Uh huh…

You thought YOUR neighbors were weird.

Where Did She Learn THAT?

Abigail is 17 months old today. She is growing and learning and doing more physical things than ever before. We smile or laugh when she frowns, dances, helps to put on her own shoes, tries to push the laundry basket through the house or feeds herself. We express sympathy when she’s upset or frustrated and rubs her eyes or waves her arms in dismay.

She’s also learning to speak, and while Mommy and Daddy may know what she’s saying or what she means at any given time, she has few words that are clear enough for others to interpret. About once a week she comes up with a new word and we ooh and aah appropriately. Lately, whenever she gets mad she will frown and very clearly yell, “BEOWULF!”

Admittedly, we do read to her, choose what she sees on DVD or TV (usually Nick Jr) and Matt’s been reading some of his favorite books since before she was born. However, no one has ever mentioned Beowulf. WHERE did she come up with THAT???

Medication might be a good thing

The other day Matt and I went for a walk.

He starts pushing the stroller uphill.

ME: Are you ok?

Him: Yeah, why?

ME: Cause you’re old?

He looks at me sideways.

ME: Cause you have a gimpy leg? Cause of the emphysema?

Him: I’m FINE.

(At the top of the hill)

Him: Here. (giving me stroller) Think you can handle it?

Me: I don’t know. I’m old. (slight pause) I have a gimpy leg..

Him: Don’t say it.

(Five minutes later.)

Me: Whew! I’m tired!

Him: (looking at the sun, blue sky…) We’re not dead yet.

Me: (panting) Give me a minute.

Him: (laughing)

As we walk up the road I notice (for the first time) a large yellow circle painted in the middle of the road.

Me: What’s the circle for? Is that where the parachutes land?

(He looks at me sideways.)

Me: Yeah, cause they wouldn’t pick one of these big open fields, they’d have to do it in the middle of the road. To show off.

(Two minutes later, every step I take I wince in pain, and to be sure he doesn’t miss it I say “ow”)

Me: “Ow.” “Ow.” “Ow.” “Ow.” “Ow.”

Him: Stop whining.

Me: (whining loudly) But it hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrts!

He glares.

Me: It huuuuuuuuuuuuuurts-ah!

Him: Can you stop talking now?

(Five minutes later I see a VERY LARGE Squirrel galump across the road (it was HUGE), crash into the underbrush and THUD into a tree. HUGE I tell ya.)

Me: That was the biggest squirrel I’ve ever seen.

(He rolls his eyes.)

Me: Seriously. Back home the squirrels are small, cute and dainty. Most of the time you don’t hear them running around. That one was like STOMP, CRASH, THUD.

Him: What kind of pattern do squirrels run in?

Me: I don’t know. I didn’t take guitar lessons.

A Rose By Any Other Name Would Still Smell

Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Naming your child is one of the hardest parts of parenting, and you’ll know right out of the gate whether or not parenting will be your “thing.” Well, everyone else will. You’ll be clueless until your baby’s old enough to get beat up on the playground every day.

When considering baby names, you have to rule out names that rhyme with things (like body parts and bodily functions and your last name), names that can be shortened to things that rhyme with body parts and bodily functions, names that remind you of people you don’t like, names that remind your OTHER of people he doesn’t like, and names that neither of you like “just because.”

After all that, you can bring in the extras like whether you want your child’s name to begin with the same letter as your last name, if you want the first initials of your children’s names to spell out your name, whether you want to keep your family’s names all within one nationality. You need to agree whether you want your children to have original names or if you want them to have names that have been passed through your family for generations. You have to decide whether your unborn child will be bothered with being Michael #3 in his class, or your daughter will be frustrated being Emily #4 at camp.

Then, you also have to consider whether that name will work for cheerleaders, lawyers, editors and old ladies in nursing homes. They’ll have that name their whole lives (unless you really screw up and they change it and go into some kind of protection program) so it has to fit everything, and since you don’t know what kind of personality your child will have it will have to fit all of those too.

I wanted my kids to have uncommon names. I didn’t want them being Bob Smith all the time because there were 8 other Bobs in their classes, but I didn’t want them to have names no one could spell or pronounce or that were too far “out there.” I wanted original, but not crazy.

