currently.

Reading... The Shining. I have seen the movies (the Stanley Kubrick film, as well as the made for tv mini series) and have also read the book before. However, I don't do well with the horror genre so I'm reading very tentatively. When I first read it as a teenager, I'm fairly sure I kept the light on every night for about a month... Iris is reading letters, repeating the sounds they make, and learning to sound out words.

Watching... or rather, rewatching one of my favorite shows of all time, Battlestar Galactica. Iris is currently working her way though Pokémon. On a more serious note, I recently watched a documentary called Auschwitz: The Nazi Final Solution. It's an amazing production that shows in gross detail and description the horrors of the holocaust. Through interviews from both survivors and from former Nazi party members, the viewer gleans a well rounded perspective on how and why this travesty occured. For anyone who is interested in this particular history, this is a must see.

Learning... lots of new things with Iris in homeschool. I generally do an informal homeschooling session every day, Monday through Friday. Iris' most recent favorite lesson focused on coconuts - where they grow and how to open and eat them. We watched a few videos of people and even monkeys picking coconuts from the trees, looked at diagrams of the different layers of coconuts, and then we cracked one open ourselves! While I broke a fingernail trying to get the darn thing open, Iris drank the coconut water and then finally ate quite a large quantity of the meat. Now she wants bottled coconut water every time we go to the market!

Eating... lots of interesting things, speaking of coconuts. While Iris does ask for ketchup for dipping (a request which is most often denied), she also has a taste for flavors which are usually considered more mature. For example, she loves sushi, olives, a variety of aged cheeses, and caper berries.

Anticipating... getting the tattoo on my leg finished. I finally have a followup appointment with Sebastian Brade this Friday! Sebastian's work is based in Berlin, which is about nine hours away from us by car. He is guesting at a tattoo shop about two hours from us (which is how I got my outline done almost two years ago), so I am able to finish what was started! Definitely looking forward to this - though not so much the knee area - ouch!