Home Sweet Home

Last night was a better night for Oliver. His first stretch was 6.5 hours long - his longest ever! He was up from 4:15-5:30am. Unfortunately for me Paul decided to get up at 5:30; his shaving, showering, etc. in the master bathroom kept me up. In hindsight I should have gone back downstairs and slept on a couch. I got back to sleep and then a few minutes later Ian came in and woke me up at 6:30am. I've been up since 4:15am, but at least I got 6 hours of sleep. He nursed so long during that one feeding that I didn't need to give him a bottle during the night. Today we stayed home ALL day, which felt great. It enabled me to take Oliver's 3 month pics, I stayed in my pjs all day, Oliver was able to take 2 naps in his crib, and I was able to read many books to the kids and spend a lot of time working with Nadia on the beginning sounds of words. She's getting very good at identifying the letter that words start with. A couple of days ago we were working on word families, and she actually read her first word (by sounding it out rather than by sight). It was "gap." Good job, Nadia!

Paul has been coming home each night again. The downside is that means the news was on tv this evening (I'd really prefer the ignorance is bliss mode at the moment). I was surprised that he thought he had time to watch it. He's been working on finalizing his journal article so he can submit that. He has so many things to juggle. I assume the dissertation will rise to top priority again in the very near future. He has about one month until he needs to submit the final draft to his 4 committee members, and his advisor wants to see a complete rough draft long before then. He did submit one more application today (#3). His perfectionism means he spends HOURS on each cover letter. I'm hoping he'll submit three more ASAP. There are a total of 7 more letters to be written. Even with him deciding not to apply to Lehigh, Villanova, Lafayette, and Binghamton, there are still a total of 10 places he has applied or is planning to apply. Three start in January (one tenure track and two adjuncts), and the other seven are tenure track positions that start next fall. We shall see what the Lord has in store!