Since the beginning of the semester, Jodi has had class on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and on Sunday all day. This means that I get Charlotte and Maryann all to myself on the two weekdays from the end of work until bedtime, and on Sunday from wake-up to about 5PM. It's been a challenge re-learning their habits, schedules, and needs, and taking care of them all by myself, but the process has its rewards. I've been getting to cook on Sundays, learning how far along the kids are in their development, and building Charlotte's fluency in English.

Today, for example, Jodi fed Maryann a bottle when she left at 8am or so, and put her back to bed. I slept in until about 9am when Charlotte started calling from the girls' bedroom ("'icah, 'icah!") to let me know that Maryann was awake. I threw on some clothes, changed a couple of diapers, and made breakfast for me and Charlotte consisting of a few steamed buns, apricot jelly and a couple mugs of milk. Maryann is now beginning to explore solid foods, so we had some fun feeding her pieces of steamed rice bun. Bundling up the girls, we hopped downstairs and across the street to the new baby supply store and bought a refill of baby formula for Maryann. Then back home we spent some time playing in the girls' bedroom, sitting on the bay window sill and watching the construction going on outside on the light rail line.

By 11:30 Maryann was getting restless so I fed her a bottle and put her to bed. Charlotte played music and drew on scratch paper, and I cleared out the RSS reader until about 12:30, when it was time to fix lunch. Charlotte pulled a stool into the kitchen and by 1:30 we were chowing down on simple spaghetti and carrot-raisin salad. Changed a poopy diaper and did the dishes while listening to techno on the laptop, and then Maryann woke up and needed a diaper change as well. After a little playtime in the bedroom, I took advantage of Maryann's good mood to jump in shower, but she started bawling before I even had my clothes off. No problem, she needs to learn to monitor her own temper, so I steeled myself to her cries and proceeded with the bath. Now clean and dressed, I fixed Maryann a bottle and sat down to watch cartoons on 哈哈少儿 with Charlotte for a while.

We played around with the 喜羊羊 balloons we bought at Metro on Thursday, and then I dressed up Charlotte and Maryann in coats and shoes and we took off on the dot at 5pm. A taxi to Zhangjiang subway station and a short hop on Line 2 got an awake me and two sleeping girls to People's Square by 5:50 or so, where we met Jodi for dinner at 老克勒 (thanks for the reminder, John). Charlotte was in a grumpy mood after a rough nap on my shoulder, so dinner took a lot longer than it should have. But we were back home by 9am, and a quick girls-to-bed process means that Jodi's reading threads on Liba and I'm checking e-mail, thinking about plans for tomorrow, and writing this post while enjoying the electric blanket in bed.

Signing off.