Survivng

I live in north Alabama, which if you haven't heard, has been hit by a major series of tornadoes. My family are okay, but we will be without power for who knows how much longer. Internet service has sporadically returned to my phone, but is very unreliable, so you won't be seeing me online much for a while.

We were invited to a nearby friends' house, with power, to get a hot shower and wash some laundry. Ah, luxury! And Internet, so I'm able to post to various accounts. Hope whoever might be reading this is safe.

Belated Hannah update: 18 months

I've been meaning to write this entry for months now. I was going to give physical stats and such, but I don't have them. In the interest of getting this out, she's still 5% in height and head circumference and still below the chart on weight. However, she's on a steady curve and finally hit 20 pounds so we could turn her seat forward! Oh, and she has 12 teeth: eight incisors (four top & four on bottom) and four molars (at the four corners, after a gap next to each end of the incisors where her canines will grow).

I'm teaching her to turn out the lights around the house, as I obviously went wrong somewhere with my sons. They couldn't turn a light out as they leave a room to save their life. Typically the first thing I do when I get home from work is go around and turn out the lights in the back, because everyone's in the living room or kitchen. Naturally, I have to hold her up so she can reach the switches, but maybe she'll keep it up on her own once she's tall enough. She's got enough fine motor skill to do it, but sometimes gets confused as to which way the switch should go to turn the light off or on.

Developmentally, the doctor said she should speak 7-27 words, if I recall correctly what my wife recalls the doctor saying correctly. That's the main thing I want to document now: her vocabulary. Unfortunately, that's rather hard as it has rapidly increased since she turned 18 months, so there may be words I've left out. Note that she's not speaking these absolutely clearly, but her family can understand them when she says them. And she there may be a few that she used in the past that she's not using as often now.

Andrew

Apparently her favorite brother, because she's refusing to say "Walter", even these months since she hit 18. We wonder if she's doing it on purpose to taunt him.

baby

One of her earliest words. It applies to just about anything people shaped. She first started using it for baby dolls at the store, but she's since used it for action figures and young kids bigger than her.

ball

bubble

For her, this actually means apple.

bye-bye

Daddy

dog

This means almost any animal with four legs. (In the months since, she can disinguish between dog and kitty.)

duck

Mainly for rubber ducks, but sometimes real ones too.

ear

eye

juice

Any drink to her is juice.

Mama

meemees

Means she wants to nurse.

no

You might notice that "yes" isn't on the list. At 18 months, as best I remember, she wasn't yet saying "yeah" or "yes", just "no", which made it hard to ask her a simple question.

shoes

This was possibly her first word; it was certainly one of the earliest. The girl loves her shoes (and sometimes other people's).

thank you

tissue

This is sometimes hard to distinguish from "juice", just from the sound. Luckily, she has other ways of letting us know what she wants.

toes

uh-oh

Used most often when she or someone else drops something.

Hannah update: 1 year

Hannah turned a year old earlier this month. Hard to believe a year has passed already. Unfortunately, she doesn't have a doctor's appointment for a bit yet, so I can't give any official growth statistics. We have noticed, however, that her 6-9 month wardrobe is finally getting a bit tight, so we think she's had a growth spurt.

Developmentally, Hannah's still at or above where she should be. She's been walking since 10 months, which is well ahead of when either of her brothers started walking. Her vocabulary pretty much only consists of "mama" right now. Sometimes she'll say "baba", which usually refers to a baby doll. Rarely she'll manage "dada". Dorothy has tried to teach her some sign language, but she doesn't yet consistently use any of it. And at the moment, she's up to seven teeth: four on the top and three on the bottom.

Hannah's already taken on a chore for herself. If she's around when I start emptying the dishwasher, she'll bring me the silverware to put in the drawer. Usually this means one piece at a time, although recently she was doing two — on in each hand. The bad part is when I start putting the dirty dishes in, she'll still try taking the silverware out to put in the drawer.

Hannah has an amazingly good temperament. She fusses when she's hungry and sometimes when she doesn't get her way. We recently bought a gate and when we put it up between the living and dining rooms, she did not like it if someone went over it without her. We've since moved it to between the dining room and kitchen and that doesn't seem to be as traumatic. She doesn't fuss so much when she's tired; she just keeps going until Dorothy nurses her or she's put in the car, in which case she'll fall asleep quickly. She doesn't fuss over wet or dirty diapers, which is sometimes to her detriment because if it's a day where we're busy, busy, busy, we'll sometimes forget to check her diaper as often as we should.

