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Still working on dvorak

Wednesday, January 31st, 2007

I’m only practicing a few minutes a week these days. It looks like my speed is about 11 words per minute with 91% accuracy now. I suppose I should have kept records of my speed when I started. It sure is frustrating typing at 10 wpm when you know you could be typing 40 wpm. Here are some words that make Elliott laugh these days:

   * Neptune
   * plump

He hasn’t discovered the joys of “poop” yet. That’s just a normal, no-nonsense word.

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creating a monster

Monday, December 18th, 2006

This morning, Julie had to call me at work to ask what it meant when Elliott asked to “draw Grampoo.” That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? It means that you hold him on your lap and go to noggin.com and let him loose on the oobi drawing app. And he was asking for the train sounds, so where on the computer are those? And he wanted to hear the recordings I made of his voice, so where are those?

He is very nearly at the point of being able to do these things for himself, but not quite. His reading will have to catch up with his mousing skills.

Written in Dvorak.

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mousing skills

Thursday, December 7th, 2006

More proud parent stuff:

Elliott’s favorite website is noggin.com. He had the most trouble with getting a left-click without also getting a right-click. It was really frustrating to get that context menu popping up all the time. It helped to switch the mouse buttons for awhile, but now he is clicking and dragging like a pro with a standard config.

His favorite programs are Gimp and Picasa.

This post written in dvorak.

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dvorak blogging

Monday, December 4th, 2006

I recently told Bob that he had to start blogging more. So I guess that means I have to write a least slightly more than he does. I’m not sure why I’ve fallen off the blog wagon, but my new excuse to write is to practice my dvorak typing.

I’ve been practicing intermittently for a couple of months, but I’m having trouble making the switch. I get frustrated at how much slower I am while learning.

Time for an Elliott update:

Favorite TV show: Backyardigans

Favorite toys: trucks, trains, guitar, ball

He’s sleeping through the night, which is a big deal, but he’s a consistently early riser. Bummer.

He’s appropriately pumped about Christmas, and is really excited about decorating.

He likes drawing and can come up with some intricate designs.

His favorite letter is O.

He can almost sit through a meal in a restaurant, but we generally have to sprint through meals to avoid a meltdown.

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end of bike season

Friday, October 13th, 2006

I had to schedule some bike maintenance sooner than I hoped. A flat tire yesterday cut short my bike season which was supposed to end on Monday. I suppose now I’ll splurge for the full tune up, brakes, and new tire. Then I’ll just tuck it into the basement until spring.

I have to include a bit about all the remarkable progress that our little tool-user has made since the last post. He’s officially weened and working on potty training. When he had his first haircut at a barber, the wise barber tempted him into the chair by asking him to fix it with some tools. That kept him content through the whole ordeal. And I love that he can now say “I don’t know words” when he is struggling to express some new concept. This morning I heard “Mommy, this waffle doesn’t move.” That means, “This fork is inadequate to lift my waffle bites from the plate when there is so much syrup.”

Oh, and he is entranced by seeing videos of himself. And he likes to hear recordings of animal sounds. All in all, he is increasingly fun as he picks up his communication skills.

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Itsy bitsy spider

Friday, August 11th, 2006

Here is how Elliiott sings this song:

Itsy bitsy spider

water spout

down rain, washout

out sun, spider again

A good summary, I think.

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Counting and colors

Saturday, June 17th, 2006

Elliott is counting to ten now, unprompted. In English and Spanish. He can identify most objects in any of his picture books. And he’s beginning to get his colors lined up too. At first, he just understood that a color was a property of a thing and would randomly name a color when he saw something that was monochromatic.

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Parenting at 2

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

That could mean parenting at 2am or at two years old. Perhaps it will be clearer which is the true meaning by the end of this post. Perhaps not.

Elliott isn’t quite two, officially. Although he has had at least two parties for this coming birthday. Have all the parties you can fit in, I say. Lining them up on real dates is just too much work.

