Okay

Okay, well back to something more upbeat, this morning I had an article accepted into a practitioner journal, which was pleasant. It's always nice to get a little piece of good news. It'll come out in May, and I have another one on the docket for April publication, and a book chapter is getting published in March, which is nice. So if I can just get that journal article that won't die accepted, then I'll be happy. (The editor keeps telling me she wants to put it in the July edition, which would be awesome). I submitted the revision. It wasn't too much -- at least the revisions get quicker and quicker each time.

Nora is sick today, so Jake is staying home with her. Colds and flus become less prevalent in the spring and summer, right? Right?

In other child news, it is really interesting and difficult to try to explain big ideas to little people. For instance:

Nora: Where's the earth?
Me: We're standing on the earth. The earth is what we all live on.
Nora: In Caillou the kids were standing on the earth and it was spinning around.
Me: Actually, the earth does spin. It's spinning right now. It's just so big that we can't feel it.
Nora: (Eyes me suspiciously)
Nora: But where's the earth? I don't see it.
Me: The earth is underneath us. You know when you're outside and you're standing on the ground? That's the earth. Everybody lives on the earth.
Nora: But I can't see it.
Me: Um....

We were driving in the car during that conversation so I couldn't make use of visual aids. I wonder if I showed her a picture of the earth and then told her that it's the same thing that we live on if that would make any sense at all.

Also, time is a difficult idea for them and the kids can't conceive of anything that happened before them; or rather, they can't conceive of a time when they weren't here. So if we tell them a story about when we were little, they'll ask "Where was I? Was I staying at home with Daddy?" I'll say, "This was before you were born" but they totally don't get that. Also, Milo thinks that when he grows up and gets big and can be a Daddy, then Daddy will become little.

A concept like marriage is hard to explain too. Milo saw a picture of me yesterday and said "You look married in that picture!"

The other day I got my hair cut. Milo was the only one in the family who noticed. He definitely has opinions about things like haircuts, eyeglasses, and clothes. In fact, yesterday morning he was being very pissy at breakfast because he didn't like my sweater, and he demanded that I take it off (which I did not thank you very much).

Nora keeps asking if there are any more numbers after the biggest number she knows (20, 30, etc.) She also likes to talk about time and age, even though she doesn't really know what they mean, like "twenty o'clock". However, I was pretty psyched last night when Nora correctly counted 6 pistachio nuts without any repeats, tapping each one as she counted off the number. Now she will arrange things in a line so that she can count them properly.

I have had a realization about why I need to use this blog to complain so much about tenure, but that's a topic for another day.