The two week sprint

What a whirlwind. The Wee One survived her weekend with my parents (although my parents looked more tired than she did by Sunday) with only a minor cold and a less minor full throttle vomiting in the back of my parent's car (something she has yet to do in our car). I guess leather seats clean up alright after all.

I think the biggest thing that going away makes you appreciate is how fast kids change. I saw the Wee One briefly on Wednesday morning, but otherwise had did not see her between Tuesday morning and Sunday evening. Even during that short amount of time she has added a number of words to her burgeoning vocab (including phrases like "more juice" and "more cookies", which are a direct result of a weekend at grandma's) and is putting words together much better. We are realizing that we have to be more and more careful about what we say around her, as little ears hear all. She's even putting concepts together, like when I grabbed a beer after work last week and she immediately pointed and said "Daddy's milk".

As much as we enjoyed our weekend away and some time hanging out in Big City, one incident on Sunday morning reminded us why we are happy living where we do. We were walking on the sidewalk and approached a cab where two parents and two kids were piling out. One of the kids was crying in rather dramatic fashion and his mother was trying to sooth him. They were dressed for church and getting out of the car in front of a small yard on the church grounds where kids were running around. Rather than pointing out the playing kids to her son, the mother said to him "Look honey. Grass!"

Now back to reality, meetings and deadlines. Oh my! I have two weeks before I travel again and a mountain of things to finish between now and then and one visiting speaker I will be entertaining for two days.