We’re back and settled in after our week-long vacation/Thanksgiving holiday/Turner family reunion in Panama City Beach Florida. I was looking forward to the trip, but it far exceeded my expectations.
The kids really missed getting to the beach this summer. We haven’t spent that much beach time with them, but they really love it when we go. When they’d ask for beach time this year, I’d promise them our trip to Florida. So my main hope for the week was that we’d have at least one day warm enough for them to get in the Gulf and really enjoy the sand and waves. Read the rest of this entry »
Hallie’s long been a stickler for details, especially when she thinks she’s catching you in a contradiction or thinks she can make a joke out of taking things literally. For example:
Me: “Hallie, please take everything off and get in the bath tub.”
Hallie: “What? You want me to take off my hair and my eyebrows and my fingernails? Hee hee hee.”
I’ve called her a nitpicker for ages, but the dynamic took on a new twist during our week in Panama City. Mark or I started declaring it “nitpicking time” every time she’d make such a crack. Then we started looking at the clock and declaring, “It’s 5:55, must be nitpicking time.” Of course she quickly one-upped us by gleefully retorting, “It’s ALWAYS nitpicking time.” She seems to be right.
Hallie and Travis love hearing stories about themselves, especially from when they were really little. In telling some recent tales we keep discovering things that were such a part of our lives we never posted about them. For Hallie, one of these was her joy in hearing “dundar.” She turned one, and her words started coming like wildfire, in the summer. We had lots of afternoon thunderstorms that July and August, and Hallie was delighted by them. She’d hear a boom, do her special L-shaped pointing at the ceiling, and announce gleefully, “dundar!” No fear of thunderstorms for our girl. We still delight in announcing dundar whenever we hear it.
For many, many months Travis has been embarking on long monologues describing his latest creation, invention, or brainstorm. I have to admit I often get lost part way in, but a few well-placed “uh huhs” or “that sounds cool” or “what a great idea” seem to be all it takes to keep him going. Just like my ad lib bedtime songs, I bet he’d be hard-pressed to repeat any of these descriptions a moment after they’ve left his mouth. They do, however, have one thing in common. Almost every Travis creation has at least one “robotical” feature.
Travis is able to slip “robotical” into a conversation on almost any topic. I think he means anything with powered, moving parts. He seems to think that adding a robotical element (or two or three) overcomes any laws of physics the rest of his construction might be violating.
Boy is he going to love the motorized, remote-control Erector Set he’s getting for Christmas. It remains to be seen whether the rest of us survive it!
Kelly pointed out that we’d never written about a classic Hallie phrase we heard over and over when she was two years old: “what is that funny thing?” Of course it never came out sounding like that, but was more like “whatisdatfunnyting? whatisdatfunnnyting?” We heard it whenever our curious Hallie saw something new and interesting.
This began not long after she learned to ask “what is that,” an event which we did blog about way back in 2004.
When I picked Travis up from school today his teacher filled me in on a minor misbehavior he’d been guilty of both yesterday and today. We had a good talk with his teacher, Travis apologized, and we walked out of his school.
I wanted to do some immediate follow-up, so we sat down on a bench out front. After I felt like I’d made my points and they’d been received, I told Travis I loved him and asked, “Are you ready to go?”
“I was ready to go even before we had this little talk!” he grumbled. I’m sure he was!
As I mentioned in Travis’s birthday letter, he’s gotten even more into jokes and puns this year. He loves it when we check out joke books from the library. He’s very quick to make puns (he comes by this naturally from both sides of the family and more than one generation), and many of them are quite clever. And he thinks his jokes are hysterical, whether or not they make sense. Here are a couple of his recent favorites:
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Pan
Pan Who?
Panpire! (ahahahahahaha!)
(Given the Halloween theme of many recent jokes, I’m guessing this is a play on “vampire”)
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Boat
Boat who?
Boat for the president!
You wouldn’t last long in this family without a sense of humor. Looks like Travis is safe!
As he was cutting out, decorating, and stapling together yet another Travis masterpiece Travis asked me, “Mommy, why don’t you create as much stuff as Hallie and I do?”
Well, one answer is there would be no room left for the people!
One final post from my notes from many weeks ago. Hallie’s worst day (and mine as well) of her transitioning to school this year came on a Saturday. We’d stayed at a Seaboard Music concert past ten the night before, so being overtired was clearly a factor. But in hindsight, it was also just a fragile time for Hallie.
Hallie often has a hard time handling frustration or sticking with things that don’t come easily right away. I’ve seen lots of improvement in this area in recent months. But she had a really tough time with it during that transition period. Hallie and Travis had been in a big Lego building phase. After breakfast that Saturday, Hallie was playing in her room and accidentally dropped a very intricate creation she’d spent a lot of time on. Read the rest of this entry »
Hallie emerged from her room yesterday having spent part of a rainy school holiday writing the following poem. Seems to me she’s feeling pretty good about herself these days!
Horse rider
Absolutely adorable
Lovely
Loves zydeco
Incredibly smart
Especially sweet
Marvelous
Careful
Kind
Enjoys soccer
Nothing but creative
Zesty
Imaginative
Energetic
Terrific at math
Unlike other girls
Responsible
Normally happy
Embarrassed sometimes
Respectful