Hannah's still not sleeping through the night, though. Well, at least most nights. She'll go to sleep around 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. and stay asleep until around when Dorothy and I go to bed two or three hours later. Then she'll wake up, but go back to sleep until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. After that she's a bit restless until, of course, around 6:00 a.m. when I get up.

Hannah hasn't had a proper haircut yet, but Dorothy did trim her bangs a bit, as seen in the adjacent photo. Note that her hair was wet, so it's not its usual, curly self. As I recall, Dorothy was able to get the trim done without major drama.

For her birthday party, we invited her grand- and godparents, plus many friends who had children around her age. All the grandparents plus a great-grandmother and two out of three godparents made it and a few friends. It seemed like everyone had a good time. The party had a zoo/jungle animal theme and the kids seemed to have fun playing with inflatable, ball-shaped elephants, lions, and other animals.

So here's to Hannah celebrating a year of surviving being in the same house as her brothers. She's managed to avoid major injury so far. Life is certainly getting more interesting since she got more mobile, such as the scare with the paperclip. We look forward to what the next year will bring.

Hannah update: 9 months

By popular demand, Hannah updates are back. In short, she's doing great. She's running small on most measurements, particularly weight, but developmentally she's exactly where she should be, if not ahead. For the record, the measurements were 27.75" long and weighs 15 lbs. 2 oz.

She's dangerously close to walking. She can walk as long as bigger person holds her up or she can cruise holding on to furniture. In fact, she seems to prefer cruising to crawling. I fully expect her to be walking before 12 months.


She also has gotten her first two teeth. They're the two bottom ones. Hopefully you can make them out in the adjacent picture. She was starting to eat solid food even before the first tooth came in, but still gets plenty of mom's milk, too.

We had a scare over the weekend. Hannah spilled a container full of paper clips. Dorothy thought she had picked them all up, but then Hannah found another one, which Dorothy got away from her. Then, just a bit later, Dorothy thought she saw Hannah put something in her mouth. She checked and couldn't find anything, so she thought maybe she'd imagined it. Just a few minutes later, though, Hannah started choking. She spit up a bit of food and seemed to be fine, but that was scary enough that we took her to the pediatric ER.


It turns out they make teeny little hospital gowns for babies, as seen here. There was a bit of a wait, but it wasn't too bad, and much more pleasurable than going to the regular ER. Finally, we got an x-ray technician who loaded Dorothy and me up with lead smocks, as it was our job to hold her still during the procedure. We had to remove Hannah's cloth diaper, because of the snaps on it. The technician then seemed way too concerned about exposing her privates during the procedure. I mean, give me a break, she's just nine months old and the only people there were him and the three of us!

After another wait, we got the good news that nothing was found in the x-ray. So one $175(!) co-pay later, we were free to go. The cost made us feel a bit silly about the whole thing, but really, the peace of mind is priceless.

In other family news, our church had its music camp a few weeks ago. It was the story of the apostle Paul. Walter played the part of Peter. His main job was to do roll call for the rest of the apostles, which he did well. Andrew—seen here with his friend, Andrew—was in the sailor chorus, but also got to "stone" Stephen, which is what the costume he's wearing in the photo was for.

More Tales of Appliances

For the two of you that might possibly read this, my apologies for being away so long. In the past few weeks I've discovered Facebook, so I've been spending most my online time there. But there's a whole 'nother possible blog entry there, so let's move on to my recent adventures with major appliances.

Thanks to a bonus, we were finally able to purchase a new dishwasher to replace the one that died months ago. After months of washing dishes by hand, I should never complain about having to unload and reload the dishwasher again. I didn't say that I won't, but I shouldn't.

We selected a mid-range model and while I might possibly have been able to install it myself, I've seen some of the difficulties in doing so and opted to pay a professional to do it. We even bought a service plan on it. Historically, this is something we avoid, but given our history of problems with dishwashers, it seemed prudent this time, especially considering all the things it covered.

If you read my previous entry about making an emergency clothes washer purchase, we bought it at the same store as we did that. This time, however, since we had a bit more leeway, we didn't opt for "what do you have in the back right now." Oddly, this still worked out in our favor. The store called the morning of the delivery and said, essentially, "we don't have the model you selected, but would you be willing to take the next model up for no additional charge?" Naturally, we said yes and wonder just who turns down such offers that they feel it necessary to ask? I mean, it was still the color and manufacturer we selected, just a model that might offer an additional feature or two and cost about $100 more. Looked at from a certain perspective, that essentially means we got the five year service plan for free.

