Why It's Cold

Mrs. Scott: "Why is it so cold in here?"
Me: "Because it's wintertime."

Baby's First Complete Sentence

Our 18 month old is saying words, but mostly parts of words. One syllable of a word, if all the sounds are there. Recently he has begun putting two words together every now and then into a phrase. But yesterday he spoke his first complete sentence. "Press play."

An Apple A Day

Early in the morning I was in the bathroom getting ready for work. Mrs. Scott was in there talking to me about each of our schedules for the day. Then walked in our youngest. He was holding an apple. Mrs. Scott asked him, "where did you get that?" As he raised it to his mouth, I could see a small trench he had dug into the surface of the apple that stretched half the way around the other side.

Our 18 month old had gone into the kitchen, opened the fridge, pulled the crisper drawer open, taken out an apple and walked through the house eating it. Okay, he left the door open, but we have plenty of time to work on that.

Radio Controlled Jet Plane

Our seven year old received a belated Christmas present from a family member. It was a radio controlled "jet" plane made by the Estes rocket people. It has an internal turbo fan engine rather than a propeller on the nose. Just battery operated, no burning fuel.

The box spelled out that it was for ages 14 to adult. Fourteen? Our son is seven. Well, we put it together and took it to the park. It was difficult to fly, but with hand-eye coordination that many seven year olds get from playing video games, we felt he could handle it. It will be just a matter of time before he masters the controls.

Hooch Shiner

Our little Hooch was playing inside the drapes, twirling himself around. When he came out, he twirled his eye into the corner of the table. He's got a pretty good shiner on the side of his eye. Ouch!

The Jungle

Our seven year old son turned his top bunk into a jungle. He drew several dozen vines on paper and hung them up from the ceiling. He has decorated the entire bunk and the walls with jungle theme and placed lizards and other jungle toy animals around. He also put up an entire set of glow in the dark insects. Pretty cool. It keeps him off the street.

No, Poon!

Children grow in quantum leaps. Our 18 month old is no exception. Just yesterday, he took the next step in a number of different areas. Mrs. Scott offered him a fork to eat food, and he responded not only with a word, but with two. "No, poon!", was his response, referring to a spoon. He started getting into new things, started pressing new buttons on things, repeated words to his bedtime songs. He usually takes my lunch box to the kitchen when I get home. Last night he also unzipped it and put everything away.

New Yoise

New Years' was fairly uneventful. Mrs. Scott is sick and the kids stayed up late, but our oldest crapped out about 15 minutes too early. Our neighborhood is usually a hot bed of fireworks and barrel bombs, but this year was wimpy. There wasn't even anybody to share the bottle of champagne my boss gave me last Christmas. Maybe next year. Hey, next year is today!