We woke up this morning to rain. It was supposed to keep raining (with maybe a few snowflakes mixed in) until afternoon, when it would transition to snow and we would get a few inches. Wouldn't you know it, the clouds missed the weather report. (That's been happening a lot lately!) Ten minutes after Tim left for work to do some photocopying for tomorrow's 8 AM class, snow started pouring down out of the sky. And it kept pouring down for the next hour or so, at which point I got a call from Tim saying he was almost home, but couldn't get up the hill at the end of our street. After waiting for a while to see if a snowplow would come through, he parked his car where it was and walked the rest of the way home. He is very thankful for his new snow boots!
Just before Esther's nap a snowplow left the road looking pretty good, so while I put her down, Tim suited up and headed back down the street to see if he could move the car. He tells me that the wheels were spinning like mad on his way up the hill and he didn't know if he was going to make it, but in the end he did. Then he got stuck coming in our driveway, just in time to provide an obstacle for the garbage truck that was coming along behind him. And once that was taken care of, he still had to shovel the driveway in order to get the car into the garage. But it is now safely parked under cover, and we don't have to worry about getting up at some frigid hour of the morning to walk down the street and shovel the car out from behind a ridge of piled-up snow just so that Tim can get to work. (Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if he has late start tomorrow, but we won't know that until later tonight.)
I think we've already gotten the high end of the range of accumulation that was forecast, and it's still coming down. But, with the car safely put away and nowhere that we have to go...let it snow!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
silly Esther
I will eventually get back to my Revised Plan series, but we recently got back from a week in the DC area and are now getting caught up on stuff here. Meanwhile, I've been adding funny happenings to a draft of this post for a while now, and it's gotten long enough that I think it's time to publish!
We've been trying to model apologies and acceptances for Esther. She gets the idea, but not all the fine points of wording; hence, after apologizing for something she herself has done to hurt or aggravate one of us, she will frequently add, "I forgive you!" So, one day around Halloween when Esther spontaneously called to me through the bathroom door, "I forgive you, Mommy! Mommy! I forgive you!!" I had my suspicions that she might be feeling guilty about something. Sure enough, when I came out she showed me how she had accidentally pushed the lid of her jack 'o lantern down inside. I was just glad it was nothing major!
Esther, like her Mommy, enjoys learning new words and using them correctly. So when she hears me say something wrong, of course she has to set me straight. As in the following conversation:
Mommy: Look at that snow blowing around out there!
Esther: It's called wind.
Speaking of words, Esther still sometimes transposes sounds within words. The funniest is that she consistently calls "energy," "injury." As in, "I have lots of injury! [jumping up and down]"
Esther has now watched certain DVDs enough times that she goes around randomly quoting from them. This makes for some...err...really out-of-context comments, like the following.
Esther (inspecting freshly baked brownies, quoting from a Little Tykes episode): Ewww, stinky! Oh well, let's keep looking for octopi.
And speaking of stinky, the other day I took some old leftovers out of the refrigerator. I expected them to be bad, but they looked fine, so I took off the lid and smelled them. DEFINITELY bad. Esther heard my "Oh, yuuuuuuck!" and hurried over to ask what was going on. I explained that the food had gone bad and it was disgusting now. Her response: "Can I try it, Mommy?"
Tim was frustrated because he had spent a long time writing an e-mail and then lost it just as he was about to send it. Esther asked him, "What's wrong? Talk about it!" So he explained why he was feeling upset. She reassured him, "It's okay, Daddy. You can play doggy!" How can you stay mad when you can play doggy? :-)
Esther still like to do "cheers" with with things that are alike. The other day she noticed that all three of us were wearing black pants. So the next thing I know, I feel a little hip bumping into my leg as she gleefully exclaims, "cheers!"
While we were in DC, we made it to the zoo. Earlier in the day, Esther was discussing with an adult friend what she might see at the zoo, and panda bears were mentioned. Esther informed us that pandas eat bamboo, and then said wistfully, "If only we had bamboo growing in our yard! Then we could pick some and bring it for the baby panda to eat."
