Birthday boys and other matters

On Jan. 14, the two men in my life reached important milestones, age-wise.  JB turned the corner toward old age with grace at 40, and wee Ben rolled over the hill of infancy at 3 months.  He celebrated by rolling over from back to front this week (Benjamin, not JB; ).  For the family who like to keep tabs on these things, he is also regularly grabbing at things and holding them in his hands.  Mom, remember the outfit you brought for him when he was 4 weeks that we looked at and said he would not be big enough for before it was too warm?  Well, here he is at 12 weeks and it fits perfectly.  

I haven't been posting very much these past few weeks because I've started teaching again and my attention is more divided than it was.  I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed going back to teaching.  I can tell you that I've been surprised by how much I enjoy it.  Teaching had become such a burden when I was trying to write my dissertation a few years ago that I thought I would never want to go back to it.  But as I got out of the car and started walking to class on the first day, I thought--perhaps for the first time ever--that I was really looking forward to it.  

And it has been great.  I've enjoyed interacting with students, revising lesson plans and essay assignments, and taking time to think about my class when I'm nursing later in the day.  When I was doing heavy intellectual work all day ever day in grad school, the extra intellectual work of teaching was just overwhelming, but now it's a nice change of pace from the decidedly non-intellectual (which is not to say it is not hard!) work of caring for wee Ben.