speech pathology

I've mentioned before that we have been slightly concerned with the delay in Phin's verbal progress, but as long as he was making small but steady improvements I had decided not to worry about it too much.  A couple of months ago he really started to take off with the full parroting stage and now I have the pleasure of arguing with him about everything!  

me: Go get your alligator.

him: That's a dinosaur.

me: Would you like a clementine?

him: No, I want a gunkin (pumpkin)!

me: There's Santa on your pajamas, ho, ho, ho!

him: That's Grandpa!  No ho ho.

me: Oh, you sneezed!

him: No!  I burped!

He has also decided to randomly add the "ch" sound to all sorts of things.  There's chochit (chocolate) of course and the chitchen (kitchen) where we eat chunch (lunch) and he calls himself Chin and all little animals (baby bears, penguins, puppies, what have you) are also Chin.  Whenever it is time to say a prayer, we try to quietly ask someone and starts before he realizes or else it is always, "Chin's turn!  Garble, garble, garble, daddy, garble, .... (sometimes short, sometimes really long) garble, garble AMEN!"

Some other cute things he says are die, for goodbye, so we tell everyone he is cursing them, and doom for moon.  Anytime he sees the moon in the sky even in the middle of the afternoon, he says, "Night night doom!"  He's obviously a bit of a fatalist.

it's been awhile

There has been so much going on lately and a lot of laying around at the same time.  I did something to my back and I couldn't even sit at my computer desk!  I know -- the tragedy!  I am not quite sure what happened, but I imagine rather than it being just one thing it was a combination of raking, leaning over Phin, moving furniture all over kingdom come, and never forget the infernal laundry!  So my back was hurting and then add in a combined about 7 hours of sitting in the fiendish church pews (I am sorry, but those benches can be wretched after prolonged exposure) over the course of a few days because of various meetings and I was completely laid out last Sunday afternoon.  The following week consisted of me taking the kids to seminary, laying on my bed, taking kids to school, laying on my bed, moving all of the dishes to the edge of the counter then kneeling to put them in the dishwasher, laying on my bed, going to the chiropractor, laying on my bed, vacuuming, laying on my bed, teaching my class, laying on my bed, being in charge of RS meeting, laying on my bed -- I'm sure you get the idea.  Then on Friday, after I had gotten a back brace and was feeling a teensy bit better, I caught the virulent stomach bug that has been mowing down the entire city (Lucy, Phin, Ibby, and I got the vomiting part and the other three members of my family just feel yucky and wiped out) so spent a couple of more days in my bed.  I do have a pretty comfortable bed so that is good. 


Our friend just left with the greeting, "Have fun celebrating the genocide of this country's indigenous people."  Okay.  And don't forget the raising and subsequent slaughter of millions of top heavy turkeys.  Let's all go enjoy that, shall we?

dahliaaaah

Last Thursday night it froze so everything not winter hardy turned black!  Fortunately I was out in the dark gathering up the green tomatoes, peppers, zinnias, and some lovely dinner plate dahlias (that had to fend for themselves since I'm too lackluster to stake anything).

I even dug up the bulbs to save for next year so we'll see if I'm capable of letting them exist that long.  I also pulled up the rest of the garden and gathered the zinnia tops for seeds.

Another Halloween picture -- we went to our first ever Murder Mystery party.  I was Madame Garlique and Matthew was Balihi the RodgersandHammerstein monster.  I already owned everything that made up my costume (except the garlic I had to buy), who knew I was so bohemian?  And we found Matthew's seersucker suit at an estate sale that morning for one dolla'.  And really, I must insist that people take my picture from above only!  That chin = not good.

And I think I need this for Christmas:

I promise that I would use it to go to the store!  As long as it wasn't too hot or too cold (basically for about two weeks out of the year).

lions, and glenda, and flamenco dancers -- oh my!

