Tia, Mago Elf Liam, Nem-nem Niamh, Lil' Bug, and I. (kid names are aliases)
//Tia, in preparing a Family Home Evening lesson, copied and pasted from the online edition of Doctrine and Covenants, chapter 88 verses 17-20. The pasted text included what was originally the little superscript letters that indicate footnotes, but as everything was pasted plain-text, the superscript combined with the verses to form new words:
..Therefore, it must needs be asanctified from all bunrighteousness..
////the front top center of a cheerios box –
– with a tiny red heart shape printed there:
One. Baby. Heart.
//At my computer monitor when I return:
Your search – k;lo;;l;kkjlkj;jlj;;;;k;;l;;ljl;;l;l;;l;j;k kklllllllllll l;j;;llllll;jjjjjjj, ;jll;l;kl;jl;jl;l;kl; – did not match any documents.
Suggestions:
* Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
* Try different keywords.
* Try more general keywords.
* Try fewer keywords.
//Losing Tia’s grandpa several weeks ago and then more recently my own grandfather, I’ve been in kind of a state of shock and not known what to write or post. My cousin Daniel puts it briefly and well, though, in his post, linking also to another cousin’s (his sister’s) great post.
(There are many cousins’ and relatives’ blogs I don’t have in my blogroll yet, and some I’ve known about for some time but haven’t added. I’ll get them there.)
//Nem-nem took many steps yesterday on different occasions. She’s continuing today. Video footage (get it? footage, har, har) pending..
Here’s a short test clip from my new camcorder shooting in lower-quality DV (as opposed to higher-quality HD) mode, compressed with Xvid and LAME mp3, then recompressed by YouTube into Flash (.swf) format. I am aware you may not have needed to know any of that, but at least a tiny bit of my geekiness needs to bleed into this blog. I’m looking for an attractive way to host and embed video here – meanwhile, what does some lower quality video of a high quality child hurt? 🙂
//
This beyond fabulous photograph of Mago on a trampoline was taken by my dad on his cell phone camera while we were at.. a.. multi-birthday party?.. at my sister’s. (No, I don’t mean by that link that we were having a party at her blog. You can’t really do that. Well, maybe you can, but even blogs aren’t good enough for real parties.) It scales up to a large resolution pretty well, which I have done and you can grab that image if you click the thumbnail to open it. On my work computer as a “desktop” or “wallpaper” (which is it already – a desk or a wall?) this one has gotten a lot of notice.
Mago is very interested in water lately. Yesterday he placed a plastic bag in a sink and emptied a quarter of a large bottle of body wash in with running water. Fun experiment – but Tia was exasperated. He makes up words and names many things, including pretend fishes, which can be any object at all – toys, a frisbee, branches, rocks – which he collects and puts in a large plastic bin (“aquarium”) full of water (in the front yard). One example among so many I’d forget is that yesterday he named a rock a “rockfish” with a name of Thotha (“th-aw-tha”), which Tia thought I should write down for a character name in some fantasy story, which is why I’m writing it.
Nem-nem has started babbling many vowels and different consonants and blather. She’ll offer you perfect blather in perfect meaningfulness, as if it were just ordinary adult conversation, which I now recall thinking with Mago it may as well be for adults anyway. How much do we consciously remember? We might as well make it perfect blather – it’s more fun.
Nem-nem stood on her own for a good ten seconds the other day, balancing.
//Tia recently related this to me; they had just left a store and, as too often happens, Mago let go of a floating balloon they got in the store and it flew up and away in the sky. Mago commented afterward while they were in the car, and he and Tia talked:
I’m sad.
Tia said she would be sad too, and it would also be sad if any wild animal choked on the balloon. Mago latched on to this thought and began listing any of a number of wild animals that could choke on plastic if they ate it: deer, birds, whales etc, then ended with:
.. or a Truck. (pause, smiles) No, not a truck.
This morning I took him into our bedroom to say hello to mommy and Nem-nem. Nem-nem smiled at Mago and I set him down. He lay his head on her belly and they smiled at each other and she put her hands on his face. Cutest thing I ever did saw.
//At a family Halloween party Mago got a little bag of various Haloween-themed toys, which we were playing with the other day. One of them was a blank notepad with a skull on it, which I turned the pages of, prompting Mago to pretend to write a story in it.
Me: What is the story about?
Mago: A little boy.
Me: What did the little boy do?
Mago: He was playing with a toy.
Me: Then what happened?
Mago: His daddy came and took it away.
Me: Then what happened?
Mago: He cried.
Me: The little boy cried?
Mago: Yeah.
Me: Then what happened?
