We made it to Oregon Monday after only stopping twice. Cameron has become quite an agreeable traveler. In related news, we have abandoned potty learning for the duration of the vacation -- the relatives have carpeting and he's just really not motivated yet. We'll resume after we get back.

Anyhow, Cameron had this to say to me last night:

( Biology )

Wow, that was fast. Next thing I know he'll be asking how babies are made.

Cameron and I tell each other stories. It's really awesome. They're always about him, of course, but must have a beginning, you know.

He will launch into a ( detailed narrative... )

Then there are the stories he asks me to tell him. Once, when he was sitting quietly, I asked him if he would like to hear a story. "Yeah!" he said, though I'm not sure he knew what that meant. So I began, "Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Cameron..." ( Read more... )

T. has had a sinus infection (we think) for several days and has felt like crud. Finally, today, it has let up a bit, though he is still sleeping a lot and is low on energy. I have been hoping Cameron and I would not catch anything, not only because that sucks on general principles but because my 20th H.S. reunion is this next weekend, and LLM is planning to make the trip and stay with us (read: Cameron and me. T. is being a pooper and does not want to make the trip), and she won't be able to do that if there is a whiff of illness.

So, sure enough, C. turned up with a fever today. 103.5. Yikes! But, as usual, he seemed to be feeling fine through most of it. At dinnertime tonight he started feeling lousy, so I gave him some tylenol and he perked right up. I'm hoping it will be like last time and be all cooked out within 24 hours.

And I am hoping it will also be like last time, when, miraculously, I didn't get it. So far so good (knock wood). Keep your fingers crossed.

Went to visit my folks for the latter half of spring break (Wednesday through Sunday). I was totally, completely offline for FOUR DAYS... It was really refreshing (no offense, of course!). In fact, I had no contact with anyone except family the whole time; didn't even go to Meeting.

( The highlights )

Yipes, it's late (quarter to two now); can't believe I'll be back in the saddle again in 7 hours. I wish we could have stayed to see the orange counters go down. Bye bye, childhood kitchen.

This has been quite the last couple weeks.

( Midterms, trip to Bay Area, math talk, balloons, elevators... )

By far the highlight of the meager amount of sight-seeing we did in DC was the Library of Congress. I wasn't particularly interested in going in -- a book is a book, right? -- but T. wanted to go in so I went along. I ended up joining a tour in progress and having to fight back tears as I gazed upon this beautiful building built with such a worship of erudition. Seeing especially the inscription on the wall:

True, This! --
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.

I just about lost it. I was so glad T. talked me into going in.

The tour guide was a kick in the pants. A little roly-poly octogenarian who was just so excited about everything -- especially quizzing the kids about what they were seeing: "Why do you suppose only men were allowed to watch the ancient Greek Olympics?" ("They were naked!") And one I didn't know: "The builders wanted to decorate the ceiling with the most precious metal of the day. What do you suppose that was?" (When somebody inevitably said gold, he pointed out that there is gold on the ceilings, and plenty of it -- "twenty-three-karat gold, the kind you can only get in India even to this day!" -- but that was not the most precious metal. It was aluminum! He pointed out where to see it.)

Can you believe we were in DC for the first time for both of us, and we didn't have a camera? (Ours broke over Thanksgiving.) Oh, well, I bought guidebooks with all the good pictures in them anyhow.

In Taco Bell on the way down from Oregon, Cameron noticed the big value-menu signs hanging from the ceiling: "Seventy-nine up there! EIGHTY-nine up there! NINETY-nine way over there!" Okay, I guess he knows all the two-digit numbers, I thought. Wow.

Now he's starting on the threes. The first time I showed him the number 100 and asked, "What number is this?" he paused for a bit and then said, "Ten o'clock." Ha! Good guess!

He counts by "tens": "Sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, HUNDRED AND ONE!" Makes me laugh. As noted above he knows that two zeros on the digital clock means "o'clock," so he can read most of those now, along with a few other times. Sample quote: "Eight o'clock. Eight-oh-one come on next. Eight-oh-two after that. Eight-oh-three after that..." He often reads the hour and the minute backwards. For example, if it's 11:17, he might say "Seventeen eleven."

Anyhow, we're back in Fresno. T.'s parents are driving their motorhome to Florida to visit T.'s brother, so they showed up yesterday at our house only a day after we made it back ourselves. They're staying an extra day so T. and I can get some work done today without sending C. to day care. They leave tomorrow after french toast (a Saturday tradition at our house).

Short post to say we made it to DC for the Big Math Meeting. There is a line for the computers so I will keep it short. Suffice it to say that our red-eye did not work out as planned, but that we got on another flight on stand-by and made it here only an hour or so after we had originally been scheduled to arrive -- and though with a lot less sleep.

I give my talk tomorrow. I have benefitted from watching many others here have technical difficulties with their Mac laptops, getting them to talk to the projectors here, so I think (knock wood) I will be all right, and won't have to rely on the transparencies I prepared, just in case.

About to hit the hay to get ready for the red-eye T. and I are taking tomorrow night to Washington, DC for the inauguration (ha! I wish!) the Big Math Conference.

We will be 5 full days sans Cameron. He's already getting clingy, and so am I. This time I made him a calendar showing all the days we will be gone. I instructed my MIL to give him a sticker to put on each day so he can track how long it will be before we come back. I taped it to the wall at his height yesterday; he's already noticed it. From time to time he goes over and points out the numbers ("4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9" (i.e. of January)), and I take that opportunity to explain to him again about our trip.

I don't know if he quite understands when we are leaving. Tonight he insisted on a very long hug before bed (after nursing for twenty minutes!), then came out of his room four times before falling asleep. Each time he saw me he was overjoyed, as if he'd thought we would be already gone. It's going to be hard walking out the door at 5:30pm tomorrow, when he is fully awake.

OTOH, I am looking forward to the trip itself. There will be lots of people I know there whom I haven't seen in a while. And it will be nice to have an adults-only "vacation."

We get back very late Friday night (the 9th), after C. goes to bed. So on his calendar I put that we'd be back on the 10th.

I've just been sort of hanging out, enjoying vacation, enjoying that we are not rush, rush, rushing up to Oregon to get there in time for Christmas this year, and suddenly today I realized that Santa is coming tomorrow night, and I don't have anything wrapped. In fact, I don't even have my shopping all done. Whoops!

Going for a hasty early-morning trip (Target opens at 8am) before visiting with colonelfairfax at 10. I hope they have what I want in stock!