The Haring's: Happy New Year!!

Well, having been inspired to make another blog entry by more diligent bloggers in my family than myself, here it is...

We spent New Year's Day getting drunk on FUN and sloshed with Mormon wine (Welch's sparkling Grape juice) at my Elder's quorum President's house. After the clock struck 12am we proceeded outside where all the fathers dutifully taught their sons how to jerry rig 10 packs of sparklers together (the hand-held kind you waive around and chase each other with) so that they would ignite at the same time, all bunched together, to create one "super-sparkler" as a survival tactic to make oneself visible from space.

Unfortunately, the party was short-lived as I (Fuller) have begun to study for the Florida Bar Exam to be held on February 23 and 24th. While masochism is a specialty of mine, this type of self-destructive behavior is truly an exponential magnification of my usual mental mutilations. (If anyone is curious as to why the federal government can't create a law that keeps guns off school property, but can make a law making it illegal to grow corn and feed it to your own cows, give me a call). The only days I will be taking off are Sundays, so unless you have an emergency or have cooked something for me to eat, try not to call during the hours you are awake. (Instead, you could take advantage of the US government's plenary power to regulate all non-emergency postal deliveries and mail me a letter.)

Sophia and Tyler are having a great time growing.

They have really taken to eating lots of food. The two of them combined consume roughly the amount of sustenance that, if they could be found locally, would put a hippo in a coma. The joy of having two babies under the same roof is understandably under appreciated by most intelligent members of our species, but I find them at the least amusing. I quite often have the great privilege of directing a chorus of lamentations that most likely keeps our home free of all would-be intruders (and probably some well-meaning visitors too). However, Tyler has evolved to the homo homo toddelus phase of his development, but is still struggling with the high-step tire drill. If anyone has any advise on how to overcome his overwhelming fear of nothing, please notify me asap (via letter, of course).

In other, proud-daddy news, Tyler won his first fist-fight the other day, although I am not sure he knew it. He was sitting alongside a little boy about 4 times his size and more than twice his age who had obviously not been taught that hitting children named Tyler was punishable by death (ignorance of the law is no excuse), when that boy began to strike Tyler in the back repeatedly as hard as he could. Tyler responded in typical Haring fashion by laughing out loud and then bashing him in the face with one hand and poking him in the eye with the other. He doesn't know this ... but I almost cried proud-daddy tears.

Sophia has continued to be a good baby rather consistently. She sleeps most of the way through the night and I have recently been able to train her to tune any middle-of-the-night crying to such a frequency so as to make it inaudible to male ears and yet still perspicuous to female ears ... all in an effort to give myself the best chance possible to pass the bar the first time, of course. Sophia now entertains us regularly with well-timed flatulence and always seems to ruminate on all the right people. She continues to be at the top of her class in her favorite subject, Growing Longer, and is also doing well in other subjects such as Being-prettier-than-you-ness class, and others. She has almost graduated to her own room where Tyler currently sleeps, but I'm almost certain she will relegate him a small corner of her kingdom for sleeping and perhaps even some small personal effects.

Christmas was spent in Naples this year with my family, however, we had the Cajas' up from Guatemala for a few weeks where they were able to "enjoy" being with Sophia and Tyler and even put up with us on occasion as well. They were immensely helpful and we enjoyed having them here with us. Naples with my family was also a great time, and served as a much needed reprieve from studying while being amongst family. You know your'e having fun when you forget about budgets and diets and procrastinating study for a few more hours seems OK.

It was truly a GREAT Christmas!!

Not long after returning from break, Melanie had the opportunity to teach her Kindergarten class about the letters I and E. If you speak Spanish, you understand how these letters would confuse a child learning about them in English for the first time. Below is a text photo that Mel sent me the other day showing the issues surrounding teaching these vowel sounds specific to young Latino children.

She first sent me that photo in a text while I was in the middle of a bar lecture ... I laughed out loud and had to pass my phone around the class. Mel is doing well since the babies and has been a huge help to making my study for the bar possible with a newborn and a 16 month-old in the house. She's still my angel and I don't mind telling anybody who will listen about how great she really is.