I have been even more lousy than ever at taking my camera places, taking pictures, and downloading them. So still no pics. Add in that yes, my Mac was in the shop again this week, and I'm just plain behind.

So the brief recap:

My baby turns 4 tomorrow. Seems like just yesterday that he was the wet baby in the tub in my living room, getting put into the hanging bag scale and filling up the little bag. I still need to go out and buy his zoo pass so he will have another wrapped gift. It's not a great zoo day, either in terms of time or weather, so I'm not sure if we'll actually visit the animals or not. It depends on whether we get schoolwork done early.

My doctor's office wrote the right code, but not what the lab was expecting for my test for celiac disease. Long story short--they didn't perform the test, even though they took my blood, and they didn't bother to tell me it didn't happen. So...it meant that while I've been gluten free for five weeks now, I had to repeat the test this morning, and I ate some gluten containing cookies so I'd be sure to have something for my immune system to react to. I only ended up with a slight headache from the challenge, but still...it's really irresponsible for a professional office to take blood, then not make sure the test happens, especially when it's for a chronic condition that might affect the rest of my life and especially when the test is dependent upon one consuming the offending entity. I was pretty livid. I'm not expecting the test to come back positive, but I do still intend to not eat gluten for the forseeable future regardless.

We made some video game changes. The plan is to revert to only playing on Saturdays, which was our former plan. And to have Kerry change his gaming habits so that he is not playing games rated M while young children are present. Rutledge needs to have the cache cleared on the computer so that he only gets to certain websites and not ones that involve snowmen shooting each other with machine guns and bleeding. Not that he's really exactly learning letters from playing Word World or Martha Speaks games on pbskids, but his limited time is going to be spent on slightly more wholesome entertainment than what he had been doing with some of his time.

Yesterday our co-op had some special guests. The Dunstons, who are in their 80s, came to share their experiences during World War II. Mr. Dunston served in the Army after being drafted during his second year of college at the University of Pittsburg. Mrs. Dunston was still in high school and living at home in rural Mississippi. Mr. Dunston's War experience seemed very quick--drafted, quickly sent to a few weeks of training, then a swift boat trip to Italy (?), and then to the front to assist at the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes forest. He told our group about staying in farm houses and barns, many of them abandoned, while moving from place to place helping to load cannons. When the battle was over, he was sent back to the States and then went on to serve in the Army for about two more years. It was fascinating to find out more about what was in his backpack, how he ended up in the Army instead of another branch of the military (he wore glasses, so he was not accepted by the Navy or Air Force or Coast Guard), what he ate while he was in France and Germany, what he did while on furlough (leaving a day early, for example, and thinking no one would miss him!), about his girlfriends during the war and how one of them broke up with him as soon as he returned from Europe. Mrs. Dunston answered our many questions about rationing (she wasn't terribly affected, especially when it came to food, since she lived on a farm that raised chickens for sale, produce for sale, and cattle), interactions with men in the military at canteens and dances, and whether she knew the blow by blow of what was going on in Europe and in the Pacific. It's sad that we have lost and are continuing to rapidly lose so many WWII veterans, so we feel fortunate to have had an opportunity to spend time chatting with people who could give us their firsthand experiences. Once again, I regret not asking my Mom and my grandparents more about what life was like for them. I wonder if their life just seemed "normal" because it was all they knew, but there's just so much that I would ask them given a chance.

We've been continuing the WWII theme at home in our own reading. We just finished _Hitler's Canary_, and excellent book about the Danish resistance during the Nazi occupation and about taking Danish Jews to freedom in Sweden. And on a not quite related topic, but within the same time period, we watched a show on PBS about the polio vaccine and the largest epidemic in 1952. Interestingly, the worst hit area in the country was Wytheville, Virginia, which is very close to where my Dad now lives and is just down the road from where I went to college and where we lived for many years, and this documentary contained a lot of footage from that town. My mother had polio in 1953, so she was just about a day late and definitely a dollar short, as the Salk vaccine was widely distributed just a bit after that. I'm thinking that I should perhaps look up some of her friends and ask them for some of the information that I wish I could get from my mother. Maybe they know if she was in an iron lung, what her physical therapy was like, how it affected her parents, whether they feared polio. And perhaps they'd be willing to share their war memories as well. Most of them would have been in their later elementary years or early teens, and they would have lived in Norfolk, a big Navy town.

We've had a big turn in our Latin endeavours lately, and finally things seem to be coming together. We are doing a bit of review each day and it has definitely paid off. Now I'm sure that we're going to continue with Latin II next year.

Frances returned yesterday from Annie and Tim's house. Friday night she went to see a hobo band and fell asleep right on the table because it was late at night. Saturday she went shopping for a new dress and jacket to wear to see Beauty and the Beast at E.C. Glass High School that evening. Sunday she went to watch Tim in a bike race. She came home Monday, just in time for ballet and flamenco class. She is really doing well in dance now, and the extra time and classes are, I hope, going to be a big help for her. My Spanish is also coming along. I had a private lesson this past week because the other person who is learning with the teacher was not there. My assignment, in addition to writing another paragraph about a crazy little series of pictures where two teenagers, Paco and Paula, find a big stack of money in the street and go shopping at the tienda de ropa, is to watch the Spanish Channel so that I can practice trying to hear some words that I understand. I'm getting really proficient at reading, but I can still barely understand a darn thing, and I'm working hard not to butcher pronunciation myself when I speak or read aloud. I have a zillion grammatical questions, which probably drive the teacher crazy. She probably doesn't encounter too many people who are eager to plumb the depths of the rules about participles and infinitives and so forth. I'm a total Latin nerd!

Today was Frances's first piano lesson. I gather that it went well. I made a big mistake, though. Poor Walter got left home alone, and I knew it was happening, but I guess he didn't. I was only gone 10 minutes, but in that time, he managed to get himself into a panic, lock himself out of the house, and sob in my neighbor's yard. Ugh! The boys had asked if they could stay home while I dropped off Frances (the piano teacher is in the neighborhood and about 3 minutes away by car). I said yes. Then I turned around and Ollie was back in the car. He thought Walter had come out. He hadn't. I decided to go ahead and just go to the lesson and then come back to Walter, thinking that he might realize Ollie was gone, but he wouldn't care. Boy was I wrong! And that was the wrong thing to do. He cared a lot, and he thought we had abandoned him. Then he went outside, pulled the door shut, it locked, and he couldn't get back in. It took a long time to console him. I felt awful! Frances practiced not just once, but twice today. If only it could always be this good!

Friday Ollie has a dive meet, just for fun. He hasn't had a competitive situation since the summer, so this should be good experience for him. We're all looking forward to swim team season, which will be here before we know it.