Word games

Mason refuses to call me "Mom" or "Mommy," as I prefer. Instead, I'm Ma. It's not that he can't say the other words, he just chooses to call me by my hick name. We've made a game out of it. He calls me "Ma" and I respond by calling him "Dude." Ma, Dude, Ma, Dude...it can last an entire car ride.

Well, on the way home from Grammy & Grampy's he called out, "Mommy." Kenzie was the first to notice, and was evidently quite touched. She said, "Mom, did you hear that? He called you Mommy!! That was so precious!! That makes me wish that I had a little boy, a little Mason, to call me Mommy."

Mason's verbal abilities are continuing to develop. An average sentence is now 3 to 4 words. He still tends to skip words that he thinks are unnecessary. For example, "Sister and Ama are in the car in front of us" would be "Sister Ama car front." Kenzie is a good translator when we get stumped.

Arial portrait

Kenzie drew the picture below of Arial, Sebastian, and Flounder from memory. I found this picture as a reference, but she didn't look it when she was drawing. She's got the detail from the fins on the Arial's tail to the eyelashes. Sebastian (the crab) is in the lower left.

Kenzie status

I'm happy to report that all signs of Kenzie's concussion were gone by the next morning. She vomited a couple more times during the night, but has since made a full recovery. Whew. That wasn't fun. It was quite scary to see her so lethargic, sleepy and confused.

We still have snow, even got 2 more inches this morning. We haven't done any more sledding, though! One word: helmet. Or, better yet: summer.

Lap Cat

Madison is such a patient cat. Ok, it's true that he's so fat that he can't out-run Mason. But, still, he puts up with a lot.

Mason points to the cat and says "LAP!" in his very, very loud voice. The cat just holds still, as if preparing for an earthquake. His ears perhaps show his true feelings.

Every once in a while Madison gets fed up, or pinched, and hisses. That breaks Mason's heart and he almost instantly cries, unsure why his truest friend would betray him.

P.S., if you're wondering about the texture of the fur on the cat's back, let's just say this. He wasn't able to reach all the way around to groom himself appropriately and got mats. Then he got too close to me when I was holding scissors.

Grammy's story

I added a post in June 2002 a speech that Grammy gave to a group of women about her life story.

Watch out for that tree!

I knew I didn't like the snow this time around.

Kenzie's sled took a right-turn on the hill by our house, crashing her into a tree. Our neighbor Landon picked her up and she was just like a rag doll. I ran to get her from him, and she was completely lethargic in my arms. All she would say is that she just wanted to go to sleep. As our neighbor Lindsey (conveniently a nurse at Children's) was checking her out, she vomited. Then as she tried to walk a bit, she couldn't quite do it.

So, off we went to Children's.

Lucky for us, the waiting room was vacant and we got right in (although the ER tech did tell us it was the second "sled in the tree" case she'd seen today). One CT scan and urine test later, Kenzie was diagnosed with a concussion and sent home. She threw up again tonight and is still sleepy, but we know that there's no internal bleeding and will feel better in a couple of days. Her description to Grammy of the CT scan: "I had to go through this donut thing because my noodle rattled a little bit."

In another bout of snow-fun, we had a scary ride home. Our neighborhood is a skating rink and as we were heading down a hill another car was coming up, we weren't in control as the tires locked and we held our breath until we passed. Needless to say we came home and hunkered down for the night.

Have I said, "think sun?"

Another wedding in China

Kenzie brought Chirpie out fully decked for a "party." Note the hair accessories, necklace, bracelet, dress, and "shoes." Curious, I asked her what party Chirpie was going to. Here's her reply:

It's a school party. This lady, her sister is getting married. Her name is Bun. That's her regular name, not her real name. Her real name is Chirpie. Not THAT Chirpie (pointing to the dog), a bunny named Chirpie. The party is for the wedding. It's in China. And I don't know what else their marriage is all about. I'll have to ask Chirp.

Evidently that's all she knows - only Chirpie is going to the party.

Life's cold lesson

Mason didn't want to put on boots before going outside to see the snow. While some might call it poor parenting, we like to call it "The Law of Natural Consequences." Strangely, it took four barefoot trips on the front porch for the lesson to fully set, each time with him coming in crying, saying "cold, cold!!"...then asking to go back out.

Winter: Enough already!

What is up with this weather? It's snowing again tonight. Normally, we'd all be thrilled. But because we've just spent time in Winthrop and Leavenworth, we've had our fill! Kenzie and Mason did think it was fun watching the snow fall...but for some of us the novelty has worn off this year!



Matter of fact, we're looking forward to our upcoming trip to Cabo! Here's a picture taken from the porch of the place we're going to be staying. Doesn't that look better? I told Kenzie that we were heading to Mexico. She said, "how are we going to get there?" When I said we were going to fly she slapped the side of her head and said, "I can hardly believe it!" Mason is excited too. He repeats the same phrases: "airplane [pause] beach!" and "boat [pause] Mike!" and "boat, me." We're all excited too! Think sun!

ABC progress

Winthrop weekend

We had a lovely weekend in Winthrop celebrating the New Year and a chance to escape from city life. There was a couple of feet of snow on the ground that made for a Winter Wonderland. The mule deer were in abundance and eventually braved our deck to get some food and meet the kids eye-to-eye, separated only by a piece of glass. I just love the deer's face in the right-hand picture. It was as if he sized Mason up and just concluded "no threat, I'm bigger than you."


For fun we threw the kids down the hill on a sled. By the end of the day Mason was so tired his eyes were rolling back in his head as he lay on the snow at the bottom of the hill, but he still wanted more. The closest they came to quitting came when Kenzie asked to go down a small cliff (there was a lot of cushy snow for her to fall into, but still a very steep straight drop down). She came up and said, "Mom. That was kind-of dreadful. It was a little crazy. But I'm okay. Can we try the other hill now?" She then asked me if I wanted to go down the cliff. I said, "no way! That looks scary!"

In all seriousness, though, Kenzie was a great sledding partner with a lot of endurance and perseverance. Because the snow was so deep, it became tough to cut a path. In the picture to the right, we are heading up a decent sized hill. This is about as far as Mason made it, but Kenzie followed me all the way to the top several times, even though the snow would cave up to her thigh. We had a rule - you have to walk yourself to the top to be able to sled down. Mason broke that rule many times as it was just a little too tough for him to navigate with all his padded clothing and short little legs.

Santa visits

Finally, this year's Santa pictures. Kenzie's was taken (from a Polaroid, gasp!) when he visited her school, so the quality isn't great.

Elevator escape

Grampy nudged me to post this, I had all but forgotten it. It was one of many near-misses that we have with Mason on a daily basis. This day was Sunday, Christmas Eve. We were heading back to the car from church, in the high rise across the street where we park. Mason ran ahead, took a right turn toward the elevators as I increased my step. As I rounded the corner I saw him dart into an open elevator and the doors began to close. I bolted toward him, saying "excuse me" as I nearly ran over a fellow parishioner, lunged toward the almost-shut doors, barely reaching the end of my church bulletin into the opening, just in time to cause them to reopen and see Mason's "duh, what?" expression. Grammy and Grampy peeled themselves off the floor in time to join us for the ride to the car. No worries...just another dose of adrenaline.