On Tuesday T. and I spent an hour in a waiting room, while L. finished a therapy appointment. Not long after we had sat down, a little floppy-haired boy ran tumbling in, with his dad close behind. The boy was two, his dad told me, and at that wonderful age when everything out of his mouth was a string of unintelligible sounds--no distinct words, but the sounds were clearly recognizable as questions, statements, exclamations. He pointed, he smiled, he gestured in delightful and easily identifiable ways. He was clearly communicating, and thrilled about it all.

I have a stack of papers to grade this weekend. A large stack. The challenge with grading student writing is, as usual, coming up with just the right words to both encourage the writer to do better but, at the same time, convey my dismay (despair) over the lack of effort put into the assignment. In procrastination mode this afternoon, I'm thinking instead about how much I like to volunteer at my son’s school (they have a very generous open-door policy), and whether or not I can fit in an hour or two there next week.