Danisms

First, this post from Nathan Bransford is nice: http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2007/10/talking-to-yourself.html
His point is: If you have to talk yourself into something, it probably isn't right. I agree in most cases. Except visiting teaching and making dinner. I have to talk myself into those things, and they are right. I have yet to successfully talk myself into keeping the house clean, so I don't know about that. But if you're trying to talk yourself into, oh, say--marrying someone? I might pause a bit longer before jumping into that.

Now, Dan:

he says "Mom, can I have some pied apples? Oh, mean Dried apples?"

I said, "Oh, Dan--your diaper stinks! PU!"
He said, "P Me!"
(Pee Indeed...thought I)

I just said to Dan: "Your name is Daniel. Do you know what your long name is?"
"Poop," he answered confidently.

And, no, nobody has ever called him that ever before.

Dan perched on the edge of the bathtub and said, "I want to ride a horse, too!" I guess the tub is a horse.

Tonight, I was getting toast for everyone and the butter knife slipped out of my hands and landed between his feet. He started laughing and said, "Mom, I like that time when you smashed my toes with the knife." (I am not exaggerating. He really said all that, word for word).

And all this was just today!

Anda

Misc note first of all: There is another virtual academy--Connections Academy. It's a national online school with branches (usu. charter schools) nationwide, but not in every state. Their target audience seems to be ahead/behind students who don't fit into the traditional classroom because of the way their brains work. It appeals to me because the promotional materials say you can go as fast (or slow within reason) as you want, even completing multiple grades in one year if you want--in one subject or all of them. Very cool.

Anyway, Anda:

Anda is sick today. Stomach/intestinal yuckies. She was walking around with a "throw up bowl" under her chin. "Are you throwing up?" I asked. "Apparently not," she said sourly.

You ask a stupid question......

Also, the kids reminded me of the first story Anda ever told us. I think she was two. The story went, "Once upon a time there was an ugly old frog who was dead. The end."

Anda loves to tell stories. They go on and on. When she tells a traditional folktale, she's never content to stop at happily ever after. Instead, she says, "The End. Now, verse two." Most of Anda's stories have verses, which are something between what you would call 'chapters' and 'variations on a theme.' Most verses include her favorite toy, Baby Kitty, and Caleb's toy, Guy the Green Bear.

She also loves to break out of traditional songs with improvised, scat-singing breaks, which she invariably wants us to sing along to and gets mad if we improvise different than she does.

Kid News

Caleb has discovered "Alice in Wonderland." I left my copy of the Philosopher's Alice (a version with sidenotes about philosophy and nonsense) on the floor, and he found it and was instantly enamored with the fact that there was a child named "Pig" who turns into a pig. So I got Caleb the other version I have--one with side notes defining the more difficult words and with pictures of the less-common things mentioned in the book. He loves it, but he says he especially likes the second verse of "You are Old, Father William."

We found a fully-accredited k-12 public school that functions entirely online. It is the Branson School. Branson is a small town in Colorado, .3 miles from the New Mexico border, with a population of 77. No joke. But the Branson School Online provides computers and teachers, curriculum, feedback, etc. The kids stay at home with parents as teachers, but they are enrolled in school and provided with all the "stuff" that public school kids get (books, field trips, etc). Because it is public school, everything is free. Because Colorado supports school choice, the school is filled on a first-come, first-served basis. So we applied. It may be just the right thing for Caleb. Because it's online, it is individualized, and they say they want school to fit in the family's schedule, instead of the other way around. They don't do letter grades, but do have evaluations. I am excited about the possibilities inherent in doing a school all online. I hope we aren't seriously disappointed. If we are, there is another --the Colorado Virtual Academy that is both charter school and virtual school, all online, and based out of a suburb of Denver, so they also have regular outings and stuff. How did I not know about all this before?

Anyway, on to the other kids:

Anda is reading well now. She won't do it on demand, but likes to read to herself, and, when questioned, really is reading. Most days her name is Baby Kitty. Or Becca (then she makes me be Anda or Tim. Talk about confusing!). Sometimes she's Scruffy the Tugboat (remember when Caleb was Soonle Great? Scruffy is a different character from the same movie). Sometimes she's Perdita, and then one of the others of us has to be Pongo (from 101 Dalmations). Sometime's she's Kiki (from Kiki's Delivery Service). Sometimes she's something else. Talk about confusing. To add to the confusion, sometimes the kids go play in their room, and sometimes they go play on the "Highland Sennec Ship"--their bunkbed, I mean rocket.

Daniel is verbalizing a lot of things, and he sees the world in a unique way. For example, when the Baby's binkie falls out, he says, "Oops! Fell Off. Back on..." and he tries to put it back in. Upside down. He's very consistent about that. One day "Benj'nin" wouldn't take the binkie. He kept spitting it back out. I heard, "Fell off. Back on. Fell off. Back on. Fell off." Then Dan came trotting over to me and said, "Fix it," and handed me the binkie.

A few days later, I took off his very soggy diaper (he always says that, too, "Not poopy, mom. Soggy.") and then got distracted before I got another diaper on him. When I turned around, he was just starting to pee on the floor. I shouted, but my arms were full of baby and I couldn't get a diaper on him just that seconds, so I said, "Run outside" (the back door was open) "and pee out there." So he ran outside, and I got distracted again. About two minutes later, I was finally putting down the baby, and Dan ran back inside bawling. I said, "What's wrong!" and he said, "Doesn't work!" and cried and cried. I finally figured it out--he hadn't been able to pee outside after I startled him, and he thought he was broken!

So that's Dan. Cute as ever.

Benj is getting cute, too. He smiles more and more, and loves to have a two-way "Conversation" of goos and coos. He likes to talk to his painting of black and white flowers that hangs over my rocking chair. And he seems to have respiratory allergies. I spent several days trying to pinpoint the one thing it probably was. Then I realized it was probably all of the things--the cottonwood fluff, the pollen, the dog that came to visit, the perfume in Relief Society, the mold that we found in the swamp cooler pads, dust, etc. Poor kid. He's only 7 weeks old, and he's already smashed with hay fever. He'll probably have asthma, too.

Now all the grandmas and aunts and uncles have been duly updated. You can go back to reading your email again.