I’m here…I’m alive even.  I can’t believe it’s been almost two weeks since I posted.  This is “having a life” I suppose.  There’s not a whole lot new to report.  We have a robin who built a nest in the tree right outside our dining room window.  Unfortunately, she hasn’t been seen since the initial nest building, so I don’t know if she’s abandoned the nest or if it was a practice nest or maybe she’s looking for someone to make eggs with.  I don’t know much about birds, as you can see.

Ana has two grown up teeth coming in behind her baby teeth in her lower jaw.  This happened to me too when I was her age, so not totally unexpected.  I took her to the dentist on Tuesday to see what to do.  The baby teeth are loose, so he gave us two weeks to wiggle them out on their own.  Otherwise, they will have to be pulled.  Unfortunately, we have no dental insurance (we have medical).  The insurance my job offered is good, but expensive since they charge more if you work part time.  All of our prescriptions only cost $5 if I take them to a Medstar affiliated hospital and luckily there is one only 5 minutes down the road from us.  We thought we could manage without dental for a year.  Oops.

Needless to say, “have another apple, Ana,” is an oft heard suggestion around here lately.  The dentist will work with us on the payment and there is also a dental school in Baltimore where we might manage to get them pulled a little more cheaply.  I just hate to take Ana to a “new” place for a procedure that might prove somewhat traumatic.  She likes our dentist and the people that work in the office.  But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.  I might make Jim take her, though.

David has a new Transformer.  As I tried to “transform” the thing for him last week, I wondered if there was a book out there called “Transforming transformers for Dummies.”  If there isn’t, there should be!  I tried to follow the directions, but they might as well have been written in Japanese.  David didn’t take my explanation of “this is a BOY thing” as an excuse to give up, either.  I finally resorted to borrowing from George Lucas and just “used the force.”  I did transform that sucker.  And David can do it by himself now too.  Not really surprising since one of his latest pastimes is taking stuff apart to see how it works.  His Uncle (my brother) is a mechanical engineer and I seem to remember him doing the same kind of thing.  Although finding a screwdriver next to dismantled small appliance is somewhat frustrating (especially for Dad) it is good to have mechanically minded people in the family.

To my Orthodox friends…three more weeks to Pascha.  Yay!

Have a great day!