back in the homeland

I've brought Anna to visit my family in New England. My brother and his wife and kids and dogs came last night, and stayed about 20 hours, which is always very sweet of them when it's a 2.5-hour drive. The girls are hugely tall now, but they remember me without shyness finally, and brought the heavily-used Mexican shoulder bags I brought them in 2008, and the name-embroidered microfleece blankets from before that. Good times all around.

I haven't had a chance to rant about the iPad I got before we left, but it's every bit as awesome as I hoped and I'm getting to do a lot of reading, mostly technical. It occurred to me last night that a drawing app would be fun for my nieces and at least occasionally entertaining for me, so I did a quick search and settled on Drawing Pad, which is excellent. It's nice for me to have something else to do with my brain, like making marks on the screen with my fingers. The girls were all over it, of course, so they were playing with the iPad throughout the day, until E moved it from the table without asking, at which point I revoked iPad access and set the passcode until they left.

I'm developing good parental reflexes. During breakfast we got to talking about some large stuffed penguins my uncle Richie gave my brother's family (it's complicated), and E, sitting next to me, started to get distracted.

"I can go get those to show them to you."

"It can wait until after breakfast."

"They're right downstairs! I can just go get them."

"Do it after breakfast."

She starts to get up. "I'll be really fast and come right back."

No-Nonsense Parental Command Voice. "Sit down."

And she did! It was cool, and I did it automatically.

Everyone loves Anna, of course, because she's awesome. She's been doing a lot of the talking, as is traditional, and fine by me: as it is, I talked enough that my throat is sore.

We did flip through the old photos and school materials; there's a post or two coming about that.

I'm still a little zombified from the trip out, so I have no deep thoughts. It's nice to see everyone, and hopefully I'll make time to do it a bit more often.