Yesterday Michelle had a quick visit to the OB/GYN. They did the standard exams and listened to the baby's heartbeat. All sounded healthy and strong. Michelle will have an ultrasound on September 24th.
This morning we all took Claire to Milford Elementary for her first day of school. Pictures will be available soon. The school only has grades 2 through 4. The class sizes are small, typically 20 pupils, but there are 10 2nd grade classes. Whoa! Within seconds of dropping Claire off and walking back to the van, Abigail groaned, “I miss Claire!” This is the same Abby that ordinarily shouts Claire's name in hostility about two dozen times a day. I guess Abby was going to miss having one less sibling to bother.
From talking to Claire this evening when I got home from work, it sounds like she had a nice first day. Once she gets comfortable with the school, we'll see if she's ready to take the school bus in the morning. It stops right out in front of our house. We didn't want to overload her on the first day. New year, new school, new teacher, new friends to make...
We're in the middle of watching A Beautiful Mind on DVD. So far, it's very good. We're looking forward to when Monsters, Inc. comes out early next month. That Cambridge Soundworks speaker setup may not be some $2000 setup, but it does a world better than the speakers built into the television.
Thanks, Dad! Packages arrived today containing the extra stuff we didn't want to carry on the airplane trip home. I'm still waiting for my Mac software to arrive from Amazon.com. (MacOS X 10.2 and Photoshop Elements 2)
If I create an email account on MV for Claire, would anyone be interested in writing with her? I'm interested in anything I can do to encourage her writing skills: email, a ClaireBear.com type weblog, etc.
Monday and Tuesday were the feasts of St. Monica and St. Augustine. I can't imagine what it must have been like for St. Monica during St. Augustine's early (far from saintly) years. She was a woman of devout faith who for years saw her son turn away from the beauty of the fullness of truth and live a life rife with sin and immorality. In the end her prayers for his conversion were fulfilled. It's my understanding that she only got to see him return to his faith shortly before her death.
When some people hear of us expecting our fifth child, they often bring up college tuition. It's not so much tuition payments I worry about. I would worry more about the kids losing their appreciation for their faith. If my folks had obsessed with making tuition payments for us, it would likely have been just me and Alyssa. I wouldn't have had the privilege of knowing Christopher and Suzanne.
I'm putting in two temporary links that I want to monitor for short spell. They are the “grownup” Livejournal webloggers who live in Milford and Nashua. If you throw out the age filter, the number of matches goes up significantly with the vast quantity of teen webloggers in the area. The links will likely not show you anything because the LJ search engine is limited to users, not the general public.