Who What Where

I took a linguistics class in college. I loved it.  Between that and the French class I had that semester I could phonetically spell the pants off anything said to me.  Unfortunately my phonetic spelling skillz faded with disuse and by the time I had small children pronouncing things in funny ways I didn't remember how to write them.  

Anyway, in that class we talked a bit about childhood language development.  I don't remember any of the technical terms but I learned that sometimes kids say something correctly but they don't know it's correct so they may move on and try a few other things before coming back to saying the correct way.   

What I just wrote; is that nonsense? I'm not sure.  I tried so many different ways of saying what I mean that I can't tell anymore. What does this say about my linguistic development?

Anyway, Moo.

She points at people in the store and asks me "What's that?"  My standard answer is "I don't know his/her name,"  Either that or I try to creatively turn the conversation in such a way that the person to whom she was referring will not realize that they've just been called a "what" rather than a "who." 

Next she started asking when I'm on the phone "Mom, what's that?" I, being myself, can't just answer the question I know shes trying to ask, instead I answer the question she actually asks. "It's a phone." I say. After a few repetitions of that she come's back with "NO what's THAT!" and eventually I act surprised and say "Oh, you mean who's that? You want to know who I was talking to?"  So we've had a chat or five about how peoples are whos not whats.  Then we had a new development.

I was changing a diaper when she walked into the room. "Who's that smell?" she asked me.    

A pineapple post

Our internet connection has been spotty today.  Luckily The Mr is home now so I need not fear an interruption in my posting schedule due to technical issues.

Technical issues did interrupt the kids' daily dose of power rangers this afternoon.  Half way through, so probably about the time the rangers were meeting the monster face to face fort the first time, before they retreat to regroup for the battle royale with the zords and the giant monster, netflix shut down. My poor children distraught not knowing how it ends.

I got a new nail polish.  Essie's "No Place Like Chrome" It goes on nice and opaque.  This is a good thing but it will take some practice to get a smooth finish.  I always have trouble with pale opaques.

I put it on my fingers this time because my toes were already in good shape.  I think I'll save it for toes in the future though.  It doesn't compliment my skin tone well enough to wear on my hands.

Like women everywhere, I have a love hate relationship with fingernail polish.  I love it for the first day and then it inevitably gets flawed and I hate it until I spend the three minutes to take it off. Someday I'll try a shellac manicure.

Today in the car Duke answered the Beatles with a "hello" of his own every time they said "hello, hello"  He never got sick of it, just kept shouting out those hellos for the duration of the song.  Maybe I should have turned it on repeat to test his limit.

I guess this was a very tiny can of pineapple because those are all the tidbits I've got at the moment.

Guess who had his first time out today?

 

See that toy behind his right ear? It's his favorite. It's similar to this one. The four balls are what he likes most about it. I've confiscated the hammer because other things kept getting pounded with it and even when used as intended it was awfully loud. Also, it was beginning to splinter.

 So what Duke likes to do is put the balls in the holes like eggs in a carton, admire his handy work and then take the balls out again. He has a ball in his hand approximately half the time he's awake.

 

This afternoon he looked at the blue wooden ball in his hand, then he looked at his sister lying on the floor. He raised the ball over his head stretching his arm to it's upper limit. Then with his arm still stretched, he walked around to the opposite side of his supine sister where he had better access to her head and smacked the ball down on it with all his wee might.

I think  Moo thought it was worth it just to see someone else in a bear-hug style time-out for a change.

 I'm pretty sure his motives were purely scientific. Duke-boy's a lover not a fighter. Of all my babies he is the snuggliest. Moo was rather snuggly, but in a different way. Duke's snuggles are more intentional some how.

 Bearing that in mind I wasn't surprised to find that Duke is also much more interested in baby dolls than any of his predecessors were. He discovered Moo's baby, Polka-polka, a few weeks ago. He carried and snuggled that baby doll for a good ten minutes before I got the camera out to take a picture of the sweetness at which point he lost interest.

 

I tried to bring his focus back to the baby by showing him how the diaper goes on and off. Duke loves to take off his own diaper so you'd think putting the diaper on the dolly would be a surefire way to draw his attention back. It sort of worked.  As I suspected he was very interested in taking the diaper off but the baby wound up taking a back seat to the thrill of the velcro.  Ah well you win some you lose some.

 

Hot to trot

My run this morning was killer. It started out good but the back stretch nearly did me in.  My feet were burning through the soles of my vibrams, the heat was pressing in on all sides and it was all I could do to sustain my slow sloppy jog through the last minutes of my prescribed training time.

Once I finally made it home I had to get my sweaty babies out of the stroller and carry/usher them into the house.  I didn't think I'd make it, but I did.  The burst of cool air when I opened the door was one of the most welcome experiences in memory.

Five minutes later, after cooling down some I let the dog in.  The effort required to open the perfectly functional patio door was enough to spike my heart rate afresh.

My theory on why I was so beaten down today is heat.  I guessed that today was dramatically hotter than days past.  I just now tested that theory.  Monday's high was 111 today's was 116. I'll be honest.  I was looking for a bigger margin between the two days.  I'd feel better about being so thrashed today if the gap was bigger.  

Then again, today's run was a bit more strenuous than the course we ran Monday.

Ok, I just looked up the temps on the last day we ran the same course as today.  That day's high was only 104.  I'm feeling better already.

By the way, I run in the mornings well before the day achieves its high temperature.  Not that it's pleasant even then but I most certainly wasn't out in 116. 

chilly

The highlight of summer always seems to involve wading in a mountain stream. At least it used to, there have been quite a few more recent summers that didn't involve mountain streams at all. Then came this summer.

