Speech lessons

It's now back-to-the-grindstone time and our little princess has switched speech instructors. I now have to have her at one of the local elementaries 2 mornings a week at 8:30 a.m. No sleeping in that day! It's amazing to get the instructor show Veeka how to say words like "bubbles" and make squawking noises when she sees a chicken. Not to mention the "woof woof" and "mieow mieow" she already knows. There's reading exercises, then there's put-balls-in-the-hole exercises and on and on. Finally all those school taxes I've paid over the years is resulting in something.
Typically, her inability to concentrate on anything for more than one minute does get frustrating for me as I have to constantly supervise whatever she does. So all my unread books and magazines sit in huge piles. Getting a babysitter for the weekends is not always easy; just tonight I tried 4 teenagers and all of them were busy this weekend. Basically this means I stay up to 1 a.m. every day trying to get my work done. But she does not play alone at this point and there's no one nearby with whom I can share play dates. She constantly needs to be entertained or related to. She loves gadgets, but I cannot let her loose on my computer because of some damange she's already done.
One thing on my Veeka wishlist is that she get pottytrained quickly. Even Oma's efforts over Christmas were frustrated by Veeka's refusal to sit still for more than 2 seconds. She's in line to enter a much closer daycare this spring, but she has to be pottytrained by then so if anyone has great ideas on how to do this, pass them along.
Meanwhile things are going well with my blog at work. Again, the URL is: http://video1.washingtontimes.com/beliefblog/ and I've spiced it up with headlines like "Do Lutherans Believe in Hell?" One entry on the Baghdad Prayer Patrol got 65 replies! I posted that earlier this week. The beast needs to be fed nearly every day and starting Jan. 15, we're premiering a 2nd religion blog on the upcoming papal visit to Washington 3 months from now.
The photo shows Miss Veeka several weeks back on stage after the reception at the Indian embassy. A friendly woman I met is talking with our little celeb as she tests out the microphone. Veeka, btw, acted like a model princess that entire evening. When I saw the aghast look on the face of one of the embassy people when she arrived, I figured we'd have to make a quick exit. But no, she sat quietly the entire evening and charmed everyone with smiles and kisses.