the lead writer on a Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant and has been spending many a late night putting that together. In his spare time he attends neighborhood meetings (he's VP of our neighborhood association) and generally frets about the level of crime and poverty that surrounds us (and I'm the pessimistic one!).

Grace is also back at school with a new teacher whom she adores. We have opted for her to attend three days a week with the option to change that to five. So far, I actually enjoy having her home Tuesdays and Thursdays, though she probably ends up watching a little too much TV while I manage nursing Julia and keeping a nap schedule. I remember the righteousness in my voice when I announced that Grace would not watch any TV (this proclamation was made prior to her birth; since she was born during the 2004 summer Olympics she spent the first weeks of her life watching things like table tennis at 3am). Like most proclamations I have made about parenting, they have eventually come back to bite me in the ass. Now I try to assuage my guilt by limiting Grace's TV consumption to PBS. At least she doesn't see too many commercials...like that really makes a difference.

Julia is doing so well that I have to pinch myself at times. I'm head over heels in love with her. In the last two weeks she has developed a full belly laugh, which is really so darn cute. She's a pretty chubby infant, so when she laughs her little rolls vibrate like jello. This usually results in Craig and me laughing so hard that our rolls vibrate like jello. It's a good thing I'm so happy right now or I would be down right blue about the state of my abdominal muscles. My only solace is that Craig is sporting his own inner-tube. We're a perfect pair.