I'm no Eastern philosopher, but it seems karma dictates that this good fortune come at a price. A few nights later, around midnight, my wife woke me up to tell me the clothes dryer was making a funny noise. I checked, and yes, it was. Seeing few options, I took it apart. Just after 1:00 a.m., I had diagnosed the problem: one of the rollers for the main drum had worn out. It had obviously been working on it for a long time, but I guess something just finally gave. (I apologize for not thinking to take a picture of our laundry room with bits of dryer spread around it.)

My wife said she hadn't expected me to take it apart. However, I've seen the appliance repairman do so once before, several years ago. They're not that complicated inside. If the drum is turning and the heating element is working, there's not a lot left to go wrong with a dryer. I might point out that this dryer is probably 20-30 years old. We bought it from the people who sold us the house 15 years ago, and it was old then. I've been told, probably by the same appliance repairman I watched, that a dryer can last through about three washers. Most people replace them at the same time just so that they'll match. As we're not in the habit of inviting friends over to watch us do the laundry, we don't really care. They're both white and box-shaped, so I suppose that's close enough. Oh, and we're on washer number three.

Now, at 1:00 a.m., there's not a lot of options for getting dryer parts, so the cloth diapers she was trying to dry would have to wait to go out on the line when the sun came up. I did so before I left for work. Naturally, it rained during day while Dorothy was away from the house, so they didn't get dry. Luckily, some friends down the street let her use their dryer so we at least had clean diapers. I, unfortunately, had a meeting right after work. I hit one of the big-box hardware stores afterward, as they were the only things open. While they did have some generic dryer parts, as I feared, they didn't have what I needed. Thus ended the second night without a dryer.

The next day, before work, I attempted to visit the appliance parts store I'd been to once before, but they'd moved farther away from us. Next I checked what I could do online. Sears.com – it's a Kenmore dryer – led me to the where I could buy the parts. They weren't too expensive, but having them shipped next day delivery just about doubled the cost. So I called Bob Wallace Appliance, a locally-owned store listed in the yellow pages. They confirmed they had the part, so I went by on my lunch break. Once there, I told them I wanted to replace the belt too, at which point he said, "let's check the price on this maintenance kit." It turns out there's a set of pre-packaged parts that covered what I wanted/needed to replace, plus another part. And it cost less that buying replacement rollers and the belt separately. I'm sold!

So, on the third evening I go to work. I didn't pay attention to how long it took, but I eventually had all the new parts installed and the dryer back together. And it seems to work. I mean, it's been a week or two now and the clothes are getting dry. Paying $32 for parts certainly beats a service call, even if it took a couple days.

R.I.P. Rufus, 1993–2008

We had to put our cat, Rufus, to sleep today. It was the most difficult decision I've ever had to make. He's now at rest in the raised flowerbed in our backyard next to our other cat, Somalia.

It appears Rufus had a blood clot or possibly a stroke. Back in September, I came home from work and heard a thud. Rufus had apparently attempted to get off the couch to greet me, but instead fell. I stood him up and he was having problems walking, so I rushed him to the vet. I called them as I was preparing to leave and they stayed and waited for me. The cause was uncertain then, but when he hadn't improved much the next day, they thought he'd probably had a mild stroke. The main symptom was his walking in a drunken stagger. Within just a few weeks, however, he'd appeared to have recovered.

We had to board him while we were gone for Thanksgiving. He seemed to do fine, but then I noticed after a few days of being back home he had appeared to stop eating. I might have noticed sooner, but the job of feeding him had been given to Andrew, and he didn't bother to mention it to us right away. A visit to the vet seemed to get him back on track, but then – after they'd done a follow-up call, of course – he seemed nearly to stop again.

I'd planned to call the vet today, but this morning, after Hannah woke us up, I heard him calling from the living room. I found him lying on the floor in front of the couch. Upon trying to stand him up, it seemed he was unable to. Further examination showed no movement in his tail or back legs. He was happy for the attention, though, calmed down, and began purring.

Once we got to the vet, the prognosis wasn't good. The options boiled down to more of the kinds of tests he'd had lately or putting him down. After much heart-wrenching discussion, we decided for the latter. I stayed with him while it was done, which broke my heart.

I think I understand, now, an emotional reason for burying the dead. Digging a large hole to put a loved one in helps a little, because it actually gives you something to do and focus on. Putting him in and preparing to cover him, however, I broke down again.

