Author: Shane

Poor little naive Shane

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We were sitting in the bathroom at the new house, and I noticed something in the heating vent.

“What do you think that is?” I asked Evelyn. “Is it a letter?”
“I think it is a book,” said Evelyn.
“A book?” I said, getting all excited. “Maybe this is where they hid the secret tome with the forbidden knowledge! It could have been hidden here for decades! Let’s get it out!”

We ran immediately to the toolbox and got a screwdriver. It only took a few seconds to get the grate off.

Now, obviously I didn’t REALLY think it was a forgotten spell book, but I was at least hoping for an old newspaper or something. We found some old newspapers in my house growing up one time and it was a lot of fun to read the old stories and look at the old ads.

With Evelyn excitedly peering over my shoulder I removed…an extremely explicit adult magazine.

Why, oh why, did it never occur to me that the kind of “book” you’d find hidden away in the bathroom would indeed be forbidden knowledge?? I felt so hopelessly naive. It never in a million years would have crossed my mind for even a second, but it seemed so obvious in retrospect. I guess it says a lot about me that I was totally convinced it would be some secret mystery text, possibly leading to an adventure, rather than something so obvious.

Luckily it was kind of rolled up and I whisked it away before Evelyn could see what was going on, but of course she wanted to know what was going on. After all the hype, why did I run away with it so fast?

“Evelyn and I just found a dirty magazine in the bathroom,” I hissed to Sara. “What do I tell her?”
“Tell her it was a gun magazine,” said Sara.

“It wasn’t for kids,” I said. “It was, uh, a gun magazine.”
“Oh,” said Evelyn. She still looked like she didn’t believe me, but to my great relief she didn’t push it any farther.

According to the cover, that magazine had been in the bathroom for about 26 years. I guess you really don’t know what you’re going to find hidden in your house! Just got to remember to be a little more circumspect (and worldly!) next time.

Kwkwkwkwkw (chicken)

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Alex has a couple of words that he consistently says to indicate something, even though they don’t sound anything like the word itself. For example, “Guh” is always cheese. He will point to it in books, he will ask for “More guh”, and he will show you where it belongs in the refrigerator. If you say, “Do you want more guh?” he will laugh, but if you say, “Do you want more cheese?” he will shake his head yes, violently.

So he knows that cheese is cheese, but it just comes out guh for some reason.

One of the entries in Alex’s word list was “Kwkwkwkwkw (chicken)”. This was my attempt to spell the way he says chicken, and it is ADORABLE. Again, chicken is always consistently this sound, kind of a cross between clearing your throat and choking to death.

Anyway, enjoy:

Entrepreneur

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Oliver bought cookies at a bake sale today, and they look gooooooood.

So good, in fact, that he is now turning a profit by selling them to Sara and me for more than he paid for them. In fact, after dinner he was too full to finish his cookie and he offered to sell me his leftovers for $0.25.

The irony is that that boy is loaded and refuses to spend any money anyway. On the other hand, if anybody was going to raise cheap kids, you knew it was going to be Sara and me.

Alex’s Word List

/ Shane / 1 Comment

In the spirit of posts like this one, Sara and I have been putting together a list of words that Alex knows. We started with a few words, and then we kept coming up with more and more, texting each other additional words for the list, until we realized that Alex knows a lot of words! It seems like he learns a new one every hour or so, so I better publish this quick, otherwise we will never stop adding to it.

I think it is a pretty impressive list of words for a not-even-one-and-a-half year old!

To quote from the post about Oliver:

So I tried to be very conservative in my list, and only include words that he uses often and obviously understands completely. He has a lot of words that he has said just a few times, or that he repeats after you, but has not used independently. So those I didn’t include. He also understands about 100 times more words than this, but I think that’s pretty normal.

Anyway, here is the (partial!) list, in no particular order:

  • book
  • Eva (Evelyn)
  • Oliver
  • Mama
  • Dada
  • Up
  • Down
  • More
  • apple
  • applesauce
  • avocado
  • cracker
  • egg
  • pasta
  • pizza (sounds pretty much exactly like pasta)
  • water
  • burger
  • Guh (cheese)
  • Guh (keys)
  • Vroom-vroom (car or anything with wheels)
  • Ambulance
  • Airplane
  • No
  • Packer
  • Girl
  • There
  • vata?  (flower)
  • elephant
  • bacon
  • pancake
  • hammer
  • come on
  • Nana (cat)
  • Da (dog)
  • Kwkwkwkwkw (chicken)
  • Ba (bear)
  • fish sound (fish)
  • rar (for lion or other big cat)
  • Monster
  • Elmo
  • Bir (d)
  • Who-who (owl)
  • Tongue clicking (horse)
  • Baah (sheep)
  • (ba) nana
  • Buh (bottle)
  • Buh (bib)
  • Buh (bug)
  • Buh (ball)
  • buh (bus)
  • balloon
  • bicycle
  • elephant

Maybe tractor too. Maybe puzzle. He also inexplicably still signs a few words, but refuses to actually make the noises: bye-bye, night-night, all done, milk, train.

 

A New Look

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Fiddling with the look of the website today. It has been a long time since I’ve freshened it up! I don’t believe in the thirteen or so years that I’ve been running this thing that I’ve ever gone with a light theme. What do you know, I kind of like it!

I think I basically have it how I want it (mostly just cleaner, dare I say, more professional?), but don’t be surprised if you notice some additional changes in the days to come.

— The Management