NanTalk

Overheard from the shower:

(During her shower, Hannah is cleaning the glass walls and door with a washcloth, trying to keep the glass free of water droplets. Yes, a futile effort. She pretends the wall is afraid of the droplets.)

This one-woman show is performed by Hannah, doing a variety of voices.

Wall (in a deep worried voice): Oh no. What are we going to do? This stuff is everywhere! Help! Help! Help!

Hannah: Not to worry! It's ME to the rescue!

Washcloth (a high squeaky voice): No! It's ME to the rescue!

Hannah: But I can help too. You need me! You can't reach all the places.

Wall (more frantic): I don't care who helps me but somebody, PLEASE! This water is...is...making me WET.

Hannah: I'll save you. I'm the best. (turns off water)

First day of school!

Good Morning Student!

Here are some of your subjects for this year.

Let's review Numicon shapes while I prepare the rest of the lesson.

Now, make all variations of 10.

Our day went well, and we did manage some enthusiasm! We reviewed lots of old stuff, and started on the new as well. Hannah chose to begin with her new Health books (of course). Then she chose reading, geography, Numicon (video coming soon), spelling, penmanship, Thinking Skills (love these books), fine motor (made/colored/cut a puzzle), and piano (always last). She cooked her lunch (Annie's Macaroni and Cheese), and now she's painting. We have dance this afternoon, and then we're done!

If only I can make it a routine, then we'll be set!

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A funny:

Hannah chose four colors for her puzzle. One was a yellow, labeled "canary". We briefly talked about what a canary is.

When she was done coloring, I was glanced over and saw that the yellow was so very light.

Mom: Oh, that yellow is very light.

Hannah: Yes....(thinking)...as light as a feather!

Weather and Dinosaurs

Today we're talking about dinosaurs.

Did you know, according to Hannah, that the full name is Iguanodonald? They just call him Iguanodon for short.

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Yesterday, we went outside and it was blustery. I said, "It's really windy". She said, "Yes, just like your good friend Windy Saunders!!"

Back in the saddle

Saddle meaning my computer chair, of course.

My back is back. It's actually working! And now that I am functional, I have discovered again how much I don't like running behind Hannah on her bike in the summer. It doesn't help that I've had no cardio exercise in several weeks. But, I did manage to make two rounds of our route tonight. She hasn't lost any skills from our break in practicing, so that's good. She really enjoys riding--doesn't let a day go by without asking to ride!

Chris is settling into the dorm. I guess. They are keeping him busy so we haven't heard very much from him. Orientation has taken up virtually every waking minute of his days. Today he met with his academic advisor and tomorrow he finally gets to register for classes (just in time too-classes start on Wednesday!). He's now toying with the idea of Neuroscience instead of Biology. Fortunately he has a semester to figure it out before declaring his major.

And.

Who knew?

Who knew that Cinderella was living right here in our own house?

Look! The Grand Duke came to try the glass slipper on my foot. I tried really hard to make it fit. But he didn't buy it.

Then the Duke learned there was another maiden in the household.

Look! The glass slipper fits!

The Prince and Cinderella lived happily ever after.

Finally, at the table this evening:

James: "How do you like your dinner?"

Nan, who apparently was quite hungry: "It's glorious."

21 Things about Mommy, According to Hannah

This has been running around Facebook, and I thought it was cute enough to share with you too!


1. What is something mommy always says to you?

Get things right. (I don’t believe I’ve ever said this in my life.)

2. What makes mommy happy?

If I read a book to her.

3. What makes mommy sad?

Sticking out your tongue to be mean.

4. How does your mommy make you laugh?

A joke.

5. What was your mommy like as a child?

Doing art. (Wrong.)

6. How old is your mommy?

78

7. How tall is your mommy?

59--That means tall. (I'm 5'5")

8. What is her favorite thing to do?

Taking care of beautiful children.

9. What does your mommy do when you're not around?

You have to do stuff yourself.

10. If your mommy becomes famous, what will it be for?

Being a statue.

11. What is your mommy really good at?

Drawing (yeah, right...maybe stick figures)

12. What is your mommy not very good at?

Spelling (Hey, I can spell ophthalmology!)

13. What does your mommy do for a job?

Being the boss in the house.

14.What is your mommy's favorite food?

Spaghetti

15.What makes you proud of your mommy?

(long silence.) Maybe you're a good cook.

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?

Sully from Monster’s Inc.

17. What do you and your mommy do together?

Read, eat, cooking, taking care of dogs.

18. How are you and your mommy the same?

Same last name.

19. How are you and your mommy different?

Different color hair and eye color.

20. How do you know your mommy loves you?

Sing a nice song--"I love you so much. I love you so much. I can't even tell you how much I love you. You're special to me, you're special to me, I'm lucky to have you as part of my life."

21. Where is your mommy's favorite place to go?

Inflation Nation or, maybe the circus.

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Hannah used another one of her invented words today. I had forgotten this one.

"Yesternight".

I was getting out some leftovers for lunch. She said, "Oh, chicken pot pie from yesternight."

More made-up words....

Since we're all still sick here, nothing has been going on. Hannah is slowly improving, but I'm not so sure she actually has/had strep. She should be all better by now, but instead she has congestion and a cough. Me too. Chris too. But we don't have the fever she did, nor the sore throat. We've got aching joints. James has something too, but he's away on a business trip all week, so I'm not sure what his symptoms are.