Dorothy and I got Rufus from the Humane Society back in 1994. He had gotten sick and his family had been unable to care for him. The Society had gotten him healthy again and then put him up for adoption. He was about 13 months old and came with the name Rufus.

I had taken Somalia from Dorothy's family a year earlier. She was a stray who was obviously uncared for and they couldn't really handle another cat, as they had many. We naively hoped that maybe she'd get along with Rufus immediately since she hadn't been a problem for Dorothy's family. We introduced them far too soon and, naturally, she attacked Rufus, the intruder. I grabbed the cat who was closest, which happened to be Rufus, and paid for it with numerous scratches on my hands and arms. Eventually, of course, they got along, although Somalia seemed to remain the dominant one.

Rufus was an unusual cat and extremely laid back. He loved to have his belly rubbed. Once we had children, Somalia tended to just stay away from them. Rufus, however, tolerated them better.

Sometime after Walter learned to crawl, Rufus came, laid down in front of him and rolled over for a belly rub. Walter, not knowing how to pet, just grabbed his fur. Rufus didn't react, other than to give him a look like, "what are you doing? That's now how you do it," and then got up and laid down a little further away. Walter crawled over and the scene repeated itself. Rufus tried a third time before giving up and wandering off.

When Andrew was one year old, he tried riding Rufus. Meaning, essentially, he sat on Rufus, although not putting his full weight on the cat. Rufus just sat there until he could get away. Other, more high-strung cats might have responded with clawing and/or hissing, but not Rufus. The above photo of baby Andrew and Rufus is not from either incident, but was one of the few I was able to find of Rufus with one of the kids.

I realized while burying him that Rufus had been in my life longer than any of my children and almost as long as Dorothy. While I felt sad when we had to euthanize Somalia, it didn't hurt as much. That was, perhaps, because while Somalia let us feed her and pet her, she remained aloof as only a cat can. Rufus was more affectionate. I don't know that I'll ever know another cat like him. Goodbye, kitty.

15 years is the "washing machine anniversary"

About two days before our wedding anniversary, our washing machine died. For just $35, the repairman was kind enough to tell us that a slow leak had caused its innards to rust and the motor was dead. Even if he could repair it, it would cost more than a new machine. Great.

Thanks to my sister-in-law's Christmas present (unwrapped early), we had dinner plans for our anniversary. (Thanks, Beth!) Afterwards, we'd originally planned to get some Christmas shopping done for the kids. When you have three children, however -- particularly when one is in cloth diapers -- dirty clothes aren't something you want to get too far behind on. So after dinner, we had a lovely evening looking at washing machines.

It seems our desperate circumstances actually worked in our favor. After narrowing down our choices, we found out we were incorrect in our assumption that they'd have a sample of most models in back. So we asked what they had in the store right then. This revealed a discontinued model that the store happened to still have sitting in the back. There was no floor model on display; this was truly the only one they had. But we got a good deal on it because of that! (Or so it seems to us and we'd appreciate not being disillusioned.)

And there was also a good thing about the timing, as far as time of year. Our babysitter wasn't available until later than normal dining time. If it hadn't been the holidays, the store wouldn't have been open late enough for us to shop after dinner.

So, we found out we could indeed fit the washer in our minivan and drove it home. I then had to get the old washer out of the laundry room. I'd attempted to do so before dinner, but discovered it wouldn't fit through the way I'd initially picked, so I had to clear a second path when we got back home. Thanks goodness the laundry room has more than one door. Once that was done, I had to bring in the new washer and install it. And after that, I had to run an "empty load" to clean the machine out before using it. In the end, I think I got to bed around 1:30 a.m., but there was a load of clothes running when I did.

Two last interesting notes. First, the new washer thankfully came with new hoses. In removing the old ones, I discovered we were supposed to have changed them about seven years ago. You'd think after having our house flooded by a burst washing machine hose several years ago, we'd have learned our lesson and kept a better eye on that. I have dutifully recorded the date that the new hoses should be replaced in my PDA, so I'll get a an alert sometime in 2013.

Second, I was once told by a repairman that a clothes dryer can last through about three washers. Most people don't keep them that long, however, because they want their appliances to match. We're on a budget and don't give a flying fig; the laundry room's not a room we show off to guests. We bought our first washer and (the current) dryer from our home's previous occupants. The dryer is now on it's third washer. So happy anniversary, dear. I hope you like your present the clothes washer. Let's hope the "clothes dryer anniversary" doesn't come until at least 20 years of marriage.

