Entries Tagged 'Family' ↓

When K first started school I told a story about how she came home and in the course of telling me about her day, started using the word "honkin." It took me a little while figure out that she was using it to mean "very big", as in "cut the big honkin paper."

Now E is in school, and today she tells me this. "Daddy, they have a beautiful bookframe at school and next time you pick me up I get to take it home so you can see it!"

Book frame?

Anybody spot what she's talking about?

A photo album. It is a book of photographs. Photographs go in frames. Therefore, a bookframe. I love it because it's not like somebody else used that expression in front of her, and she didn't say it like "That's kind of like a book with frames in it, Daddy." She just invented a word, bookframe, that meant what she needed it to mean, and started using it like a regular part of her vocabulary.

So my 3yr old recently has decided that her Daddy and her Father are two different people. I'm actually used to having conversations like this:

"Daddy, can we watch the movie we got?"

"After dinner, maybe."

(a few minutes later) "Daddy, my Father said we can watch the movie after dinner maybe."

"I know, sweetheart, I heard him say that."

"You did? Do you know my Father?"

"Yes I do, quite well. He's very handsome, isn't he?"

"Oh yes."

And, this:

"Who is your Daddy?"

"You are."

"And who is your Father?"

"Ashley Tisdale."

For those not in the know, Ashley Tisdale is the name of the actress who plays Sharpay on High School Musical. I have no idea where the connection came from, or what "Father" versus "Daddy" means in her head that it's ok for an 18yr old blonde girl to play the former while I handle the latter.

Anyway, that's nothing compared to this morning coming down the stairs:

"Daddy, my father scooted me with a shovel in a hole."

Now that sentence is odd enough, but knowing her sense of time and memory, she could well be talking about this past summer down the cape. (When we drive by the elementary school that her big sister goes to, for example, she tends to say "I went there when I was 5", something that won't happen for two more years.) "When did I do that?" I ask, trying to recall any sort of playing at the beach where I may have done this.

"No, my *Father*," she replies, reminded me that I am not that character. "Down the beach. Remember he put sand on my head?"

I'm guessing it was some sort of dream she had. I looked at my 5yr old for help, who shrugged and said "I have no idea what she's talking about, it makes no sense."

Last night, Savion Glover was a guest on Dancing With The Stars. He's now introduced as the World's Greatest Tap Dancer, and since Gregory Hines died, that is probably accurate. He did a very weird number wearing these funky green boots, so it sound a lot more stompy than tappy, but it was still a good show, and he's obviously so amazingly comfortable in what he does that the smile never left his face. He never looked like it was anything more than warm up.

My kids, 3 and 5, are in dance class and both know about tap. So I asked them through the magic of Tivo if they wanted to see what the world's greatest tap dancer looked like. They were both very impressed.

I explained that he was also the guy who "taught the penguin how to dance in Happy Feet." I then had to explain why he didn't teach them *all* how to dance ("They could all dance a little," I explained, "But Mumble was really really good at it.")

And then my 5yr old came out with the quote of the morning:

"Tap dancing is like sign language for your feet."

This week in my news headlines I saw something about "The number of Lefties on the rise in the US." I figured it was a political story about increasing liberal identification in the polls.

Same story was on the news this morning. Turns out it's about the number of people who are left handed. D'oh!

("Ambisinister", by the way, means "left handed in both hands").

I had not heard about, as my dad put it, the dip from MIT who walked into Logan airport with a fake bomb. So apparently she's both an electrical engineering student as well as an "artist" who wanted to "stand out on career day."

Thoughts: Ok, she's an idiot. That's obvious. Anybody who walks into an airport with a fake bomb is asking to get shot. She's probably disappointed that she didn't get injured, she would have gotten more press that way.

