"Spiderman." That's the answer to just about any question in Noah's world these days. "What's your name?" "Spiderman." "How old are you?" "I'm spiderman." Here he is protecting his sister from dangerous photographers. Notice the web technique. Very important. Tomorrow night he will have to take these techniques on the road as we go trick or treating in the warm Florida evening. Being spiderman has been important to him as we make our transition from New England to New Spain. Maxim has done even better. She takes life as an adventure and worries really only where her parents are next. She is sounding out words and beginning to read. Her favorite thing to do it to have me hold her hands when she jumps in the air and lift her farther. "Jump me, Daddy." She says, meaning, lift me up in the air. She has made new friends in school and one in particular through our parents' collective at Eckerd. Still, she misses her friends from Massachusetts. They both often mention Maynard and we all think about the north a lot.

Florida! We have been quiet here on our blog, but not because our lives have been quiet. What a set of changes. Let's see... Let's begin with the children. Noah is at last in a pre-school, a place called "Lad -n- Lass" where, as his teacher told us after the first week, he acts like he has been going to school forever. At school his best friend is a girl named Elizabeth. "I don't like the boys," he told me, "they're too rough." This is our Noah - cautious and certain. Two weeks ago, Marcela bought him a Spiderman costume for Halloween, mask and all. He feels complete. His face was aglow when he saw it come out of the box. He puts it on to sit on the couch and watch movies. He puts it on to be "savey." We enrolled Noah in gymnastics and three weeks ago the teacher, Coach John, promoted him to the next level. He said that Noah was excellent at listening and following directions. I said, I don't think he got that from me. Noah is still just small enough to be picked up and want to be picked up, still snuggle-able. He refers to himself as a big boy, but he always makes a beeline for my lap when he gets up in the morning. "I will miss you, Daddy," he says to me when the family drops me off for my 8:30 class on Tuesdays and Thursday. "I love you." Of course, my heart melts. He is a loving and compassionate soul. We are blessed. The girl, our Maxim, is no longer small enough to snuggle. She is growing in leaps and bounds these months. The Florida sun seems to cause her to grow faster. She is light enough to hold, but she is all bones and growing muscles, long stretches of body and limb with pointy angles and edges. She has my hip-back rotation, causing her belly to jut out slightly, and my skinny thighs, which will wear much nicer on a girl than a boy. She loves kindergarten and has great fun learning hand-clapping games and rhymes from the girls in her class. "Welcome to McDonalds, Let me take your order, fit fat chitter chat, ice cup, milk shake." She informed us that she has a boyfriend, Nathan. "Finally!" she exclaimed, as if it had been a concern of hers. She has learned to swim underwater and was herself promoted in the gymnastics classes to the next level. She is also taking ballet nearby and will be among the cast for their Nutcracker show in late November. Her newest accomplishment is the ability to read. They have been doing phonics in school and she got it, like we knew she would, in no time. She has already read a short story for the class and written a short story on my dry erase board in my office. Marcela and I are exhausted. My work is demanding and adjusting to a new set of students (I had really just gotten used to the Emerson crowd) is more work than I anticipated. One can write a syllabus, but when it gets executed by real people, you realize the challenges of communication. Now that I am tenure track, I do not have the luxury of ignoring faculty meetings and school social events, of which, lots. Who knew they would cut into my time so deeply? But, we are getting there, me and my 71 students. Marcela is busily making contacts and meeting people who work in and around book and paint conservation. St. Petersburg and Sarasota have several impressive museums with various interesting collections. She is nervous about being in the limnal stage of things, and anxious to have something decided, but excited about each new thing she finds. She is also running the household practically without my help at all, an enourmous job to which she devotes a lot of love and attention. And sometimes, when we are lucky, we have a stolen moment to exhale and say hi and remember each other. It has been a crazy six weeks since I last wrote. The semester ends on December 14. We're at the halfway point of the first big push. They say it becomes easier as the semesters roll onward. We believe that.