Hitting the road. . . .

. . .I'm paroling Thea from school at around 1 pm, if the packing is done and the car is loaded. After a quick stop at the post office (why does one of my half.com books always sell on days like today?), we're heading south, to Oma's.

This will be the second Valentine's Day Thea's been away from home, the first was when my mother had knee replacement surgery when Thea was two, Micah's first. Of course he's pretty oblivious to the whole idea of Valentine's Day. Thea made up her cards for her classmates, the upper graders and her teachers last night, and she actually seemed to be thoughtful in her choices of which card and lollipop for which person.

Micah had a great session with his speech therapist today. She had a card game of sorts focusing on the word 'where' - where does the pillow go? on the bed, where do we go shopping? at the store. I was amazed at how quickly he paired the cards up while saying something appropriate about it. It's really great to watch him when he's on his game and being cooperative.

I tried the GPS out on the way home. After the trip down to work when it was barking at me in Dutch or Danish, I tossed it at one of the medical assistants (who've all had Garmins or TomToms forever) and asked her to make the damn thing speak English or show me the mute button. Being bossed around in harsh Teutonic tones is not the way to start the day, at least not without a nice cup of coffee to soothe one's nerves.

Since the GPS has a mind of its own about how I should go home, and I have my own ideas, we had a chorus of "Recalculating. . ." interrupting NPR, followed by Micah hollering, "Too noisy" from the back seat."

Back to organizing and packing. Happy Valentine's Day, back on Monday night.