MTN, singing, “AB-”
HEN, shouting, “CD-”
MTN, “EF-”
HEN, “G!”
MTN, “HI-”
HEN, “JK-
MTN, “LMNO-”
HEN, “Poop.”
21 May
One from MTN2, and one from OMN, and one from HEN
MTN2, “Mom, when was the first war?”
SJZ, “I dunno. I suppose when Cain slew Abel.”
MTN2, “How did you know Cain’s middle name?
______________
OMN heard me humming along to an iPod and asked, “Dad, is that the song that made you and Mom fall in love?”
______________
HEN is playing with Scrabble pieces, arranging them onto the tile racks. Suddenly, he stands up, raises his arms in victory and declares, “Now I know my ABC’s! Now I know my ABC’s!”
10 May
MTN Interpreting HEN, HEN Interpreting MTN
If you’ve had email for at least a few years, no doubt you’ve received the spam email that shows us how our brains can interpret words even when they’re jumbled, for example:
Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
That’s pretty much how I feel when I listen to HEN speaking. If I repeat what he says enough times, I figure it out and then I’ll try and help him pronounce some of the words the right way.
So yesterday, I took his brand new Lightning McQueen shoes that he wanted to wear in the sprinklers, and I put them on top of the piano. He calls them “racers” instead of “shoes.” This morning, he comes over to show me that he has retrieved them from that spot.
He says, with most of the translation provided, “I took my new racers off the -ano.”
I said, “Oh, you took your racers off the piano.”
He said, “No, the ano.”
I said, “No, it’s P-ano.”
He said, again with translation provided, “Ooooo, that’s disgusting.”
7 May
Grade school justice
Tonight we told the story about Nephi and Sam getting smitten with rods by Laman and Lemuel, and the fortuitous, salvific intervention of an angel.
Miles asked, “Why were they beating Sam? Nephi started it.”
4 May
Overheard
OMN was in the room with the TV on, though off in his own little world doing something else. But he always listens. A character on the TV was listing geniuses, “Albert Einstein, Mozart, Socrates…”
OMN says, “Cool! I’m on a soccer team too!”
19 Apr
NAGELS BREAK THE LAW!
Our VW Golf clutch gave up the ghost two years after we burned it up in bumper-to-bumper up the hill to Dodgers Stadium. This time we were 30 miles east of Denver and it was snowing. We called a VW repair center in Aurora and they could get to work on it immediately if we could get it in. It was 3pm Friday. We had a wrecker zoom out to get the car. When he arrived it occurred to me that we had no way to tow the family into town. Wade the Wrecker said, “Well just put your seat belts on. I don’t know what else to do.”
So we climbed back in our Golf, put on our seat belts, and then they dragged the car onto the bed of the Wrecker and we drove into town.
So of course this would be better with a photo, but I couldn’t get one for obvious reasons. In any event, imagine riding at bus height, shaking around a bit, and with the added excitement of ducking whenever another car or truck passed by.
With the snow piling onto the windshield and our breath fogging up the insides, I think we went unnoticed.
It was completely unnerving, but as Wade the Wrecker said, “I don’t know what else we can do.” Well, once we were up there, we thought of all kinds of alternatives. As usual, most of my ideas arrive in my head right about the time they are no longer useful.
SJZ suggested another title for this post: SAVED BY THE BELLS. The car needed a new clutch, so it couldn’t be fixed by Friday close of business. My old mission pal, S. Bell of Parker CO, picked us up at the VW joint and took us inn for the night. Very gracious and very fun. His family is practically a mirror image of my family….and they have a Wii.
“Our door is always open to our friends who pass our way…” Thanks Bells.
12 Apr
A rose by any other name…
I remember when my Grandpa Nagel would refer to me as “Matt-er-Jack-er-Matt…” He was 94, so it was understandable.
SJN is not yet 35, but often mixes the boys’ names. Recently, O proposed a solution.
“Mom, why don’t you name me Harper so that you’ll call me Owen.”
[As a grammatical note, I believe the phrase "why don't you" is the meaning equivalent of "you ought to" and therefore does not constitute a question, hence no question mark. Just a little cyga there (cover your grammatical ...)]
11 Apr
Too many questions
We’re road tripping to Texas. O was in the backseat rolling out a question spree that was starting to annoy SJN. Anyone else who has had a four-, five- or six-year-old knows exactly what I’m talking about.
So SJN explains that the muscles in her ears are tired of working so hard and they just need a little break from all his pointless questions. O doesn’t seem to care.
His next question: “How are miles made?” (We’re pretty sure he used a lowercase “m”, which makes a big difference in how we’d have to answer that question.)
Exasperated SJN says, “There just aren’t any answers to questions like that.”
O says, “Why aren’t there any answers to questions like that?”
Please respond with YOUR answers to that question.
(Our answer was just laughing and shaking our heads.)
8 Apr
Oliver vs. Wii
In our continued effort to raise cultured young boys, I forced them into watching the 1968 musical Oliver, which won the Oscar for best picture. They were unimpressed. After Oliver wants more gruel, this old man takes him outside, walks him down the street and sings, “Boy for sale.” So I asked our boys, “What if I walked down the street trying to sell all of you?”
MTN2 says, “I hope I would get chosen by a man who has a Wii.”
9 Mar
Says O
Sunday nights, we watch the Sunday morning political shows recorded earlier. O couldn’t fall asleep tonight after trying to sleep for approximately six minutes, so he came in to watch with us. After the This Week on ABC, we watched the monologue from SNL from last night.
SNL opened with a parody of Tim Geitner offering $420 billion to the first person to call-in with a plan to solve the banking crisis. At one point he says, “I know what you’re thinking, what if two people call in with the same plan, who gets the $420 billion dollars? Well, in such a case, each person would get $210 billion dollars.”
O said incredulously, “That’s not what I was thinking.”
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