November 29

Wow – what a loser I am. I cant believe its been a whole month since writing. Read Jordan’s journals for a discussion on the engine saga. Its actually fairly impressive and educational  - if you follow the Murphy’s law “If it can break, it will break.” Jordan did receive with honors a most wonderful education in diesel mechanics.  

I fled to NYC with the child during the engine episode. It was good to be there during the crisis with Debbie and Al’s son to offer support and distraction. Cole was born with an esophagus that didn’t make it to his stomach and needed to be operated on. The kid is 100% now and large and healthy. Medical science is truly a wonderful thing when you have children.  Jonah had a blast in NYC – we visited many playgrounds, Central Park (repeatedly for rock climbing!) and the Zoo. My vision of a trip to NYC was hanging out in lower Manhattan doing gallery crawls and drinking coffee – didn’t happen. I did go to the Met one day and it is always a pleasure to visit. I saw an amazing show on “Romantic Painters of Paris – 19^th century” – their drawings are amazing.  

I have been busy provisioning the boat – a job I do excellently particularly finding storage space for everything. The cook is very fussy and wants very particular ingredients and doesn’t want them to run out till American Samoa. The cook is delusional sometimes but his food is amazing so I smile and say “Sure Honey – no problem.”   

I have been a bad teacher lately and we have skipped loads of school. I keep telling myself that he is only 4 and already doing work a year ahead. We read books everyday together and discuss them. Whenever we do errands together we work on memorizing rhymes and tongue twisters. He loved the woodchuck one – “How much wood can a woodchuck chuck if ….”. My biggest concern is his perfectionism regarding writing and his frustration with controlling the pen. I am just going to be low key about it because I don’t want to exacerbate the situation. His letter recognition is excellent with about 70% of the alphabet. He is great at numbers. Spatial concepts (which they belabor tediously in my kindergarten program) are incredibly simple for him. He adores science books – someone gave me some books on the evolution of animals which are meant for a 12 year old and he adores them. I think I  might get some older books to keep him interested. I will have to go thru and adjust the curriculum for the winter to make both simpler in some areas and more challenging in others.