language...

there's too much to tell you, which always overwhelms me to the point that i don't tell you a single thing of import.

i just spent the morning reading mails from a new faraway friend who's been sending me pics of her faraway home which may be mine, soon. not the exact home, but probably the same architecture and batik and lush gardens. i like beginning the week with a healthy dose of wanderlust.

i bought these and these for the girlies, plus a set of six shades of brown in the most velvety-soft pencils i've ever felt...so that lillie could do a self-portrait accurately. they like to draw before bedtime, and i am all about a few quiet moments before bedtime. that is usually just prior to the moments when i am screaming brush your teeth! and shush it, lillie!




last night, lillie was making - what are they called? - an acrostic? where you write your name and then describe yourself with words beginning with all of the letters in your name? of course, she began with lovely. it's true. and then...well, then...

grae walked by and asked, "what's incedible?" {pronounced in-seed-able, fyi.}

lillie rolled her eyes and corrected with disdain, "incredible."

grae shook her head and suggested a dictionary. plus maybe an r. because as it stood, lill was incedible.

uncle sugar is learning a new language, and is just at the beginning stages of speaking. he has a little vocabulary app on his iPad, which pronounces the words in a woman's voice. i WISH WISH WISH i could let you hear a recording of his first few words. so high-pitched and adorable that i still crack up when i remember it. he has since ditched the lady voice and learned a much...manlier...way of speaking bahasa indonesian.

esmé, as you know by now, is pretty effusive. and she says things like "i very want to go there." and "i very like that girl." things like that.

the other day, pat corrected her speech, which he rarely does. fwee and teef were just fine for ages because we both kind of feel that language, among other developmental things, are organic. they'll come when they come. or, at least, one of us still feels that way.




but on this day, he edited her. "it's i really want to go there or i very much want to go there. not i very want to go there."

i looked at him like he was crazypants. "why are you correcting her?" i wondered.

and he kind of snapped back "because i currently speak like a three year old in bahasa indonesian. and it's driving me insane."

poor thing. he's not really used to being anything less than incedible.

happy monday, you little sweethearts. i feel like it's already started well. hope i didn't just jinx it for us. oh! one more thing that made me laugh really hard this weekend. whenever pat sees something i've bought, either for dinner or for the house, and i'm unusually excited about it, he nods like he's supremely interested and then asks "did you get it at a garage sale?" gets me every time with its unexpected {insert proper synonym for jackass} quality, doesn't it? all photos from my gimme bar.