busy week

It was this time last week that I was returning from my trip to the northwest. We came home to a 104 degree day and it only got hotter throughout the week.

We have been busy this week but I am starting to get my photos organized from my trip so I will begin my stories about that soon. I know, I know, you don't need to remind me that you are still waiting for last year's tales from my trip.

This week, I have slept a lot. I also grew a new tooth and I have another on the way. (This maybe explains why I did not sleep for more than three fitful hours a night on my vacation.)

And our big activity this week was hosting a breakfast meeting with our beloved county commissioner, Karen Ford. She knows everything about water. My mom says she is heroic because the Commissioners' Court cancelled a contract with the evil KBR. As you can see from the photo, she gets my vote.

fish

By some strange coincidence, my great-grandfather's last name was Fish and he was a master fisherman. This is a photo of him trying to teach my dad how to fish off the pier in Florida.

My mom has been trying to find photos to make a display for my grandfather's memorial. Her photos are terribly disorganized. Before the house flooded, she used to have them grouped by date, event, location etc. When they quickly pulled everything out of the closet to keep it all from getting ruined, everything got all mixed up. Since I was born shortly after the flood, nothing ever got reorganized. So we cannot find a lot of photos and my parents had done some fun things with my great-grandfather in recent years. the wedding. my sister's graduation. Kennedy Space Center. Islands of Adventure on Christmas Day. Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Victoria. My great-grandfather was also here the first week Remus was here on a trial visit.

Speaking of Remus, my new phrase today is "bad dog." Let's not even talk about why I know how to say that.

Back to fishing. This was, I think, my great-grandfather's last fishing trip ever. My mom, dad, and him went out on the pier. (This was in 2007 . . . before I was born, of course.) My mom just went along to visit and take photos since our PETA friends would not approve of us killing or harming animals. Anyhow, it wasn't more than five minutes into the fishing trip that my great-grandfather pulled a big yellow fish out of the ocean.

We were happy to find this roll of film.

Russian

Yesterday was my last day with Jolanda (for now). She is going to Europe to study for several months and then she will have a practicum in Toronto and another in Portland before she finally comes back to me. I will not see her for a lot of months and I am heartbroken.

To try to convince her to stay, I was extra cute yesterday. I dressed in my orange sunsuit (which is her favorite outfit of mine and she calls it my "pumpkin dress").

I learned something new about Jolanda yesterday. When she was studying Russian (who even knew that she also knew Russian???), she would write her grocery lists in that language to help her learn. wow is she ever smart. We have decided that, if anyone else is to ever work with me, she is the standard by which all others will be judged. Not that we would EVER ever EVER in a hundred million years hire someone from Craigslist, we checked out what kind of "nannies" are available . . . or I should say Advailllable. They all want to be paid "in Advancced." Of course, those nannies all promise to be affordable, but you get what you pay for. Childcare is not where you want to try to save money! In the end, though, it feels like we way underpaid Jolanda; she did such a good job with me that you might think she was making the same salary as the CEO of BP.

Did anyone ever remember that my sister had Jolanda for a teacher in the high school at Waldorf?

sigh. I guess my efforts to convince her to stay failed. Now I am counting the days until her return. We have no real plans about what to do between now and then. My sister will play with me sometimes next week.

I have a photo of me and Jolanda playing on Thursday. I will post it as soon as my dad gets some photos off the camera.

scrape

In this photo, you might notice that my chin looks a bit red. (You should see it tonight.) That is because I suffered my first scrape ever this morning.

Though my career as a farmer is over (for now), I have settled into the routine of waking up way too early and going to bed early. I have also decided that I am too big for two naps so I only sleep in the morning.

When I wake up early, we go outside before it gets too hot. This morning, I was cruising around the front porch and I stepped right off the side and tumbled onto the grass. I don't know what I hit my chin on since I fell flat on my back. My dog was outside too so he rushed over to save my life by licking the top of my head. thanks, Remus.

I had a few more tumbles throughout the day. And don't try to call my mom because I bit her cell phone and it is pretty much broken.