We did manage to go on the one hike this year.  When we happened upon an ideal wading spot I called a halt and started stripping off socks and shoes immediately.  The first three kids made their way down the bank and into the water before I got the chance.

I had to unstrap Duke from the baby carrier, remove both our shoes and roll up my pant legs before I could follow.

Finally I got my feet onto the pebbled bottom of the tributary we'd picked to wade in and found I'd already had enough.  The quickest refuge from the frigid water was a rock just one step further along.  I got myself up onto that thing as fast as I could and there I was stuck.  I have apparently acclimated to Arizona's climate better than I'd realized.  In so much that a stream fed primarily by runoff from the winter's snows was too much for me.

 

I stayed on my rock for quite a while trying to work up courage for the two step trek back tot he bank.    I'd taken Duke with me out to my tiny makeshift island with the idea that I'd dip his wee toes in the pleasant stream.  Instead I passed him back to The Mr and the bank where those toes could enjoy warm sand as opposed to freshly melted glacial runoff.

 

The other kids though, seemed to enjoy the adventure just as much as I remember doing.  Ziz and Enz did tend to stick to the rocks hurrying through the water only as it was necessary to gain access to bigger and better rocks.

 

 

 Moo on the other hand tromped back and forth through the still little pool where my own exploration ended.

 

I suppose in a way, wading in the mountain stream really was a highlight of my summer. It's just that my enjoyment was vicarious. I guess I can live with that.

 At this point I feel I should note that The Mr was a way better sport about the cold water than I was, and wading in it wasn't even his idea.

 And now, because I can't think of a good conclusion for this post, and because I had a hard time narrowing them down, here's another  handful of photos from that day.

 

 

 

 

THE END

Thoughts on Chicken

While running errands in the car today Moo related past horrors.  Memories left skirking around shadowy corners of her brain were pulled out and examined in the light of day.  Hopefully said memories will have lost their haunting power after their exposure to the sun.

"Mom," she said "I like Chick-a-lay but I don't like panda bears."  At this point I thought we were doing a compare and contrast exercise between fast food establishments we'd passed in our morning travels.  She talked for a few more minutes about not liking panda bears finally calling my attention back with the following question. "We hide inna bafwoom right mom, so the panda bear no get me?"
That's when I realized there was actually only one fast food establishment under scrutiny in my car this morning.

About a year and a half ago we were at Chick-fil-a as a family eatin' us some nuggets when a person in a cow suit began to make the rounds from table to table in an attempt to delight children.

Moo was far from delighted.

Her terror became louder and louder as the cow-man, one table at a time, approached. Finally I took her and sought refuge in the bathroom.  Cow man by this time had noticed that he was in fact the cause of the hysterics and left the dining room.  We returned to our table and Moo resumed eating.  A few minutes later the polyester cow made an attempt to finish his rounds.  This time I took Moo and fled to the parking lot while the Mr. rounded up the other children and met us at the car.

Today the time finally came to talk all this out.  First I clarified with her that the beast lurking in the chick-fil-a dinning room was not a panda bear at all, but rather a cow. No need to villainize innocent bears when it was a bovine who wronged her.   

After she grasped the cow vs. panda concept we went to work on the cows motivators.
"The cow wanna git me so we hide inna bafwoom, right mom?"  "No baby," I said. "The cow didn't want to get you, he just wanted to say hello.  He didn't know you'd be scared."   After a few repetitions of that conversation she seemed to catch on that the cow was indeed not after her. She moved on to another explanation.

"The cow wanna eat my chicken. He wanna eat my chicken and my fwies! We hide inna bafwoom and the cow git my chicken and my fwies!" The idea that our flight may have enabled the brute to burgle her dinner left her newly enraged.

There was no reasoning with her on this point.  She could accept that the cow meant her no bodily harm, but that his presence was in no way malevolent was just to much for her to accept.  We discussed at great length the diet of cows (hay) pandas (bamboo) and various other herbivores (horses, zebras, cows again) but in the end she was sure that cow was after her chicken.

As long as we're on the subject of Chick-fil-a, I'm going to break a precedent here at Uniquety.  I've never talked before about issues that involve more than myself and my family., But I guess there's a first for everything.

 Today I'm going to try to express why last Wednesday as I perused Facebook my stomach sank and sank and sank as friend after friend posted photos of themselves and their families gobbling chicken. "Do they know?" I asked myself. "Do they have any idea what they're saying by posting that?" I wondered.

I think what those people who's chicken posts I viewed we're trying to say was "I support free speech"  or "I'm against gay marriage," but what I saw, was my friends saying to other friends of mine, "This is how I hate you. This is how my baby hates you.  Here's my whole family smiling and eating chicken because we hate you."

I don't think those friends of mine meant to say that. I have to believe that they didn't realize that's what they were saying.  Still I wish they'd been able to see the full message that chicken sandwich was sending before they launched those photos out into the world.

I don't know if what I'm trying to say here is coming through clearly.  Here's a post that summed up my feelings to perfection.  My thanks to Mr. Turner for writing it.  

   

November is off the hook

I've had a little rivalry going on with the month of November these last few years.  Some years I've won, other years November has almost beat me.  Today I'm writing to tell November that it's off. There will be no struggle to settle the score in 2012.  This year I'm eschewing the official" Mo" of "NaBloPo" and having my daily post fest all by my lonesome right now.
That's right folks.  Starting today, August the fifth I will post daily for 30 days or lose the right to call myself "blogger" (if I haven't lost it already)
Now, what this post needs to wrap things up is an anecdote from my life.  Sadly I'm a little rusty what with my extended blog neglect and all.  I can't currently come up with a single anecdote. Here's hoping I can get my writing legs back under me soon otherwise this will be a long month for all of us.