Sleepy Daze

The days now are short (in theory they get longer each day but I'm not seeing it) and very cold. And the nights are colder. It's very hard to get out of bed in the morning when you know all you have to look forward to is the drive to work while it's still dark and then a bunch of sleepy dunderheads (and those are my workmates, never mind the students). After work, there is more driving in the cold and dark (why does my car only ever start to warm up just as I pull in to park some place?) and then arriving home to an ever narrowing driveway (as more and more snow gets shoveled off it and piled on the sides, the sides get closer and closer until, as we have now, two narrow icy luge runs we have to fit our car wheels into to slip and slide back down the driveway), a cold dark house and no ideas for dinner.
Here is Frederick in the early evening cuddled up on the couch, reading his favorite books. I don't know if one (or more?) switches finally clicked a few days ago, but suddenly Frederick is a reader. He is brilliant at phonics and can work his way through just about anything he is presented with. One of his favorite activities is to read all the covers of our books. (Just after I took this photo he pointed to a book on the shelf across the room and asked for it. This one? I asked. No. This one, I asked, pointing to another. No. This one? Yes. This went on for quite some time as he assembled a nice murder mystery collection to peruse [Phantom of the Temple, Wash Away This Blood, Quite Ugly One Morning and so on]. Yesterday he invented a game: Think of all the words that begin with the sound of a letter of the alphabet, such as: teapot (T-pot, get it?), zebra, peacock, elbow and so on. He came up with this all on his own and Simon and I had no idea what he was on about. Simon finally cracked the code--isn't he clever!