Another crazy weekend!  The kids didn't have school on Friday so the insanity started a little earlier than usual with free scary face pancakes at IHOP, a trip to the library for a costume parade, taking Ella to the school for Madrigal practice while I conferenced with some teachers, shopping for some last minute Halloween items, taking Charles to a carb fest at Avanti's then upon finding we were at the wrong location scurrying across town to the other restaurant, getting everyone ready for the trunk or treat at the church, and dance practice. Saturday started bright and early with the girls and I going to Chicago and the boys going to Peoria for cross country sectionals and ended with Matthew at stake conference, Ella at a teen party, me and the little girls at a neighborhood party, and Charles holding down the fort with sleeping Phin and taking notes on the "Rally to Restore Sanity/and or Fear" for us.

::shopping on Michigan Avenue

::eating at the Melting Pot -- mmmmm

::going to the Lion King -- I'm not a huge fan of the movie (or the story, or even the music necessarily), but the costumes, dancing, and singing were fabulous!

::lovin' the city!

::always playing

::Charlie running -- look at that great form!

::Happy Halloween!

::he may not be able to see us, but we can see that he's pretty cute!

one thing leads to another

I just spent $25 on the ugliest can of paint ever and it was, not surprisingly, very unsatisfying.  You may wonder why I would buy a color that I dislike intensely, to put it mildly -- it is because I can't afford to gut my kitchen.  Our favorite zen statement from Matthew's Japanese mentor while he was working on his PhD is: Everything is interconnected.  Ponder that for a moment and you will soon see how true that is.  My bathroom for instance:  the wallpaper bears a striking resemblance to wedding wrapping paper and I have had friends comment that they cannot believe that I haven't ripped it off the wall, but if I tore it down then one might notice that the wall is crumbling behind the toilet where there was a small leak; that the floor tile is slightly discolored; that there is dark wood stained cabinets and vanity, but a white wood medicine cabinet, corner shelf, and trim; that the sink and counter are cream marble, but the toilet and bathtub are white porcelain... need I go on?  Can you believe I can stand it?  But I have to and the wallpaper distracts one from the surrounding discord -- ooh, shiny!  See why I can't do something as simple as remove wallpaper?  It would just start a domino effect.  


My kitchen is kind of in the same boat.  At some point in its 92 years of life someone decided it would be great to modernize it -- fun!  This must have happened in the late 60's or 70's and we had some great wallpaper which my mother thought was very cheery, but put me in mind of Gilman's short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, and was taken down in an attempt to prevent madness.  The other elements were not quite so disposable so because of the permanence and abundance of the harvest gold tile, the harvest gold sink, etc. we have chosen to live with the dented cupboards and the rippling countertops because how could one go to the trouble and expense of replacing those and yet leave the tile and that FLOOR!  It has its own amazing qualities and while I don't know if it will ever really be stylish, it does generally look pretty clean which is no small feat around here.  The wood trim around the kitchen and down the back stairs is all painted to match the tile and it is so nicked up and not cleanable -- it probably hasn't been painted for 50 years -- that something needed to be done.  I couldn't decide whether to go with a color I like and let the tile stand out more; try to "do away" with the tile entirely, taking the risk that the plaster wall behind it might completely fall apart, and as long as we're doing that just do everything else that needs to be done, or simply buy the most awful color in the whole store, Earthy Ecru to be exact (and here I thought my kitchen was yellow -- very dirty yellow, I guess).  I bit the bullet and made the hard choice of the $25 can of paint instead of the $50,000 kitchen redo.  Yesterday afternoon I painted away, the whole time thinking how I didn't like the color and I hate painting anyway and it is no fun to be painting something a color you won't even think looks better and how I am such a horrible painter!  I have paint everywhere: my hands covered, in my hair, my painting clothes are a visual history of every painting project I've ever done, it is all over the floor... why do I even try to make improvements?  I've had friends ask me to help them paint and I have to laugh because they must not know what I'm really like.  Usually I'll try to do something innocuous like put up tape, but I can even bungle that by not doing it completely flush with the edge which creates its own mess.  


Well, look at that.  It does look better.  Much more serene without all of those peeling off places and wood showing through.  I suppose I will keep going.


I did paint my back door blue last week.  I like blue doors.  

