my bragging post

let's start with me.
i discovered that i can patch wool sweaters with felt! it is so easy, and looks pretty good. i don't knit, so i've never been able to repair knitted clothing before. now, using the simple needle-felting technique, i've patched my favorite wool sweater, a friend's wool gloves and carl's "ol' greeny." it is not a perfect patch, but it looks better than a hole. it feels great to give these treasured items another life. here's a before and after:



next, there's carl.
carl gave a public talk at IU last week, as a visiting professor in the history and philosophy of science department. our neighbor babysat so i could go the the colloquium. carl was great. i was able to follow along through details of 6th century christian philosophy, and he made it interesting and compelling to listen to. he's really good at what he does. i can see why his students get so psyched about aristotle, or the history of skepticism. it was fun to see him up there being carl, talking like carl does, about things we don't normally talk about.

finally, cosmo.
besides being incredibly sweet-spirited almost all of the time, he has also learned his whole alphabet! he doesn't really sing the ABC song yet, but he has known all 26 letters since some time before xmas. the motivation came from him. he's been very interested in letters for a long time (maybe it was our fridge magnets, or sesame street?), and now he can identify and name each one consistently. his current favorite letter is W. he finds letters everywhere, and when we are reading, he'll point out all the letters in a word, and then say the word, but only if he already knows what it is, like YELLOW, or BLUE in a book about colors. still, i like to call it pre-reading. he's known his basic shapes and colors for a long time now. he really likes triangles, and will make the shape with his fingers. in my last post, i said that blue was cosmo's favorite color, but lately he seems really into gray (must be an architect's child). he can count to thirteen, though he often tries to skip over 5. he wants to count everything. i'm very impressed with all this, because it is not something i expected. when he showed an interest, of course we nurtured it, but it just seems to be something he is into. he also enjoys jigsaw puzzles, and anything involving searching and matching.

ok. i'll stop bragging now.