Busy Busy Summer

It's been an eventful week. The heat wave finally broke, leaving us with an AeroBed, an air conditioner, and lots of photos of a scantily clad Tor.

All that mooing left him drained

Tor has gotten surprisingly effective at propelling himself around. I feel like it happened all at once. Now you can't leave him anywhere uncontained for more than a few minutes, or you'll come back to find him licking the hardwood floor or wedged under the changing table. A few snapshots of his proud progress follow. Note that powerful legwork in the first one.

Post-heat wave, the Pack-N-Play has remained in the living room. It's become crucial to pen in our whirling dervish while taking out laundry or cooking something. He's usually good for a few minutes either in that or the exersaucer.

We moved on to applesauce, with similar success in terms of mouthful retention.

Our great friends Aaron and Allison gave us a photo session with another friend who takes pictures professionally, and we had a blast doing that as a family. Check out a few of the shots here.

Thoughtful presents rolled in from both sets of grandparents. (NB: Thank-you notes for these and baptism gifts to follow once I get my act together!) We capture only a few here. Grandpa Chooch and Grandma Charmaine sent Tor his first puppet, slating him to follow in his father's magic-camp footsteps, as well as a "TOR" sign to add to our front porch hanging (right between "LARS AND ELISSA HANSEN" and "AND DENDRO TOO"--I'll post a picture as soon as we get it up there).

Now the Jehovah's Witnesses will come for you too

Oma and Opa got Tor a German book about counting to five, starring the claymationtastic Timmy the Sheep, and a Norwegian book naming different kinds of trucks.

Present-opening then devolved into Daddy-boarding (a formation derived from body-boarding rather than waterboarding), as most of our evening activities tend to do.

I started teaching my summer class, Analysis of the English Language, this week. It meets Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 2:30 to 5:30, so we hired a great babysitter named Erin to come Tuesdays and Thursdays (she's a dental hygiene student at the university). For the Wednesday class, a child development grad student watches Tor, and I watch her one-year-old daughter Victoria on Tuesday mornings. It's working out well so far, and I had a good first week of class, in case anyone was wondering.

Erin keeping Tor happy