(Download mp3, ~1.8MB, 1 Min 21 sec.)
Fire and Water
Nem-nem stands on top of a two-foot tall bureau. Mago is on the floor. Nem switches the light for the room off, and squeals. Mago crouches down in a ball and starts shaking his head, or wiggling around on the floor.
Mago (squealing and whimpering): WATER! I’M UNDERWATER! I’M UNDERWATER! AHH! HELP! I’M UNDERWATER!
Nem (brightly): Oh, I sorry!
Nem switches the light on. Mago stands up and starts waving his arms, twirling or running around.
Mago (still squealing and whimpering): FIRE! FIRE! I’M ON FIRE! HELP! I’M ON FIRE!
Nem (again, brightly): Oh, I sorry!
Nem switches the light off and squeals. Mago crouches down in a ball, and the whole cycle repeats again, a dozen times, or two dozen, or more..
There are so many little things I have not written down!
Tia, surfing Facebook:
“There are 237 Tia Halls on Facebook.”
Me: “I’m sorry.”
Tia: “.. This one’s ‘flipping the bird.'”
More mouses, please
1. About a week ago while Tia was out on an errand with the kids (I was home alone), I crossed the hall into the kitchen, and when I arrived, I heard a small, high, but loud “EEEK!”, and in the same instant a smallish brown blob (for all I could see) darted from the wall above the stairs very fastly past my boots and made a BANG sound thumping into the folding door in front of the dryer – but that was the last I could see of the mouse.
When I told Tia, she made sure the traps were still set (they needed resetting).Ā We caught the mouse a few days later, and released him the same as the first.Ā I was going to bring the video camera for this but discovered its battery needed recharging, so I couldn’t capture the event.Ā However, it wasn’t as exciting – the mouse was larger, dark brown, and moved more like a squirrel – again past my boots on escape, only much more slowly.Ā Since it was slow I wonder if it was the same mouse I heard shriek ..
Update: Snake
We found our snake on the balcony.Ā What a relief! No idea how it got there.
(And we bought a more secure and spacious glass tankĀ than the ice cream bucket for him to live in.)
Snake
Mago’s grandma Helen caught a garden snake in her garage, and donated it to him (after seeing his interest when she donated another captured friend to other grandchildren).Ā It’s home is a big plastic ice cream tub.
Mago left it in his room with the lid too loose some time earlier today.
Loose enough for the snake to push up.
It has escaped.
In a great big old house that is a small creature’s hide-and-seek dream.Ā Or nightmare.Ā Current theories are that it must be trapped in a heat ventilation duct – it could easily fit down one, but back up and out, I don’t know.Ā I believe it may die – unless it’s much cleverer and agile than I think (it’s around 20 inches long, I’d guess) – in which case it will simply find its way into the wild.
I do not believe it will turn up, but we may try buying a live mouse (re last post, ironically) to put in a snake trap to lure it, on the chance it is still around.
Mouse
About a week ago Tia saw, late at night, a mouse run around the corner of the bed and toward a wall.Ā We turned over everything we reasonably could at a late hour (in our tiredness) but didn’t find the mouse.
So the next day she bought some humane mousetraps, a type that merely shuts a door on its prisoner instead of smashing its brains out.
(I shudder – never mind such traps are far easier and less disgusting to manage.)
Over the next few days the kids eagerly awaited the capturing of mice (Nem: “More mouses, please”).Ā One morning Tia found a trap set off, but it seemed so light, and the traps had previously been set off without capturing anything, so she opened the trap door to reset it – and a mouse scurried out and ran and hid in a corner, behind and under some things.Ā Ā She managed then to trap the mouse in a shoebox, which she taped shut.
We set off to Rock Canyon, the kids very eager to see the mouse as we would release it into the wild.
I videotaped this release, which (edited) footage follows, with some walking and playing with the kids afterward.Ā After the mouse’s escape Tia asked me if I’d captured footage ofĀ something particular (and very remarkable) about it on tape.Ā I hadn’t noticed, and thought I hadn’t captured it.Ā But it certainly showed in the lens and on the camera’s video display.Ā I only noticed by playing it back frame by frame, and for only six frames (at the frames per second rate multiplied by 5, and to put it more technically, that something like the “blink of an eye“).
You may also miss it on the first pass – this render will repeat the surprise in slow motion.Ā Here is a still – please only show this after watching the video. [spoiler](Link to image file)[/spoiler]
(It also starts off with a relevant silly clip from a video game I played when I was a kid – exported from an emulator.)
For a higher quality video click the link that says “play in new window” after “(hifi)”.
Reading with Nem
(10 Minutes 40 seconds.Ā Download mp3, ~8MB)
I could edit this down substantially, but that would be like taking one bite out of a sweet pear and chucking the rest into a gorge.
Plural for oops and other items
Says Nem at various times:
Opies. [Oopses.]
Getting dollies out of a bin in grandma’s basement:
Dollies now, please.
Singing and twirling around in her older brother’s batman shirt hand-me-down:
Princess, princess, princess..
In a rage of denial, most every morning:
Candy now!Ā Candy now!Ā Candy now! Candy now!..
After sneaking out of her room late at night and meeting me as I come to the top of the stairs; whispering, andĀ imploringly nodding her head repeatedly:
JuiceāJuiceāJuice, PleaseāJuiceāJuice, PleaseāJuiceāJuiceāJuice, PleaseāJuice, PleaseāJuice…
This evening Mago played at shooting
Everything in the whole world and fireballs!
out of his hand, as an attack (as always, towards yours truly, his dad, who amuses him with violent reactions).Ā Nem joined in, issuing attacks at me the same way:
Moon, nose!
Admiration and comprehension
At potty time, Nem-nem, making a situational comparison, declares of her absent brother, simply:
Nin-an. Poop. Big.
I tell Nem I’ll be right back, go to her brother’s room where he is settling in for bed time, and only repeat this as it was spoken; it is immediately understood. Mago bursts into fits of giggles, Tia laughs.
As Nem is later getting ready for bed, she babbles, and Mago, trying for Nem’s attention but failing, recites “facts” rather like the exaggerated ones we hear about fish..
Ah, these are the things that get at a father’s heart, stirring imaginations of a child’s future accomplishments..
Meanwhile, back at the church..
This afternoon as we drove home from church (I was at the wheel), Tia asked the kids about their Sunday School lessons.Ā She asked Nem (who is 2 years old at this writing) what her lesson in Nursury was about.Ā In reply Nem babbled something that sounded to me as if it had the words “hands” and “pencil” in it – drawing? – but Tia and I don’t understand.Ā Tia runs a check:
Tia: Did you talk about Jesus?
Nem: Yes.
Tia: Did you talk about families?
Nem: Yes.
Tia: Did you talk about hippopotumuses?
Nem: (a bit incredulously) No.
Nem, pointing to
sube
Me: (looking at a coloring template printout from the internet) ‘Sube?’
Tia: What?
Me: It says ‘sube’. Llama – home.. high mountains. Favorite food.. grass. Movement.. climb, sube.
Tia: Hmm..
Me: Maybe that’s a kind of movement?
Tia: Oh, it’s probably Spanish.
Me: But there’s no other Spanish word on here.
Tia: Welcome to the genius of those who create Dora.