the wonderful / wacky world of Nomi

*Blogger is not letting me put spaces between the lines or paragraphs, so please excuse the weird, hard-to-read formatting!

Since we've been looking at old pictures, I thought I'd post one of my favorites of Naomi at 2, along with a recent picture of her at a friend's birthday party. How quickly she's grown! And almost seven now... A few comments from my delightful, growing, almost-birthday girl before I forget them...

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Naomi is the indisputably the slowest eater in the family. She doesn't really enjoy this status, but accepts it and doesn't really try to speed up. I don't like to leave her completely alone for the last hour of her meals, but have trouble staying at the table for such a large percentage of the day, so I try to do things like sweep the kitchen or bake while she's eating so we can still talk.

Anyway, I was doing this the other day while she lounged in her chair, examining an apple she had been eating for over an hour... "You know," she said to me, "Astronauts are lucky. Since there is no oxygen in space they could eat as slowly as they wanted to, and their apples would never get brown." Sigh.

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While brushing her teeth in the bathroom, Naomi called me in to share her thoughts... "I just realized something, mom. When we learn other languages, we aren't really learning what those words mean in English, we are learning what they stand for. Like if we learn "agua" we aren't really learning "water" we are learning this wet thing- what stands for this actual thing. It doesn't have to go back to English. Words just happen to stand for something."

I was amazed at her perception and her non-ethnocentric (lingocentric?) perspective! I think half of my college level "Teaching English to Non-English Speakers" class never understood that. But it's funny that the thought occurred when it did. I think we need less "school time" and more time to just be lost in thought... Who knows what we'd discover?

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We get our milk delivered by Smith Brothers Dairy. It comes on Fridays, and we usually watch out for the big white truck with black Holstein spots- the kids like to be the first one's to notice it's arrival. So yesterday we were sitting at the kitchen table when Naomi looked out the window and hollered-

"Look! The champagne truck is here!"

"Champagne!?" I questioned in surprise... "Wha....?"

"Yeah!" she said. "It's backing up the driveway!"

"Since when do we get champagne delivered?!" I said. "What about MILK!?"

"No, No. Champagne- you know, to burn in the fireplace!"

"You mean propane?"

"Oh. Yeah- propane. So the propane truck is here."

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Yesterday we wanted some crackers with our cheese, and took some out of the pantry that someone (really I don't know who) had brought over for one of the holiday get-togethers. They were a whole wheat sort that we've often had, but after a few bites, it was obvious they were not right. I examined the box and saw that they were best by 2006. Oops. I explained to the kids why they were less than fresh tasting, and we tossed 'em.

Today, we tried some cookies from a tin that weren't so tasty. (I know, we're a little picky I guess.) We didn't throw them out or anything, just left the tin on the counter. (Daddy will eat them!) Later Naomi came running over to me with the tin, the insignia of the "Royal Dansk" cookie company aimed at my face"- "Mom Mom! Look! No wonder these cookies are no good! They are from 1966!!"

political preschool

I like to listen to NPR while I do kitchen tasks. Usually I turn off the radio once the kids get up, but sometimes I listen at other times throughout the day, or I accidentally leave it on while I'm in the shower, and the kids hear and interpret freely. When the election frenzy was at it's height, they were quite interested, and would always ask, "Is this voting again!?" They all had their own opinions on the candidates, based on random information. Josiah's favorites were chosen by the sounds of their names. He even renamed his stuffed horse "Dino Rossi" (since been changed to Rough-Tough) and a leopard "Baracka Bama." Anyway, so the political chatter has mostly died down, but Naomi had an NPR session yesterday, and was brimming with information that she just had to share...

Naomi: "Guess what I heard on the radio today? Barack Obama is going to create THREE TRILLION new jobs!" (I think she got the jobs number confused with the national debt.)

Josiah: "Whoa. That's a lot. How is he going to do that anyway?"

Eva: "Yeah, and what would they be? He'll say like, 'You- replace all the dead batteries.' "

Naomi: "Yeah, and 'You- change all the diapers....' (long pause) Wow. That's only two that we can thing of. He's gonna have a lotta sittin' and thinkin'! Can you believe- in just ten days Barack Obama is going to be president! And in just nine days, mom is going to be thirty-two!! And that means in eleven days, I'm going to be seven!!"

Josiah: "Wait, so did you hear ALL of that on the radio?"

"So Much Like a Two-Year Old," by Naomi

"This reminds me of you Addie. -Naomi"

first parade of the new year

What were you doing in the wee moments of 2009?

Whatever it was, I hope it was as exciting as this kid-produced parade- complete with a backwards leotard (in the snow) a tissue-paper-stuffed clown, a pink princess, some non-costumed little boys and various other colorful characters. They lined up at the front door and at the stroke of midnight headed out in the snow to bang their pot lids, yell, march, and somehow not get cold! Great memories. I won't be letting my kids stay up till 2am on a regular basis, but on this occasion it worked remarkably well. Fortunately they're finally old enough to have the good sense to sleep in the next day!

Buddy didn't care that this was "Girl Twister." It was noisy plastic, slippery, exciting, and his big cousins were on it! What's not to love?

So tired- but still up for play! What a guy.

Happy New Year, all.