Mago: His daddy gave it back. And they lived happy ever.
Tia sent me an Instant Message with this one from Mago – the monitor he mentions rests on a counter above a hard floor:
Mom, I could hear you through the monitor. And I kept turning it on and off. But then the kitchen floor turned it off… so I couldn’t hear you anymore.
//Tia relates that the other day she was driving with Mago and I assume also Nem-nem, both in their car seats. She told Mago:
“Once you learn to ride your tricycle we’ll get you a bigger tricycle. And when you learn to ride that, we’ll get you a bicycle with training wheels. And when you learn to ride that, we’ll get you a bigger bicycle.”
Mago paused at these words, then said: “And then a motorcycle.”
Here are some recent recordings I made playing with him, edited together.
First it’s me wrapping him in a blanket and carrying him up and down stairs, as mentioned in Update 13, then the other day at a playground to give Tia a break, then at bath-time, he playing at drive-through operator (re Update 16).
[audio:2007_May-June_Alex_and_Mago.mp3](download mp3, 2.4MB, 5:16)
Maybe two weeks ago I played the following music over my computer and he came out of his room, sat in the chair in front of the computer, and simply listened intently. It is a Medieval Anglo-Saxon Nativity (Christmas) piece performed by Synfonye.
[audio:03_Miri_it_is__Estampie.mp3](4:20)
It isn’t legal for me to play that last here – I think I’ll just declare my guilt and settle out of court! So no download link. Synfonye has some free tracks available here. Here are several links to purchase the album – it has a lot of great stuff [1] [2] [3].
//With many visitors and folks I haven’t been in contact with wandering to this entry, likely, because of a link sent out, it’s a good time to say.. Tia is pregnant 🙂
The baby will be born sometime in early summer. That’s as specific as I’ll get – “due dates” are seldom accurate; and Tia doesn’t want folks asking her when it will be born because it makes the wait seem longer.
Apart from the lesser question of what the new baby’s alias will be here alongside Mago Elf Liam, niether of us have much idea what we’d like for his/her real name. Back to the lists..
//I think things translate well in screen format, and here’s an exchange that occured last night. Warning: the “Innapropriate Joke” (TM) – though not terribly crass – follows.
[Minor corrections here since my first post, via Tia’s different memory of some details. And might I add, as this was posted on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 – take this, you terrorists! Here in America we still consider doing things the American way!]
Sitting at the computer and accross the room from Alex, Tia is looking through her digital photograph portfolio.
Without intending to, Tia provided some very deft, in-your-face retorts. This was a perfect way of handling my innapropriate joke, and she wasn’t even aware – it was all accidental. Playing along without any shock was an excellent way to deter.
And may I say that Tia’s photography is of notice. And there’s a veiled insult I didn’t intend in the comment; which is the lie that her photography doesn’t get a lot of notice. Everyone who came and happened on her BFA final show loved it (including me).
//This was Tia’s present from me. She was reluctant (slightly embarrased) to show her family, which is why I made a point of passing it around 😉 Her sister said “Oh no.”
I think the show is neat. And I sneered on Buffy the Vampire Slayer before I got hooked on it (I like Buffy a lot more than this, or “Angel”, which comes in third among the three). Thank you Tia for cracking the shell of my snobbery. Not that anyone who doesn’t like these shows is a snob. That was only my reason.
Mago often babbles rapid, pure, melodious nonsense.
We take him to swimming pools and a pool in our backyard often. He loves playing in water, and he plays wildly. We hang a hose over one pool, and one day he would inch backward or forward until he was under it, get some in his mouth, flap his arms around, and run away from it, spitting and flapping his tongue and laughing. He also stood on the edge of the pool and jumped into the water.
If he doesn’t want to go through having his diaper changed he’ll answer you “no” if you ask him if it’s full.
Every day he says some word I didn’t know he knew.
A while ago he came across something in the store which combined three things he knows: star, pillow, and “Happy” (smily face). He became excited and repeatedly said the three words, and also said in a repeating sweet two-tone question: “Happy? Happy? Happy?” (I have a recording of this – like many other sounds and videos, someday I’ll never post it). Tia made him a circular orange pillow with a smiley face on it.
He loves tumbling and tossing around and tackling, or grabbing your face, and still very often affectionately bites and has had to learn to not bite so hard, which for the most part he doesn’t any more.
Also, some of his favorite books are Dinner Time (that one has a different cover – ours has a more frighful gorrilla), Cathy the Calf, and Bingo Bongo Bang (not finding that anywhere online), the latter of which the other day he sat by himself to flip through repeatedly, saying the words.