I started my family with my son Cade. I thought I made it up but as he got older I was told that it’s a very popular name out west. Who knew. Ten years later more people in our area started naming their children Cade and Caden. That was okay, he wasn’t in their groups.

Son number two is Kegan. Pronounced KEEgan, it wasn’t common, it was original, but not weird (and it’s Irish). In our area there was another child about the same age who spelled it Keegan. The only problem we ran into was one year in school the yearbook printer apparently had never heard the name Kegan and next to his smiling face they’d printed his name as “Megan”. He was so embarrassed.

Daughter #1 is Caitria. That’s Irish for Catherine. One, it’s not weird, it’s not common, and it isn’t Caitlyn. Caitlyns ran amok here. There are tons of them with all kinds of spellings. So, she’s got the same name, only not so much. It’s pronounced KAY-TREE-ah. I’ve run into a few women who insist on calling her ka-TREE-ah. I don’t get it.

Next came son Corbin and daughters Kaia (rhymes with papaya) and Charity. When I had Charity it was a rough time and I named her that for a reason. However, I felt bad that she was the only child without the K sound at the beginning of her name. My babies reminded me of the Pacman ghosts: Inky, Pinky, Blinky and CLYDE. Poor Charity.

Fortunately, a year later her little sister made an appearance. I could give her a CH name and poor Charity wouldn’t be an oddball. (Well, she’s an oddball, but her name wouldn’t stand out so much.) [Hi Charity, I love you!] So, I scoured the internet, checked into all kinds of names from different nationalities, different mythologies, place names and everything else I could think of. Could I find a CH name? No. Could I find another K sound name? No. It couldn’t be THIS hard.

Finally I decided I liked Chayton. It’s a male Native American name, however, like Leslie and Ashley I decided it would work for a boy or a girl. Unfortunately, by the time she made her appearance I couldn’t remember her name to save my life and kept calling her “Chutney”. (So NOT what I was going for.) I managed to wrap my mind around Chayton, and got it straight in my head only to bring her home to her siblings to discover they couldn’t pronounce Chayton.

Welcome home, baby Satan!

Kids -1, Mom – 0

Six years later when baby #8 came along it was easy.

“Screw it. Her name is Abigail.”

Well done, Gwyneth. Well done.

For her upcoming role as a country singer in the movie “Country Strong”, Gwyneth Paltrow became a singer. She sang the title song at the CMA’s and held her own in front of the professionals. She didn’t even need Vince Gill.

I haven’t been this impressed with an actor turning singer since Joaquin Phoenix in “Walk The Line”…and possibly Meryl Streep in “Mama Mia.”

New Blogs For Us

Just pointing you to Matt’s and Abby’s new blogs. Abby’s post here was so sucessful that she’s now a budding writer. You can find her blog at The Abby Gales.

Matt’s new blog is aptly named and can be found at Dad In Distress.

Both are also listed with the list of other blogs I read regularly on my FRIENDS page. 🙂

Sarah Palin is at it again

At what?

pissing. me. off.

In her Alaska special she’s shown cavorting through the tundra with her family where she states “I’d rather do this than be stuck in some stuffy political office. I want to be out here…being free.”

Oddly enough, on the heels of the promo (seriously, not minutes later) the news is talking about Palin’s upcoming bid for the Presidency. Of the United States.

Where.

I.

LIVE. ((0.o))

Can someone tell her that isn’t a part-time job, she’ll be spending MOST of her time in a “stuffy political office” and will rarely during her four-year stint (should she –God forbid–WIN) be “out here…being free.”

Someone please tell her that Presidents devote all their time and most of their energy to preserving the freedoms of the American people…not their own freedom to do whatever they want when they want? (Get Clinton on the phone, he’ll tell her. BTDT.)

Someone please tell her running a country is indeed a much different matter than running her state (does she have enough family members to appoint to all the cabinet offices?) or her household (wait, her teenaged daughter got pregnant which she later pooh-poohed with “Oh she’ll be a great mom.”)…um….

Let’s not forget her last ride on the campaign train. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars did she spend on new clothes for herself and her family? And then claimed they weren’t HERS, “they’re the Republican Party’s. They’re just tools I could use.” Really? How many other Republicans have used those tools? Oh. They can’t because why? That’s right. They’re in your closet. I see.

Yeah, she’s done enough. Someone please slap that woman. I don’t want her near any important buttons.

“Ooh, SHINY!”