He’s still a train man, I have to admit. But there are other toys now that get just as much honor as the train: the vacuum, tools, play dough, and the wagon. Julie picked me up at the airport with Elliott riding in the wagon. He hopped out, I put my bag in, and he pulled it through the food court. Its hard to believe that he doesn’t know that he is charming everyone when he does this.

He’s better about walking on sidewalks now, so he doesn’t have to stay strapped in the stroller on walks quite so much. This makes walks pretty fun as you get to see just what grabs his attention: spiders, worms, slugs, cats, trucks, tree stumps, Dairy Queen. There are a lot of syllables in the phrase “chocolate shake” but Elliott can valiantly make himself understood.

Sleeping through the night is still something that I dream about. Wait, that’s a conflicting metaphor. But when he’s not pushing out new teeth, he’ll sometimes sleep 4-hour stretches between feedings. When putting him to sleep, I walk a loop through our bedrooms. Elliott prefers my left shoulder, so I try to make sure I spend about half of the time going clockwise. That means he gets to look out windows. Otherwise, he looks at walls and closets.

I’ve determined just about every possible placement of your feet in the circuit through the bedrooms. And over the two years of making this loop, I’ve found every creak in the floor. But that was easy. I’ve also identified the temperature at which the creaks appear. In the summer, when the wood is warm and the house is close to the temperature it was built in, there are no creaks. But in the winter, there is an assortment of creaky spots to dodge if you don’t want to sound like you are opening doors at haunted houses, over and over. In between, there are only two big spots to step over on the circuit, but they’re not easy to avoid because they are in natural places that you’d like to step.

His favorite TV show is Backyardigans. Thank goodness. I think its a blast to watch as well. Sesame Street is better for learning, I bet, but he doesn’t feel the love from Elmo that he used to. So our Tivo is slowly loading up every Backyardigan episode. Perhaps someday, we’ll get the elusive Yeti episode, which Elliott often requests. We’ve seen it many times, but never thought to keep it tucked into Tivo.

Slides and swings are pure joy on Elliotts face. I bet he would love a parade, but we’ll miss the Rose Festival parade this year… I expect the next zoo trip to be pretty exciting. And any time now, we’ll be able to start camping.

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current achievements

Saturday, April 29th, 2006

Elliott said: “Tractor. John in it. Wheels on it.” I think that’s his first paragraph. He is pretty clear about most his words. Clear enough to get us some compliments from the daycare teachers. But there are a few words that need translating:

  • bahbox = sandbox
  • beebug = ladybug
  • uffway = this way
  • pahmus = Thomas the Tank Engine

Today he learned how to say “antenna”.

We’re still working on colors. He knows the names, but can’t always get the right name on the shade.

His favorite bird is the crow, but he knows how to spot a robin.

Favorite foods? hmmm, cheese cubes, cottage cheese, berries (he ate $5 worth of raspberries in about 5 minutes today). He likes potatos, but he doesn’t love them enough to convince me he is really a Day. He likes fish and chicken.

He *really* loves the vacuum cleaner, but not when it is on. The attachments are his favorite toys. He also really likes to use garden tools while mommy is in the garden.

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next big thing

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

Trains are still king, don’t get me wrong. But Elliott has another favorite thing since we took a trip to the beach to load up on sand for his new sandbox. (We tried to just buy sand but found that the sand comes with toxic additives.) Now Elliott will ask to go out and play in his “Bah Box”. He can say “sand” when you ask him, but if it is up to him, and it is, the proper name is “Bah box”. The fun thing to do in the sand box is to make a mountain with a tunnel in it. Or just move sand from bucket to bucket to lawn.

Counting happens a lot these days. He’ll start pointing to objects and saying any number he can think of: “two… nine… five… seven…” Colors are the same way: “blue… orange… blue… green…” The fact that the numbers and colors don’t correspond to reality is a small detail that can be worked out later.

Elliott also has learned to recognize the local Dairy Queen, even from a block or two away. You can tell when you’ve entered the DQ-zone because he’ll start announcing his desire for “chocolate”. This has been our chance to learn about turns and now Elliott understands that everyone gets a turn. He’ll even enforce the turn rule if you let him keep the chocolate shake for too long. He’ll squawk until someone else gets a turn.