It looks more blue in reality and hey you can see my beautiful floor.  Do you think it will come back in style?  Was it ever haute couture?  I doubt it.  My friend's daughter used to not like coming to our house because she thought our kitchen floor was haunted.  Yes, it's bad.

quotes of the day

One of my regrets in life, and yes there are oh so many of those, but I will focus on one today, is that I didn't write more of the cute and funny things that my kids would say all the time.  My two oldest would always combine words like: cindebrella (for umbrella), fooderator (refrigerator), dinosword (sword), just to name a few that I just happen to remember.  I don't remember the others doing it, but that could just be: my poor memory, I wasn't very blown away, or I simply wasn't paying any attention to them -- all feasible possibilities.  Oh, and Charles used to come up with the most amazing little gems like, well now I can't quite remember because I didn't write it down, but something along the lines of: would infinity seconds be the same as infinity minutes?  We really wanted to write a book entitled, "Charles' Deep Thoughts," but that would have, of course, required notation of some sort or other.  At any rate, I have decided I should write some of the things that they say now so I will always remember how sweet they are.  Here are some of the things I was told directly this week.

Ella: Mom, your hair looks really nice today.

Me: Thank you so much!

Ella: Yeah, usually it looks like a hot mess.

Me: Um, well, thanks again, I guess?

Charles: You have definitely made better spaghetti!

Me: ...okay?

And this was texted to me yesterday afternoon:

Lucy: R u gone or am i missing something?

Me: I am at voice lessons with Ella.  Daddy is home.  Is Phin awake?

Lucy: Phin is still asleep as far as i'm concerned.

What does that even mean, "as far as I'm concerned," did she even check?  So there you go.  Those should keep me warm in my old age.

jinxed

I ordered this slipcover from Target to go on this free and somewhat tattered love seat and received it last week.  It feels so much fresher and matches better with the chair that I already had jerry-rigged (I just looked up that word and it was originally jury-rigged, but so many people said it wrong that jerry-rigged is now in the dictionary, isn't that fascinating?) an Ikea cover for, except that -- it seems to be jinxed.  I put it on last week and on Sunday Phin spilled red punch on it, then exactly 15 seconds after I put it back on after cleaning it on Monday he bled on it.  That is its own story in which Charles dropped one of my favorite plates, failed to sweep up all of the tiny pieces with one such piece wriggling its way into Phin's little foot.  Well, he had neglected to cry about it so I didn't know he was gushing blood when I set him on the couch so instead of being suitably sympathetic toward his injury I was kind of just rolling my eyes and laughing at the timing of it all.  Back it goes in the wash, but on the way to the laundry room I decided to grab my water bottle and accidentally knocked a glass of water off the counter in the process.  Since there was blood on the cover and cold water on the floor I did what any efficiency minded housewife would do and decided to wipe up the spilt water with the bloody cloth and kill two birds with one stone, as it were.  What I didn't realize was that there was dried up green food coloring on the floor, from when Ella made cookies last week, which had now been reconstituted to its former glory and proceeded to fulfill the measure of its creation by coloring my brand spanking new gleaming white slipcover green.  Deep breath.  I scrubbed out the blood and the food coloring on Tuesday and decided to wait a few hours to replace the cover again.  I teach my class tonight and we watch videos in the library (the fancy term we use for our "office" and where the lovely love seat resides) so I put the cover back on this morning, left the room and came back to hear, "I'm wet," from the wee one.  What???  He really has not been wetting his pants (he has been doing the other and yesterday the "other" involved smearing "that" and peppermint foot lotion all over my room, down the back stairs, a stop in the kitchen to try to clean it up himself with a hand towel, more smearing through the dining room and up the front stairs before I noticed what was happening -- never in all of my days...!  This occurrence was due, I am sure, in large part to the fact that I blogged about him being potty trained - jinx!) and it was really so, so, so ironic that when he did decide to ignore his body's promptings that it would be on the freshly cleaned, and only moments before replaced, slipcover.   Some of you may be thinking that I deserve it for trying to have a white slipcover in my house, but I have had the one on the chair for about a year and have only had to throw it in the wash about three times.  It is now hanging on the line outside, but I am a little hesitant to tempt the fates further with this.  I suppose I will persevere.  Personally I think the last fiasco was bound to happen because he was wearing his own item that is jinxed: the Thomas the Tank underwear.  It never lasts more than a couple of hours for one reason or another.  You can never beat a double jinx.


Do you own anything that is just bad news?