Thought #2, does anybody besides me think that the quotes from the police actually sound disappointed that they didn't get to shoot her. The officers are like, "Yeah, well, good thing she totally cooperated with what we said to do, you know, otherwise, we would have had to shoot her….yeah…." I get the feeling there's an airport full of guards this morning who were hoping to get their own tasering video posted on YouTube. I find that even scarier. There will always be stupid college kids (particularly those that wish to push the boundaries of "art"), but trigger happy police are worrisome. Those taser videos are coming out of the woodwork now.

Update: As people that know this person check in, they're basically saying that the sweatshirt in question (with the circuit board and wires attached to it) is indeed an art project that she wears all the time. And that, "since MIT students don't do mornings, and don't particularly care what they wear", she made a mistake. Does it bother anyone else that kids who are supposedly the smartest people on the planet make such stupid decisions? A few years back an alarming number of MIT kids were drinking themselves to death. Now we've got one who is so clueless that she almost got gunned down for failing to realize that her sweatshirt, deliberately made to look like a bomb, would not go over well at the airport.

Today my wife grabbed a string, some nails, and a bunch of clothespins and headed into our sun room that is three quarters windows. She proceeded to nail up a piece of string to the molding of one of the windows, thread some clothespins onto it, and then string it across to the next window and tack it up there as well. Then she clipped the kids' latest drawings and homework to it. Voila, instant showcase!

Why, oh why, do the new prime time game shows insist on doing this? I call it the Deal Or No Deal Curse, since I saw it with that show first and now I don't watch that show anymore.

What am I talking about? When the trailer for the episode tells you what's going to happen. Tonight, for instance, it told us, before the show ever started, that the contestant's boyfriend was going to propose, and that she was going to go on to win the most money of any contestant on the history of the show.

WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD YOU TELL US THAT? So now every song lyric she sings, instead of being in suspense if she got it right, we're bored because we know she did, up until the end. Instead of giving us a reason to watch, you give us a reason to fast forward. This absolutely killed Deal or No Deal for me, which was reduced to just random number picking. At least with Lyrics you get to hear some music. Outrageous.

On top of that, the buildup did not even suit the ending. Every commercial break (which, by the way, seemed to come more frequently as we approached the end) was filled with the same sort of suspenseful "Wait until you see how this ends!" nonsense. How did it end? With a whimper, not a bang, as she walked away with $350k, not even seeing the million dollar question. Who cares? A contestant won $350k last week. I was hoping this one would at least get to see the million dollar question.

The show could be dead to me now. It seems like they're going to do that every episode. In the preview for next week it was "This waitress whose fiance is serving overseas is trying to save up enough money for a wedding….until Wayne Brady gets a special call from a distant land that motivates her to go all the way…" I mean, COME ON! WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?

3yr old, during her normal morning potty break, says to me, "Daddy? I love my sister whole big."

Awwwwwww.

It's actually become her catch phrase, she's saying it every day this week. "I whole big love you, Daddy!"

"I whole big love you too, sweetheart. Now go whole big love Mommy."

Then again, my 3yr old (both my girls, actually) can recite Shakespeare, too. I'm still trying to find a place to show off that trick, but none of the adults they come in contact with have any idea what they're talking about :).

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2512486.html?menu=news.quirkies

This story is so silly is seems like something out of Weekly World News.  A husband and wife are both engaging in online affairs, only to find out that they've been speaking with each other.  How romantic!  Just like that song that my wife likes!  Well, not so much.  They're getting divorced, each citing the other's infidelity.  Apparently they missed the point of the song.

http://notorc.blogspot.com/2007/09/anatomy-of-humor-5-guy-walks-into-bar.html

Many many variations on the old start to a joke.  Many are stupid and forced, which disappointed me, although I did learn a couple of new ones.

They left out my favorite, though.

A mushroom walks into a bar and orders a drink.  Bartender says, "Get out of here, we don't serve mushrooms."

Mushroom says, "Aw come on, I'm a fungi!"

A friend's wife laughed at that joke, literally, for years.  She'd call up and leave messages on the answering machine with it.