Mid-Summer Already

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How the heck did it get to be late July already?

It's been more than a month since my last post. The Bioinformatics certificate course I'm taking took over my life the past few weeks. At the end the homework, final project and studying for the final exam took every bit of my "free" time. But it paid off: the final was Saturday and I think I did very well. I'm very glad to be done with that. Now I'm free again until September when Fall semester starts. The entire course lasts three semesters.

Audrey has been taking her first swimming lessons. During the first session the instructor tried to let her float and every session after that Audrey would tell the instructor repeatedly, "Don't drop me!" Audrey also thought she was there to play, but the last couple of sessions she's started paying a little bit of attention. And last week Audrey actually swam about 15' (with water wings). She was very proud. Apparently kids can't generally learn to swim until they are four or so. But she's trying and it's a fun thing to do with her. Audrey is also in Music Camp for two hours every day this week.

Charlotte is moving closer to talking we think. Her vocalizations are sounding more and more like language. We remember this phase when Audrey was about to talk. One day it sounds like Russian, the next day Chinese, the next day German. Carol thinks today Charlotte said "tickle". We can't wait until she can tell us what she needs. For example, for the past few days she's had an intermittent fever and at times is obviously very uncomfortable but she can't tell us what would make her feel better. We think she might be getting over that bug now.

Carol has been very supportive while I was studying. She put both girls to bed every night (we usually alternate) and generally picked up all of my usual parenting duties. I'm very grateful.

Oh, we also ended up staying up too late the past two weeks because after studying we still had to watch the Tour de France every night on Tivo. At least we could fast forward. The Tour ends Sunday. It's been exciting to watch a wide open tour with no clearly dominant rider.