We had a storm today so it was cool enough (85 degrees) to go walking this evening. It was nice to get out and see all of the dogs. I like the dogs at the beginning of the loop. They have red hair just like I do. They are the barkiest dogs too.

In sad news, I will only see Jolanda two more times before she leaves for Europe. I have been spending a lot of time with her lately trying to make the most of our days together. She is the greatest. I loved her from the beginning. When we first met, I was in a stage where pretty much only my mom could hold me or I would cry but I went and cuddled with Jolanda right away - no fussing. We have no plans for life after Jolanda.

expanded list

I thought of more words.

When I flip through the book Ellen gave me for my birthday, I look for the bear. When I find it, I point and say "bear."

I can also say "stuck" and "yuck." I find myself in many situations where those words apply.

Did I put light on my list? I like to point at the light even though they are almost always turned off during the summer all through my waking hours. We do not like to waste electricity.

Also, in the morning when it is time to listen to music and my mom asks me what I want to hear, I say "na na na na" meaning the Putumayo Sesame Street CD. I can sing along to Elmo's Song. I love my Sesame Street CD. It has songs from around the world . . . in French, Hebrew, Arabic, Dutch, and several other languages. There is one song that includes all 11 of South Africa's languages.

I think you get the idea. I am way smarter than an average baby.

holophrasis

At my age, I should only be able to speak between 10 and 15 words. My vocabulary is much more advanced than that. In addition to meowing like a cat, barking like several kinds of dogs, growling like a bear, and roaring like a scary dinosaur, here are the words I can say and understand the meaning of:

bath

bear

belly

bird

book

bug

bye

cat

clock

cute

D (I recognize the D from my shape-sorting barn)

deer

dog

down

duck

hippo (this is my word for water because there is a hippo on my cup)

light

mom (or mam, as I call her)

night night

no

oh no

puff

rainbow

that

uh oh

up

wow

yum

Some words, like taco, have dropped out of my vocabulary. But I had no reason to say taco anyhow. Since I spend so much time on my words, I cannot count yet but it looks to me like I might have more than 10 or 15 words in my vocabulary.

I am also starting to learn about some other languages. First off, my dad started speaking to me in Spanish and now Hector and Trinity do too. Jolanda sings to me in German and Swiss; she has taught me lots of neat songs and games from Switzerland. sigh, she leaves in less than a week.

my life as a farmer

Today was day three in my life as a farmer. It seems to be going well. The one thing that I have noticed is you sure go to bed early (7:30pm) when you are a farmer in the morning. Tomorrow, we are going to harvest a tomato.

This is a photo of me this afternoon. Don't I look attractive in green? Disregard my messy bedroom in the background, though. I tear through the house like a hurricane every minute of every day. We clean up my toys at the end of the day.

Some of the fun I have been up to this week:

Yesterday as my mom was zesting a lemon to make greek wraps for dinner, I pulled a stack of 50 (!!!!) of my dad's CDs out of the cabinet and scattered them all about the floor. I quickly discovered that putting one CD under each limb and sliding across the tile floor is as fun as ice skating. Now, before you think this sounds like I was being a trouble maker, let me tell you that I HAD to do this. You see, I have a prism that sits in the living room window and makes rainbows (bow, as I call it) on the floor and walls starting at about 5:30pm and this might just be the best part of my day. It was defective yesterday so I had to make my own rainbows. This is how my dad's CDs did not get ruined . . . because I put the writing side down so the shiny side faced up and made rainbows. Smart me!

My dog and I are both confused about who is the dog and who is the boy. For the past few days, I have been crawling into my dog's crate. I chased after him yesterday and growled like a bear (not a good way to catch a dog, I learned). When I crawl on the floor now, my dog frolics beside me and puts a paw on my back. He thinks I am a puppy in his pack!

I have also learned to climb down off furniture now so good luck catching me.

Good night. early bird catches the worm. We haven't seen any worms or scary bugs on our farm. They don't have scorpions in that area of town. lucky them.