Couldn't sleep.

Those orange foam earplugs come in really handy during allergy and cold season. Odysseus can snore, sometimes, and those things aren't uncomfortable to sleep in.

In any case, he woke me at ten 'til six this morning to go feed the pixie, and I found myself wide awake. No way could I get back to sleep. So here I am.

On the one hand, I'm kind of wistful--it's going to be a long day, because my mom is bringing one of my aunts to help me with getting caught up on housework that I fell behind on during the semester, and some I never got caught up on from being pregnant and exhausted and miserably sick. But I will admit that being the only one (besides the cat) up is...surprisingly peaceful.

I've got some last minute grading to look at--one of my students begged me to take enough late work to at least manage a D. She wrote 18 blog posts, at 300 words/post, all between 9:45 and 3:15. I'm a little stunned at that, given that she hasn't worked so hard all semester. She basically wrote the equivalent of four papers in five and a half hours. So, since I'm feeling generous, I'll give her the D.

The other thing this lets me do is work on writing. I've got an anthology of short stories about two-thirds of the way done, with one of the stories about half done and up in Word; a novel about the same; and two more novel ideas and two more short story anthologies in the works. I've got five and a half weeks free (well, free except for the bustle around Christmas), so I'm going to see if I can't get at least the short story anthology done. If I finish the novel, well--that's just gravy.

The pixie has actually been napping, for the past several days. Two hours at a stretch. Yeah, sometimes she'll wake up, but she's got a new friend that seems to be just magic at getting her to go back to sleep. Heck, "Dog-dog" seems to be able to get her to go to sleep, after a little bit of fussing that gets shorter every day. Seems like the pixie gets distracted from standing screaming and jumping at the rail by the toy, sits down to play with it, lays down to play with it, then blinks one time too many. I hate, hate, hate noisy toys, but that one seems to just be magic.

The imp has a new "toy," too. I think he's going to learn to read early--he's able to name all of the letters of the alphabet, in or out of order. Any case, he's obsessed with coming up to Odysseus's knees or my elbow while one of us is working on the computer, then he'll name the computer (Odysseus's computer's name seems to be "Green" for the light around the power button), then start pointing to keys on the keyboard and telling us the letters. (He also knows "delete" and can say that pretty clearly. Thank God he doesn't push the buttons he names.) So, since he really likes the alphabet, I took an old keyboard from a computer that died long ago, cut the wire off, and gave it to the imp to play with. It has quickly become a favorite.

I think we'll have to start teaching him to use a computer, soon. There's at least one cute game on Odysseus's desktop that's designed for kids his age. Before you know it, he'll be blogging, too.