On Saturday, Jill and the kids went to the apple farm while I stayed at home and studied. The got some delicious apples, and some pumpkins, and some other things - particularly apple cider donuts. May got to eat an apple cider donut for breakfast yesterday. I talked with her yesterday morning about it.

"What did you have for breakfast today, May?"

"Oatmeal squares," she said. She likes this kind of cereal.

I said, "Did you have anything else?"

Her eyes light up, "Apple-Cider-Donut!"

"And how was that?" I asked.

"It was awesome!" she replied with absolutely no self consciousness.

Today at dinner, Benjamin was pretty wild and pretty hungry. When he saw me cooking the chicken, he would point at the pan and scream. Usually we figure out what he wants and give it to him, but he had to wait. Jill was able to get him to watch a little bit of Elmo, but Ben is not yet "good" at watching TV. In other words, TV doesn't grab hold of his mind and crush his desire to do things, as it does with so many of the rest of us. Watching TV with Ben is highly interactive and to keep him interested you have to give a constant play by play of what Elmo is doing in the show.

We sat down for dinner and Ben immediately grabbed all the chicken on his plate, crammed it in his mouth, and swallowed. Then he began to bang his plate on the table until more meat was put on his plate and he could cram it down his gullet. He also ate a few noodles.

Earlier today, Ben and Jill walked by the neighbor's house and Ben said (or so I am told) the neighbor girl's name clear as a bell, "Parsley." (That's not her real name, but I'm trying to be more sensitive about protecting other people's identity in my blog.)

Dr. Buesher, the professor who runs our bacteriology lab, had a bad day in the lab today. A lot of people kept screwing up the simple diagnostic tests we had to run to determine the various strains of bacteria we were assigned. He kept swearing up and down that we all had the same samples, then he would catch people doing the tests wrong and explain, patiently and professionally, how to do the tests correctly. We got out of the lab on time, but just barely. I think Dr. Buescher likes to see us all get out of lab early.

I have an exam on Friday.