I started this post last month, but never really did anything with it. Since I'm not in a creative mood (cough cough), I'll just post it now, in a somewhat unfinished form.

When Hannah was about five years old she had some great ideas to add to Webster's Dictionary (I bet you didn't know that she/me/we are distantly related to Noah Webster, at least according to family lore. Also, we're supposedly related to President Andrew Johnson, the first president to be impeached, who also ranks as one of the worst presidents ever. Note to self: dig up documentation!).

Hannah knew the words "today" and "tomorrow". But she thought of a couple more that are quite valuable. "Tomorning" was the first. It really cuts down on having to say "tomorrow morning". Or, if you want to put something off until tomorrow you can say "I'll do it to-later". We all use these words in our house today.

There are other words that morphed into our family's lexicon because of some of Hannah's early articulation difficulties. She was unable to make a "y" sound, so she substituted "l". When we see something that's adorable, we say, "cloot" instead of "cute". Also, if something is beautiful, we say, "blootyful". Of course, we were careful not to use these when she could hear us. But now that she can say them correctly, she thinks it's so funny to hear about what she did when she was little. I had forgotten one of her classic morphed/short-cut words until Kate used it a couple weeks ago: Walloo? It's a shortened form of "Where are you?". When playing hide-and-go-seek we'd hear her say, "Tatie, walloo? Are loo in here?"

All those speech therapy visits, all that time working on oral motor skills...I'm glad that we did it, but sometimes I miss the cuteness of Hannah's early speech.

Lyrics

Hannah listens to lots of music in the car. She doesn't tolerate earbuds, so an iPod is out of the question. That's okay with me because very often she sings along with the CDs. She cannot carry a tune. At all. It's painful interesting to listen to her, and I fear it would be worse if I didn't have the actual music to cover up some of her "enthusiasm".

She also likes to make up her own impromptu lyrics. One of her favorite songs is, "I'm a Believer" (Monkees). The song goes, "I thought love was only true in fairy tales....", and she might sing, "I thought Mom was taking me to a restaurant..."

Then there are songs where she tries to sing the lyrics but she can't quite figure out what they are. There is this song about "The Wheels on a Big Rig" (Trout Fishing in America), where they count up to 18 in different ways--backwards, by even numbers, odd numbers, divided by pi, etc. First off, Hannah has been interpreting the lyrics as "Wheels on Big Red"--isn't that a gum? Secondly, I think that she just doesn't understand the song. When they sing that they're going to count the wheels in Roman Numerals she sings "Let's count the wheels in Ramen Noodles!"

New Goldfish

We've been in our new house for more than a year now, and Hannah has been patiently waiting for the empty aquarium in her room to be set up. A few months ago I bought a couple of goldfish in bowls to distract her so we could procrastinate even longer. It's still working, so we still have not set up the filter, nor washed the new aquarium gravel; no progress whatsoever. Well, I did let her choose a plastic plant a while back, if that counts as progress....

One of the fish (Nemo) died a couple months ago, so yesterday we finally bought a replacement.

On the way home from the pet store Hannah was trying out names for the new fish. It, apparently, is a boy.

Here is a partial list of naming options:

Nemo

Gill

Sparkle

Goldie (when questioned whether the fish was actually gold, the answer was, "Oh yes, mom, gold is a kind of orange.")

Wiggle

Waggle

Wigglesworth

Robert (the guy in "Enchanted")

Bob


And then, the best fish name I've ever heard:

Fish-ka-bob

The Planets (according to Hannah)

Mercury

Venus

Earth

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Uterus

Neptune

(she always turns things into medical terminology!)

The Narrator

All morning long Hannah spoke in narrative.

Some samples:

Mom: "Nan, it's time to get dressed."
H: "'Okay, Mom', said Hannah."

(clothes are now on, time for hair brushing)

Mom: "Meet me in the bathroom for your hair."
H: "'I'll be there in a minute', replied Hannah politely."

(brushing out tangles)

H: "'Ouch!' cried Hannah unhappily."

(going downstairs, the dogs following her, each one passing her on their way down)

H: (in a dog voice) "'Step aside, Hannah,' cried Hazel. 'Thank you, Hannah,' said Bunsen."

"'You're Welcome.' replied Hannah."

Cretaceous Period

A few chuckles from today's school work. Hannah was reading about dinosaurs. She was trying to sound out the word "pteranodon". Good luck with that! She came up with "parent-odon", which cracked me up. Even after I helped her say it correctly, she still says, "parentodon". I have a feeling that it will end up being one of our favorite Hannah-isms, along with Teddy Rosabell.

She's been having trouble phrasing her sentences when she reads aloud, so I've been making her say "period" when she sees one so she'll stop and take a breath. So when she came to "They lived in the Cretaceous Period." she asked for help. She pointed to "Cretaceous" and I said the word. Then she pointed to "Period" and I said "period". She kept pointing to "Period" and I repeated the word, thinking she wasn't really paying attention. But, of course, she thought I was telling her to look at the "."

When she figured it out she laughed so hard! Me too!

Hannah-ism

It's been a nice cool day, so I threw together a homemade chicken pot pie.

When I brought it to the table, Hannah said, "Chris, watch out for the chicken hot pie".

She's so funny.