Hannah update: 2 months

The idea was that keeping up a blog would be easier than updating web pages at my personal site, but it's not working out that way. Apologies, but here's a late update on Hannah. At a six week checkup, she was up to 9 pounds, 11 ounces and 22 inches. Now she's up to 10 pounds, 2 ounces and 22-1/2 inches. Growing like a weed, but she's right at the 50th percentile in height and weight. Our perfectly average child. :-)

Earlier this month she was baptized. At the left you can see her sporting the lovely christening gown one of her aunt's knitted crocheted for her. She did an ensemble made up of the dress, hat, and a blanket. She couldn't ever quite get the booties right, so Dorothy bought a pair (not shown). I'm not sure, but Aunt Beth may have spent nearly as much time working on it as Hannah did in her mom's tummy.

Our church does two services each Sunday and we, having three kids to prepare, almost always go to the later one. But on the Sunday of her baptism, we got a call from a friend about the time early service was starting. "Is Hannah's baptism today?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"But not at early service."

"Uh, no."

"Okay, we'll go straighten the pastor out."

We had six people, not counting Hannah, at the baptismal rehearsal. All but one knew the baptism was to be at the late service. Unfortunately, that one was the pastor. (Of course, the rest of us were focused on this one thing while he has a dozen or more to coordinate each week.) Luckily no harm was done, other than the bulletin had the baptism listed for the wrong service. The pastor worked around it with seeming ease.

And here is a photo from the actual baptism. (Thanks to our friend, Sarah W. for taking photos for us.) Up until this point, Hannah had slept through most church services in her mother's or my arms. We were hoping that might be the case this morning, but it was not to be. Right before the baptism, the youngest children's choir sang. Doing a great job, I might add. Unfortunately, as they rushed back to their seats, one child ran past Hannah, stomping just right and waking her up. There was no time to get her back to sleep, so she fussed through a good portion of her baptism. It was probably the most anyone at church had ever heard from her up to that point. The pastor even commented as he showed her around that he'd seen her at church a lot since her birth and this was unusual for her.

So Hannah's doing fine. She's been remarkable at sleeping through the night . . . most of the time. Hopefully the next belated post will show off the kids' Halloween costumes. I've just got to manage to get Andrew back into his costume long enough to get a good photo.

Children all dressed up

By popular demand, here are photos of Hannah. First, on the left, we have her in a lovely dress picked up at a recent kids' consignment sale. (Click the photos for bigger views.) Totally impractical, as she'll be lucky to wear it more than twice, but too cute and too cheap -- especially considering it still had the tags on it -- for her mother to pass up!

Next, on the right, we have her only slightly more casual and with ballet slippers on. Dorothy recently took her out wearing this outfit and never once got the "boy or girl" question. (Just the "how old is she" question.) This finally proved to me that those bows are completely silly after all.

Finally, we have a milestone for Walter. He is now old enough to serve as an acolyte at church. This primarily consists of lighting the candles before service and putting them out afterwards. Here he is doing the former for the very first time.

Hannah update: 2 weeks

Hannah is two weeks (and a bit) old now. At birth she weighed 7 lbs., 3 ozs. If she'd been born in a hospital, that number probably would have been higher because they would have weighed her right away. At the midwife's she was an hour or two old when they did it, so she'd pooped away several ounces.

The midwife checked her the other day and she's up to 8-1/2 lbs. Not bad for two weeks. Because of her gestational diabetes, Dorothy had been concerned those first few days that her milk wasn't coming in fast enough. Whether it came in quickly or not, this is confirmation that Hannah's getting plenty now.

And so it begins

I've toyed with doing a blog for a while. Unfortunately, I have little profound to say and little time to write it. However, I recently had my third child, a girl named Hannah. This is our first girl, so I was inspired to take (and caption) the below photo.

To clarify, those are cloth diaper covers hanging up to dry and the purple thing at the lower left is the diaper pail liner, also drying. No doubt there will be more photos in the future of this blog. In the meantime, welcome, friends.

A trip to Vulcan

[Originally posted to the Homewood High School class of 1989 Yahoo! Group.]

Two weeks before Thanksgiving, I took my two boys on a solo trip to Birmingham. This gave my wife a much needed break, as she's home-schooling and therefore gets almost no time away from them. My parents had some errands to do, so what to do with a 6- and 3-year-old in B'ham? Take 'em to the restored Vulcan!