Today I said something to Tim about somebody raising their eyebrows. We heard a surprised giggle from inside the closet (where Esther was entertaining herself doing who-knows-what), and Esther popped her head out to say, "She can't do that!" "She can't raise her eyebrows?" I asked. "No," confirmed Esther, "they're kind of sticky." And Esther demonstrated by pulling on her own eyebrows that they cannot, in fact, be removed.
I LOVE it that Esther can talk as well as she does. It makes life so interesting! But it can also have its downside--namely, she has learned to argue. One day Tim told her to get off the "sill" of our bay window, which she has been told not to climb on before. She informed him in a placating tone of voice (and without any move to do as she had been told) that she didn't have socks on, so she wouldn't slip. In some exasperation, Tim told her that she's not supposed to argue until she's a teenager. "Not argue till I'm a teenager?" Esther replied. "That's silly!"
We've been trying to model apologies and acceptances for Esther. She gets the idea, but not all the fine points of wording; hence, after apologizing for something she herself has done to hurt or aggravate one of us, she will frequently add, "I forgive you!" So, one day around Halloween when Esther spontaneously called to me through the bathroom door, "I forgive you, Mommy! Mommy! I forgive you!!" I had my suspicions that she might be feeling guilty about something. Sure enough, when I came out she showed me how she had accidentally pushed the lid of her jack 'o lantern down inside. I was just glad it was nothing major!
Esther, like her Mommy, enjoys learning new words and using them correctly. So when she hears me say something wrong, of course she has to set me straight. As in the following conversation:
Mommy: Look at that snow blowing around out there!
Esther: It's called wind.
Speaking of words, Esther still sometimes transposes sounds within words. The funniest is that she consistently calls "energy," "injury." As in, "I have lots of injury! [jumping up and down]"
Esther has now watched certain DVDs enough times that she goes around randomly quoting from them. This makes for some...err...really out-of-context comments, like the following.
Esther (inspecting freshly baked brownies, quoting from a Little Tykes episode): Ewww, stinky! Oh well, let's keep looking for octopi.
And speaking of stinky, the other day I took some old leftovers out of the refrigerator. I expected them to be bad, but they looked fine, so I took off the lid and smelled them. DEFINITELY bad. Esther heard my "Oh, yuuuuuuck!" and hurried over to ask what was going on. I explained that the food had gone bad and it was disgusting now. Her response: "Can I try it, Mommy?"
Tim was frustrated because he had spent a long time writing an e-mail and then lost it just as he was about to send it. Esther asked him, "What's wrong? Talk about it!" So he explained why he was feeling upset. She reassured him, "It's okay, Daddy. You can play doggy!" How can you stay mad when you can play doggy? :-)
Esther still like to do "cheers" with with things that are alike. The other day she noticed that all three of us were wearing black pants. So the next thing I know, I feel a little hip bumping into my leg as she gleefully exclaims, "cheers!"
While we were in DC, we made it to the zoo. Earlier in the day, Esther was discussing with an adult friend what she might see at the zoo, and panda bears were mentioned. Esther informed us that pandas eat bamboo, and then said wistfully, "If only we had bamboo growing in our yard! Then we could pick some and bring it for the baby panda to eat."
Today I said something to Tim about somebody raising their eyebrows. We heard a surprised giggle from inside the closet (where Esther was entertaining herself doing who-knows-what), and Esther popped her head out to say, "She can't do that!" "She can't raise her eyebrows?" I asked. "No," confirmed Esther, "they're kind of sticky." And Esther demonstrated by pulling on her own eyebrows that they cannot, in fact, be removed.
I LOVE it that Esther can talk as well as she does. It makes life so interesting! But it can also have its downside--namely, she has learned to argue. One day Tim told her to get off the "sill" of our bay window, which she has been told not to climb on before. She informed him in a placating tone of voice (and without any move to do as she had been told) that she didn't have socks on, so she wouldn't slip. In some exasperation, Tim told her that she's not supposed to argue until she's a teenager. "Not argue till I'm a teenager?" Esther replied. "That's silly!"