Not many pictures tonight after a busy week and weekend. Last week I took one of my MBA courses--yes a whole course (3 credit hours!) in one week. It was 12 weeks jammed into one and we made it work by going from 8:30 to 4 every day. Efficient, but exhausting. It was an interesting topic though, conflict management, and the professors were excellent so in the end it was all worth it.

Gram came Monday and Tuesday to hang out with Edward so he wouldn't have to go to daycare all day all week. Grandma and Grandpa Kenyon came Wednesday afternoon through Friday. All seemed to have a great time, especially Edward! He learned a few new tricks--like how to place the animals on his train toy so that the toy announces what animal it is "I'm a monkey!" "I'm a panda!" He thinks this is hilarious. Gram also claims that he knows how to do the hand game that goes with the Itsy-Bitsy Spider song, but there has been limited demonstration of this. Occasionally we see "down came the rain" and "washed the spider out." Further bulletins as events warrant.

But most amusingly, he learned to make a sign for "cold." He has been obsessed with things being "Haaa," translation: HOT. No surprise as we've had some hot days in the last few weeks so he's felt hot slides and the hot car. But he hasn't really mastered the concept because he is hesitant about many things that are not actually hot. So I've been trying to say, "No, it's not hot. It's warm" or "It's cold." Cold he also gets because he can feel the cold air through the AC vents in the house. So he started making the famous Geraghty "cold face," which I thought my mom must have shown him, but she says she didn't. The first picture here is an attempt to capture the face, but it doesn't really do it justice. He tenses up his whole face with his mouth in a big wide clenched-teeth grin and then clenches his hands and shakes them in front of him as if shivering. It's hilarious. In the picture it looks like a smile, but when he's really going to town it's quite strained.

On Thursday afternoon, John left for his annual Regional Business Publications conference, this year in Denver (big improvement over the last two locations, Detroit and Little Rock.) That left me as a single parent for the weekend. Saturday on the way to the library for story time we stopped by the second hand store to see if we could find a push bike for Ed. He's been using his wagon with the bin upturned and we thought maybe he should have the real thing. We found this one, which he's still a bit uncertain about, but he does like going backwards. (Appropriate, given that his cousin Sean thinks that's his name. You know--Edward, Backward, kinda hard to tell the difference!)

We were expecting John to be home by the time Ed got up from his nap this afternoon, but he and his co-workers ended up getting bumped from their noon flight to one at 8:30 p.m. Ugh! He was not too happy, and I discovered that I'd need a second wind to get through the extra time. I'd paced myself to be relieved by 3 p.m. today and instead had to keep going until Edward went to bed at 7.

Hence, my current exhaustion. So I'll sign off and go commune with the remote control. Nothing like a little mindless entertainment...