nesting and excavating

I'm realizing that since I'm no longer tutoring French to the two little girls (I passed them on to another tutor when I quit my teaching job in Fort Collins, not being willing to spend two hours on the road twice a week at dinnertime for a 1.5 hour French lesson), and since my nephew is too little to really make "lesson plans" and linguistic games for our interactions that I can then blog about, and the tutoring I do in remedial reading (English) doesn't often lend itself to being described on this blog, I have a whole lot less to say lately!

And I haven't been doing much research that I can report back about (or even contacting people to ask them to let me profile them here) because the "nesting" instinct you hear about in pregnant women is manifesting itself now! When I'm not working or taking care of things around the house or cooking or spending time with my hubby (or with friends), here's what you might find me doing: reading about pregnancy, labor, and child development; making inroads into the massive "to-do" pile that's been accumulating for years; excavating my home office (which involves finding a home for other massive piles of paper that have accumulated over the years, including nine years' worth of teaching materials, handouts from conferences, professional journals and newsletters, magazine and newspaper clippings, photos, cards and letters, etc.); catching up on old issues of magazines that I never got around to reading when they were delivered, in hopes of getting them out of those ubiquitous piles and out of the house; sending letters and emails to friends that I want to remain in contact with beyond just the annual Christmas card exchange; working on my French to keep from getting rusty so that I can be as accurate and communicative as possible with Croissant; napping, because I feel tired about half of the time when I'm awake; and, well, you get the picture. I just haven't been reading about second language acquisition and bilingualism in children, even though I have so much left to learn!

I'm neglecting the blog, even though I wanted to be able to post regularly three times a week once I stopped teaching! But my new job at the library is going swimmingly and I'm happy, happier than I was teaching, so it's all good. My seven-year-old reading tutee even ran up to me in the grocery store a few days ago, crying "Sarah! I read a chapter book! I read a chapter book all by myself!" and hugged me.

I promise that I'll blog when I have something to say or something I want to share. In the meantime, I'd like to invite my newer readers to peruse the archives and the links in the right-hand margin. Wish me luck in my archaeological adventure in my office, and let me know if there's anything you'd like to hear about on this blog in the meantime.