Well, OK, she didn’t write her name by herself today. This morning, we practiced together with pen and paper. I tried to get her to hold the pen “properly” but didn’t get far with that. Her ‘S’ looked like something between a “d” and a squared-off “o”. But later in the afternoon, I set her down in front of AlphaBaby, and I pointed out some of the letters, drew her name with stars, etc. Then switched it to typewriter mode, and Sam managed to type her own name. She also typed “mom” and “dad” though we had to prompt the spelling of those as we asked for them, and it took her a while to find the ‘d’. I guess qwerty is one of those things you get used to, but is an unusual sort of thing to try to explain to a toddler. 🙂
I am having Geek Gasm, I just came across Jott.com and astonished. I’ve already Jotted my Google calendar and I feel I can Jott my To-Do list, Remember the Milk too and now I am Jotting this blog entry. I called that in it gives a home meeting to some event(?). I am really impressed. listen
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WOW. Speech to text has become useful at http://jott.com/ The above is a blog entry “written” by voice. Frequent readers will know that I’m not a frequent writer. How many times have I been walking to BART and had a “Deep Thought”? Or has Sam said something while we’re out and about and I though “Oh, that’s so cute it’s bloggable!?” I do carry a moleskien and space pen, so sometimes capture these things.
Dear Sam,
I’m writing this to you on my 38th birthday. This morning when I got you up out of your crib, you asked, “What day is today?” I replied, “Monday.” Then you said, “It’s Mommy’s birthday! Happy Birthday, Mommy!” And you gave me a hug.
Best. Birthday. Present. Ever.
A few hours later, we were running errands on foot and you wanted me to carry you, and I was already lugging two bags of groceries, and you wouldn’t wear your sun hat, and you kept telling me to take mine off, and you cried and complained for the last two blocks.
Dear Sammy,
For your newsletter describing your 30th month of life, I’ve been collecting phrases that we’ve heard around the house. These are the ones that make your Dad and me grin, or gasp, or sometimes grimace. But in each case, we look at each other and mouth “did she just say that?”
Here you go. Soundbites from a 2½ year-old girl:
“Mommies don’t go to work. Daddies do.”
“I’m not a big girl yet. I’m a little girl.”
As a preface to this post, it’s important to understand that Sam still doesn’t enunciate very clearly. She can’t properly create all the phonemes in the English language. Sam’s babysitter was impressed with how much Sam talked, but bemoaned how little she could understand of what Sam was saying. We’re pretty good at making it out. After all, we’ve been listening to her since she was born! Anyway, words like “Turtle” don’t yet sound like “turtle” It’s more like “tor lul”.
Dear Sam,
I’m not sure where to start for this month. I suppose all months are continuations of the previous, but that seems especially true this month. Probably because it took me getting half way through this month before finally abdicating last month’s newsletter to your mother. Regardless, this month was full of growth and change for you. Mom indicates that you’ve been “speaking in paragraphs” for some time now. I’m not really sure how or when that happened, but you do string together related sentences. This past weekend you had the following to say, “It’s windy out. Wind is good for kites. Sammy has a kite!” And, yes, we went and flew your kite that day, though to only moderate success.
Dear Sammy,
Dad and I are a few weeks late with this newsletter. You (and the people we share this letter with) will have to forgive us: your 28th month was a difficult one"not because of you, but because this past month saw the death of a longtime family member: our beloved kitty Camus.
I’m going to start there. He died near the end of the month, but his death has colored the entire month. January 2008 did not start out well for our kitty. He became sick while we were in Pennsylvania, and the Feline B&B, where we boarded him, had to transfer him to the neighboring animal hospital. We were able to pick him up on Jan. 2, and he was scrawny and anxious"but I held out hope that he would bounce back. He always had. Alas. Camus spent much of his remaining weeks on the couch on a little red cushion that you and I picked out for him. He got up to eat now and then, but seemed to have lost his taste for food. Towards the end, he would eat only out of our hands"yes, even yours. I often had to remind you to keep your palm flat so that Camus could get to the morsel of cat food, but even then, you and Camus showed remarkable patience with each other.
My wife already blogged the Salsa Cat story. But I’ve been amazed at Sam’s story-re-telling ability. She’ll “read” books almost word for word that we’ve read to her. Sure, we’ve read them a lot, but not enough for us to be able to recite them. Anyway, here Sam is re-telling the Salsa Cat story.
It’s funny to me how apt a name Camus was for our cat. While perhaps only in stereotype was our cat an absurdest existentialist cat. He hardly qualified as warm and friendly. Really, if you imagine a cat named Camus, you’d probably be pretty spot-on.
But he wasn’t always called Camus. When I first met him, his name was “Match.” I don’t know what, exactly, inspired me to give Carolyn a cat for her birthday in 1995. I just knew she loved cats, and I didn’t have a better idea. And I mean loved cats. Like we’d be walking along a street having a conversation, and she’d interrupt it to stop and say “Hi” to a cat she saw. And I don’t mean a cat that came up to the sidewalk and asked for attention, I mean a cat crouched away in the bushes. So I decided to get her a cat. Like any proper geek at the time, I check usenet. Sure enough, someone has listed a “free to a good home” kitten on uva.want-ads.
We euthanized our cat, Camus, today. It seems such a strange way to say it. But easier than “we took a family member to be killed today.”
Camus resting
I guess it had been coming for a while. A long while, really. He’d had feline mega colon for years. Mostly we’d managed it medically, giving him 4 different medications ((cisapride, lactulose, mineral oil and metamucil)) twice daily. Still, cleaning up errant poop or vomit wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. Occasionally, we’d given him enemas. But finally, he’d pretty much given up and started to shut down. The serious downslide happened while we were away for Christmas and boarding him. He’d gotten backed up, and had to be given an enema. But then he refused to eat and had to be hospitalized and force-fed. He regained some strength and verve and we brought him home. But from that time on, he ate little, and slept lots. He lost weight, and even got to the point where he had a hard time keeping his hindquarters up and stable during standing.
