taking stock of 2017. (a terribly disjointed entry this year.)
not sure i'm going to make it to midnight, so i'll just say thanks to the many who have gotten me to a better place than i was this time last year — kelli, jack, steve, michael, dan, my beautiful kristina, our beautiful babies and my wonderful, supportive family and friends.
i am the beneficiary of countless prayers and intercessions by countless saints — on earth and in heaven. i am grateful for all of you who have been put in my path. i thank the Lord for you and ask that he may always bless and keep you.
and as per tradition, in my sadly neglected paper journal, i recount my resolutions for the coming year:
continue to pray — i have listened better to the call in the night to renew my meditations
give your wife a bedroom she can be proud of
keep working — earn that work qualification
get your wind back — focus on cardio this year
LISTEN TO YOUR WIFE — pay better attention to what she is saying; she deserves at least that much. you'll do this if you love her as much as you say you do.
that's it; a couple more things than last year, but you've made a little progress from last year. let's work to make it happen this year.
as ever, thank you, Lord, for your countless and constant blessings. may i live my life as an offering of thanksgiving. amen, amen and amen.
this was the boy about a year and a half ago, tackling a primary school, learn-to-read story from featuring lego d.c. comics characters.
he and his sister have since acquired their own library cards and choose their own books on their visits.
the girl, now learning phonics and sounding out words just as the boy did almost two years ago, approaches her reading with a mix of resolution and anxiety. she doesn't want to make a mistake.
the boy is pretty confident, deftly jumping word to word, gulping down meaning, fishtailing through curves before righting himself on the straights. he rarely stumbles on words, figuring them out on his own and seldom asking us for help.
i've appreciated how he comes to recognize words in common usage that he sees for the first time in print and banks them as another piece to his vocabulary.
what i've come to equally appreciate are the less-common words — those mommy and daddy read regularly but don't use in daily conversation.
"high tech" is one of those words, as are any constructions of using the compound modifier "mecha-."
the boy loves him some robots, spaceships and superheroes and picks up a goodly number of books featuring them. he also enjoys drawing pictures of his own creations as well as writing and illustrating comic books where they figure prominently. (inspired, no doubt, by dav pilkey, of "captain underpants" fame.)
cyber kids, 8 dec 2017
well, among his latest creations over the past month or two have been high-tech devices and mecha-characters and possibly high-tech, mecha-characters.
thing is, as a now-undaunted reader, learning words on his own, he's read and pronounces these words phonetically, e.g., "high-tetch, metcha-characters."
the "ch" sound as he's learned it bookends "church" and finishes "arch," not like a "k," as in "character" or "anchor."
i never corrected him when he spoke the words because, well, i guess because it kept him little, still reading like a young boy and i still want him to be my little boy.
today, though, he made a lego weapon that was part rock and part machine, a mecha-rock gun. (the "rock" was lava.) he described the mecha-device to me and i grinned a little and was impressed by his imagination.
his mama, though, when shown the gizmo and listening to his description, corrected his pronunciation: "mekka-rock gun" and "high-tek"system.
i tried to rein her in, but he began correcting himself afterward. (a fool's errand and disservice to him, i know.) so ... another page turns in the book of our boy's journey to literacy.
i was in traction in the hospital with a fractured femur and a bolt through my left knee after a car hit me after school not nine hours earlier.
ten years ago, i wrote my recollections and thoughts of being the parent of a child lying unconscious on the road.
i'm still befuddled every time one of my nieces pukes on me. i can only
imagine the stress it placed on my parents having to watch their boy
drifting in and out of consciousness for 24 hours.
now i've got kids of my own and, Lord knows, having watched my siblings and the news, every time something bad happens to a child, it just tears me up.
God bless all those worried, loving parents of children in pain.
first of all, here's the girl's impromptu video tale of a space monkey that she made with a kid's meal toy. (she went on a field trip today and the class ate at wendy's for lunch.)
i like its short, simple story told in her tiny voice. i also like — i think — how she and her "big bruvvy" take to the smartphone like the proverbial duck to water. (no problems swiping from shooting still photos to video. freakin' digital natives.)
that said, though, the two seem not to suffer from any lack of imagination so far, which we hope will serve them well as they grow up. (but not too fast, please.)
speaking of which — second — her imagination and expectations hit a speed bump this morning when she arose early this first of december ready to search for a christmas elf on the shelf and found no sign of him.
while she wailed and gnashed her teeth on mama's bedside, daddy still woke up to her trying to console her daughter with assertions that the elf doesn't appear until the tree is up and that it wasn't even advent yet.
the boy's make-good
this did little to placate her as she told her mom that her friends didn't have their trees up and that their elves were already making appearances. (i guess since thanksgiving was good enough for their less discriminating elfin brethren to begin their hijinks.)
mama's sleepy yet stern response was that comparing oneself to one's friends was a bad road to get on this early in life and sure a path to misery. she assured her daughter that once our tree was up, "ginger" (our elf's name, i had to be reminded) will make his appearance. (he's got a beard, so i'm guessing he's a he, but it's possible she has a lot of testosterone in her.)
the boy, on the other hand, chose a slicker, more 7-year-old savvy approach to the magical no-show: breezy, diplomatic correspondence. surely, no elf could resist such an entreaty.
so, since we were planning to get the tree tomorrow anyway, i have a strong suspicion our tiny bearded friend will make his appearance fairly soon.
