News from Pittsburgh

I got an upgrade for my work laptop today after nearly four years. The Macbook Pro was starting to get sluggish, but the biggest problem for me was the battery life. Maybe, just maybe, a new computer will mean more blog posts. It has so far!

I've been rowing again this summer with a group from work. It's all new people since the last time, three years ago. Tomorrow morning is the Heinz Challenge, a race for corporate rowing teams. We were preparing for the race at our last practice on Wednesday, and I found it quite challenging to row at the significantly faster pace. My carefully cultivated movements quickly degraded into wild flailing. But I'm hoping tomorrow will be better. I know what I need to do in my head, I'm just not sure my muscles will execute as planned.

Last Friday was the annual Google trip to Kennywood, the local amusement park. Except just after I came home Friday afternoon to pick up the family, I got a message reporting that the park would be closing in a half hour due to weather. We've had a lot of rain over the past week, which partly makes up for the utter lack earlier in the summer.

Rachel got a new bicycle this summer, with pedals and training wheels, to replace her strider bike from last summer that she has outgrown. She races her new one around the first floor of the house, in addition to riding it on the back deck or down at the park. A few days ago, she rode all the way down the hill on the sidewalk without my help, making liberal use of the brakes. I'm interested to try taking off the training wheels soon, but when we asked Rachel last weekend, she still wanted them on.

Rachel is enrolled in pre-school this summer, still at La Escuelita. This wasn't originally the plan. But about two weeks into summer vacation, Nicole called them and asked if they had any room, because Rachel already wanted to go back. She's still going three days a week, but from 9-1 instead of 1-5. Come September, she'll be switching to five days a week, still 9-1.

We're starting to work harder at teaching Rachel to read. She recognizes some whole words. Identifying street signs in the car ("the sign game") is one of her favorite activities.

Lydia is going through a vocabulary explosion. A couple months ago, I could enumerate her entire spoken vocabulary on one hand (using finger binary, of course). Now it seems like she's saying new words constantly. Today she was saying "hat" repeatedly. That was new, to me.

As reported on Google+, we converted Lydia's crib into a toddler bed last weekend. The results have been mixed so far. Some nights she would go right to sleep, others she'd get up repeatedly until I went in and waited with her until she succumbed. Early Wednesday morning, she wandered into our bedroom during a thunderstorm, and then wouldn't go back to sleep. Since then, the toddler bed's been turned around, using the wall as the fourth side. Progress? I don't know.

Lydia has also taken to feeding Gibson. She squats down by his automatic feeder, presses the advance button, and yells, "Kitty! Foo(d)!" She also demands access to his treats, so that she can feed them to him when the feeder reaches empty. Gibson has become much more affectionate toward her, but sadly he's also putting on weight. I'm learning to reduce the amount of food that goes into the feeder each day.

Coming soon, I'll recount our adventures in New York and Boston. Until then, that's the news.