Life at Home and Away

I've been splitting my time between NC and FL, working on my dissertation research, which has been difficult. Of the 6 weeks that Vivian has been in preschool, I've been home for 3 1/2 weeks. It's been pretty rough. I went down to FL for the first week of classes. I met several professors, including the professor whose class I'm using for my study. I got a lot done, so it was very productive. I was trying to make up for the 4 months of NO progress.

I'm currently in GA for the weekend, although I've been away for 9 days now and won't be home for another 6 days! :( Thankfully, Chris and Vivian are driving down to meet me for the weekend...so at least I can see my family (other than using Skype every night for storytime). Vivian currently says "mommy laptop." She sees me on Chris's laptop. Chris says she's doing really well adjusting to me not being there, which I'm grateful for...but I still have severe mommy guilt. I HATE FL..HATE IT, but I need to go down a few more times to collect more data.

When I'm home, we've started exploring our own backyard now that the weather is getting slightly cooler. Okay, so it's still been in the 90s, but that's better than it has been. We went to the Duke Gardens, which are absolutely beautiful, and to the Duke Chapel. We've enjoyed exploring various parks in the area. We also took a trip to the NC Zoo! Vivian had a great time looking at all of the animals. We paid another visit to Marbles, the children's museum, which was a total zoo with a lot of older kids running around -- so we didn't stay long. We also went to the NC Museum of History, which was pretty interesting. There was also an old classic car show that day, so we walked around the capitol area of downtown Raleigh. We also went to the Durham Museum of Life and Science, but didn't stay long because the event wasn't that great and it started to rain outside so we couldn't go see the animals. We took Vivian to the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) to see where our season tickets would be. We all really enjoyed walking around on stage and backstage.

One of Vivian's favourite activities is going to the RDU observation deck and playground. She likes to watch the planes take-off and land. She also (finally) likes playing in the sand!!

Vivian is really thriving at preschool, which we knew she would. She looks forward to going twice a week for a few hours each day. We went to Vivian's back-to-school night where we met with her teacher and talked about Vivian's progress.

We decided to sign her up for The Little Gym again this semester. She always says "have fun Little Gym" and "shake bells." She likes to tell me about her day! :)

Vivian is doing really well overall. Her vocabulary is pretty amazing, as she says over 200 words now and can tell you what the books titles are by looking at the cover. She loves reading Clifford books. We have almost the entire collection!

I'm hoping to take some pics of Vivian this weekend! We're going to the gluten-free vendor fair tomorrow (YEAH!!!!) and then to the aquarium on Sunday!