Wow am I far behind on blogging these days. I haven’t shared pictures or stories from the bee sting incident let alone the girls’ birthday party. Since the semester is drawing to a close, I should have more time to catch up on posts…although we did purchase a second camera body, so the amount of photos has doubled.
This school semester has had a fairly light workload, with two of my three classes allowing time in class to complete homework. The third class has been a challenge. Let me preface this story by stating that I consider myself to be a writer. All of the thoughts and feelings that generate words on this blog are my own, and I am very protective of them. So when I discovered that a member of my group had plagiarized her entire four page contribution towards our 15 page paper, I was angry. I was angry that she felt that she could take another writer’s words and claim them as her own. I was angry that she did not put in the same amount of work as I did in the project. I was angry that she thought the rest of us, teacher included, wouldn’t be smart enough to figure it out. I was angry that I had to rewrite a significant portion of the paper and do additional research to make up for the gaps that her plagiarism left behind. I was angry that all I wanted to do was snuggle up on the couch with Kurt and watch a movie after a long week, and had to spend hours in front of my laptop trying to find scholarly sources to use to make up for the severe defecit in information that the plagiarism caused. Most of all though, I was angry that she didn’t understand that all four of our names were to be included on that document and that we all could’ve been held accountable and accused of plagiarism and kicked out of school. I’m still angry. What I am really driving at is to please consider the writer when citing work or writing research papers. We ran the paper through a web-based tool called turnitin, and we stopped the search after it came back as 80% plagiarized. I realize that it may seem as though I am overreacting at a little copy / paste action, but it really is an increasingly large problem with the accessibility of online resources. So, I’m going to take a deep breath, know that I did the right thing, be thankful that the paper is now done, and move on.
Since I’m a couple of months behind on pics, I’ll start where I left off rather than in the middle (which is where I’d like to start as to not fall any further behind on the girls’ birthday post). We’ve had such a great fall this year. The weather has been fantastic allowing us to play outside for much of our weekends. That being said, we did have a few days where the weather, or our moods, were just too gloomy to go outside and on those days, we make due with what we have indoors. Usually play doh, paint, and duplos.
Having twins really makes one question the nature vs nurture argument. I tend to believe that nurture has more impact on a person than does nature, but somedays you’d think my girls came from different families. Violet can spend hours playing play doh and painting whereas Zoey tends to spend a few minutes and then runs off to play with something else. Zoey is usually seen carting around BearBear, a My Little Pony, some Sesame Street characters, her blanket, and probably a diaper…along with whatever else she can squish against her little frame. Violet is not attached to any toys and rarely gives interest to one for more than a few minutes. Zoey loves to snuggle and is a little shy and Violet is slightly more independent in her approach to new situations. This one really interests me. When they were wee bebes, Violet secured most of my attention. She was a little fussier and loved being held. Zoey was less fussy and therefore was held less (and writing this down makes me feel kinda shitty, if I’m being honest). So you’d think that Violet would be more a momma’s girl, but Zoey surely does love me. In fact, if I’m around she doesn’t really like anyone. And again, if I’m being honest, it’s a little overwhelming, exhausting, stressful, and yet, settled amongst all the negative emotions associated with not feeling like a person but rather a needs/wants short order fulfiller, I love it. I love that she comes to me for comfort, security, snuggles, and kisses. I love that she trusts me. This is really the same with both of the girls, but comes out more with ZoeyCakes.
