Milestone Minutiae

Today, Emmett ran into a door jam. At dinner, he asked me "Why did I run into the door? Why? Why? Why?" I said it must have been an accident, and asked "You didn't run into the door on purpose, did you?" The reply? "I did it on Saturday purpose." This is not the first time he's used the phrase "Saturday purpose" as a replacement for "by accident." What goes on in there, indeed.

A recent conversation: Emmett (to Stephanie): "You have short eyes and I have long eyes." Stephanie: "What does that mean?" Emmett: "That means when Christmas comes, Daddy will laugh about it."

Emmett is clearly starting to figure out the relationship between written letters and spoken words. I sound things out for him and talk about what sounds different letters make, and he mimics that. He'll ask me what makes a "t" sound, or what sound an "r" makes. He also faux-sounds out words by stuttering a little when he talks sometimes -- He'll say "b-b-ball!" and stuff like that. Granted, sometimes he'll say "b-b-Library!" but at least he's trying. Today while reading "Are you my mother?" I stopped on a page where the word "mother" appeared three times. I pointed to one of them and told him it was the word mother. Keeping my finger on that word, I asked him to find the other two times that the word "mother" appeared on the page. He did it so easily, I tried again a few pages later with the word "bird." The word "bird" was much tougher for him, though he did point to the

Another Music Together song in this collection is "Shoo Fly." After singing it this evening, I asked Emmett who he belonged to. His response, not too surprisingly, was that he belongs to me. I asked him who I belonged to. He said (and pointed) "Daddy!" I asked him who David belongs to, and he said "His mommy!"

I'm connected again, and wanted to share a couple of stories from the road. About a week before we left, we went to Happy Hollow one last time. There's a tram ride there that goes through a tunnel at one point. My friend Sarah said "Hands up in the tunnel," and the kids put their hands up. While going through Reno, the freeway goes under the strip so there's an underpass that's pretty wide. I noticed that Emmett had his hands up, and asked him what he was doing. He said "Putting my hands up." I asked him why, and he said "Hands up in the tunnel!" He did it again on the second day, in a real tunnel. Day one featured traffic in Livermore and Sacramento, so our 5 1/2 hour trip turned into 7 hours. Emmett didn't sleep much (poor guy). We passed the time listening to the new Music Together CD given to us by one of our Livermore friends. It was great to have new music that we both enjoyed to listen to! Anyway, Emmett enjoyed listeni

David has been talking about building a kit car at our new place in Utah. Emmett has decided that this sounds like fun. He says that he'll build the sides and the doors and the front and the back, and David can build the roof.

We've been really busy packing today. In all the hustle and bustle, Emmett had a late nap. When he woke up, he asked for something to eat. I gave him some grapes while we waited for David to return with dinner. He ate quite a few grapes, and then he had a pretty large dinner. After dinner, he was asking for jelly beans, cookies, and other junk food. He got a few jelly beans out of us, and I gave him some milk. He went to bed on the later side, and since we were still working, it took him a long time to fall asleep. Occasionally, he'd call one of us into the room for hugs and kisses and goodnights. But when he called David in, he said "You could get me a sandwich." David asked if he meant right now, and Emmett said "Right now." When David said he didn't need a sandwich right now, he said "Mom could get me a sandwich." Still hungry? I wonder what he'll want for breakfast tomorrow...

Emmett and David were looking through a copy of Racer magazine when Emmett looked up and said "Who is going to teach me how to drive a race car?"

Learning to count, Emmett first could only count two objects accurately. Lately I've noticed that he can do three, so I wondered if he could do more. Although he typically gets two jelly beans as a treat, I decided to put five in my hand and told him he could have them all if he could tell me how many there were. He looked down, and without pointing to them one-by-one and counting them out, he said "Five." Startled, I asked him to wait a minute, and returned with nine jelly beans in a line. This time he did count them one by one. He did it right most of the way, but at the end his pointing and counting got out of synch, so he thought there were eight. I gave him all of the jelly beans anyway. So he can accurately count somewhere between five and nine items at a time.