Benjamin Michael Singer -- The Preschool Years

It's been a long time between webpage updates, sorry to say. We have settled down into a good routine here in Santa Clara. Joel is still working at LifeMasters doing disease management. And Melissa has, at long last, finished her dissertation, and now has her doctorate in Education and Psychology from the University of Michigan. Also, she's excited to be starting a job at Santa Clara University this fall as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education.

Benjamin enjoys his preschool, Action Day / Primary Plus. He's gone through many changes in the past several months. Every day he has more command of language, more coordination, and constantly surprises us with the new things he knows. He likes to sing songs and pretend and act out stories. We've expanded to whole new storybooks and sections of the library, beyond the "kiddie" board books we used to read. Benjamin loves to do jigsaw puzzles and will work on the same one over and over again until knows the location of every piece. He also is still fascinated by falling water, and loves to go outside and use the hose to water plants as often as we will let him. He had all of his teeth by his 3rd birthday, and "passed" his first dentist appointment with flying colors (i.e., no cavities) though the tooth polisher was "too noisy". He's in his big-boy bed permanently now, and the crib is on loan to a friend. We're still working on the potty-training, but that will come in time, we're sure.

Last November we traveled to Spokane for an enjoyable Thanksgiving vacation with Joel's parents. Mid-December was the perfect time to celebrate Dr. Melissa Aczon's dissertation submission. For Chanukah and Christmas, we stayed in California and celebrated with the Gilberts. Mike Cohen and Joel's Dad came out to visit and play bridge. The Martin family came out for a wonderful visit in early January. Joel's brother Daniel shipped out to Iraq in late February, and, while we're worried about him, we're exchanging regular letters and packages, and he's doing OK.

Melissa rolled up her sleeves and started grinding away on her dissertation in late January, and Joel took charge of Benjamin for a whole string of weekends. They made regular trips to each of three zoos (San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland), checked out several parks, spent time doing errands, hung out at the library...anything they could think of to give Melissa uninterrupted work time! They visited Alex, Beth, and Rob in Castro Valley several times, and Alex and Benjamin had great fun on zoo trips. Benjamin loves riding carousels, especially now that he's big enough to ride bigger ones by himself. Melissa's parents took Benjamin for a few hours each weekend. He loved to make soup with Nonna Lucia and back bread and biscotti with GranJack, in addition to watering plants....

Memorial Day brought a visit from Joel's parents. As part of the Detroit disseration defense diversion, we visited Aunt Harriet in St. Jacobs, Ontario. Melissa's parents have now both relocated from Austin, TX, and have bought a house and are moving in this Friday, so we'll all be busy transporting their belongings from their rented condo.

And with Melissa's graduation from UM, her account and webpage quota will disappear at some point in the future. Watch for a message telling you our new website address, and hopefully it won't be another seven months between updates...!