Doing Great

Thank heaven Harvey is back on track this week at preschool. He was working really hard yesterday, and on Friday he was bossing his horse around without any prompting at all. His speech therapist was here yesterday, too, and she said that Harvey has been progressing as fast as any kid she has ever worked with. He has figured out that he is dropping the end sounds from his two-syllable words most of the time, and so he has started inserting some sound there. It's not usually the right sound, but they are new sounds that he has never made before, so that is great.

Grey is walking around everywhere. Sometimes I feel bad for him because he always wants to play with all the cool toys that Harvey's teachers bring, and ride the horse on Fridays, so I have been trying to get a few of the toys that the therapists bring that we don't have. There is one little ball in particular, which I searched for at Wal-Mart and Target and Toys-R-Us and Babies-R-Us before I finally just ordered it off the internet. It arrived yesterday, and when Grey saw the box he couldn't wait for me to get it open, and he was nodding his head furiously and saying "Yes! Yes! Yes!" the whole time I was trying to get it out of the package.

Jed is still swamped at work, and it is showing no sign of stopping. He has a gazillion bids lined up and he is having to squeeze them into his schedule before 8 AM or after 5.

In spite of this, I was able to go to my writers conference on Saturday. It was so great. Since it was hosted by my writing class, I got to register a bunch of important people and shake their hands and show them to lunch. These included an Editor from Granite and Deseret Book, and also Ally Condie and Eric James Stone. (Also a few other, slightly less cool people.)

I took a class on how to write and be a mother at the same time, from Ally Condie. I thought it was so funny when she was talking about how worried she was about what she was going to do with her kids while she went on her book tour. I kinda thought, if you get A MILLION DOLLAR BOOK DEAL, those problems just kinda work themselves out. I'm still scratching my head about why her husband is still working, because let me tell you, if I got A MILLION DOLLAR BOOK DEAL, Jed would quit his job and I would write 8 hours a day.

My favorite comment from the entire conference was when she said "Telling people you're a writer is sort of like telling them you're a princess. It doesn't matter what level of success you have achieved, they are just never going to take you seriously."

I took two classes from Eric James Stone. The first was on shorts, which I took because I am currently working on a short for some contests. The second was on writing an ending, which was a nice reminder for me and gave me a few ideas for my novel.

Speaking of novel...I have started the second draft. I am hoping to get it finished up and send out my first queries before the end of June.

If my camera batteries weren't dead, I would put up some really cute pictures of the boys.