I probably haven't been to Vulcan since college. For those unaware, they took Vulcan down for restoration a few years ago. The park has had a big overhaul as well, returning it to something closer to its 1938 roots. Gone is the enclosed viewing platform underneath him. Now it's a simple, open platform. There is still a glass elevator, but it now faces the south side (Homewood) instead of the west. You're free to take the stairs, as well. The first couple of flights are covered in marble, but above it's more utilitarian. The kids had a good time, although the 3-year-old didn't care for the platform. I hope I haven't given him acrophobia for life.

Oh, and Vulcan's spearhead is revealed once again. No longer does he carry a torch signifying when there's been a traffic fatality. There's also a museum and picnic area. Furthermore, you only have to pay for the museum and going to the top of Vulcan, so if you're short on dough you can still go up and take a look around the park.

Walter's Vocabulary

This post provides a snapshot of Walter's vocabulary at 18 months. These are words that Walter says (or has said) regularly. There are more things he has seemed to say, but since he did not say them regularly, I'll assume it was a fluke. Some of these words have fallen into disuse at the current time.

Walter understands many more words than he says. For example, he knows what "stand" and "sit" mean. He also has learned a few more body parts than he says, but he's working on it.

ball

One of Walter's first words after Mommy and Daddy.

(belly) button

This was amongst Walter's early body part vocabulary. Unfortunately we're now having a hard time teaching him what a shirt button is. (You say button, he thinks "belly button.")

block(s)

Another of Walter's early words, but after "ball."

book

When we first tried reading to Walter, he wouldn't sit still long enough. Now he loves to have books read to him. His current favorites are The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss and Tigger's Big Bounce.

bubble(s)

Walter loves to blow bubbles, but "bubble" can also mean "grape."

bye-bye

Walter started waving bye-bye early on, and then quit. Once he started doing it again, it took a little while for him to also say the word. Now he's a professional.

cookie

Walter refers to any snack food (cookies, fruit chews, crackers, chips) as a cookie. He will sometimes say "cracker" when corrected.

Daddy

I couldn't tell you exactly when Walter started saying this. He just slowly went from "duh-duh-duh" to "dad-ee." One of his first words, along with "Mommy." Early on, he had stages where he'd only say one or the other. Currently, Walter seems to have a problem understanding Lee is Daddy and Dorothy is Mommy. He tends to reverse them most of the time.

doggy

One of Walter's most recent words.

ear

This was the third body part we worked on. He picked it up fairly quickly.

eye

The fourth body part we did. Now we just have to teach to be gentle when indicating it.

French fry

We've unfortunately fallen into the trap of fast food. Walter loves French fries. We have to limit what we give him so he'll eat his other food most of the time. He's even said "French fry" once as we drove past McDonald's now, so we're definitely in trouble (and trying to cut back).

hi

Walter tends to greet me with this when I come home. He'll also answer "hi" when you say it to him.

juice

Any liquid that goes in his cups (juice, milk, water) is juice, although we're working on "milk." Walter uses this word a lot, basically meaning he's thirsty. Sometimes it's hard for me to tell "juice" from "shoes."

kitty (cat)

Walter learned this fairly early, despite the fact our cats always run away from him.

Mommy

One of Walter's first two words. (See Daddy.)

no

For a while, this was Walter's all-purpose answer, no matter if he meant yes or no. But if you tried to give him something he didn't want, he definitely meant it because he'd say "no" and push it away. He's gotten better about it, but "no" still doesn't always mean no.

nose

One of the first two body parts we worked on, and one of Walter's favorites. (See toes.)

potty

Another of Walter's more recent words. He knows what it means. Now if we could just get him to say it when he needs to "go potty."

shoe(s)

When Walter starts saying "shoes," it sometimes means he wants to go outside. Although usually he'll go get his jacket first and then we'll tell him he needs his shoes. Then he starts saying "shoes."

sock(s)

Walter usually says "shoes" when he sees someone putting on socks, but will start saying "socks" after he's corrected.

teeth

One of Walter's more recently learnd body parts. I think it's surplanted mouth, so I guess we'll have to work on tongue, lips, etc.

tissue(s)

One of Walter's grandmothers managed to start teaching Walter to blow his nose at an amazingly early age. He later learned to say "tissue." Usually he starts saying it whenever someone else gets a tissue, indicating he wants one too (whether his nose really needs blowing or not).

toe(s)

One of the first two body parts we worked on, along with "nose." He learned the difference amazingly quickly.

uh-oh

Another of Walter's early words, although I don't remember precisely when he started saying it. He most likely picked it up from Teletubbies. At first, he'd just say it for no apparent reason. Then he started saying it any time he saw Teletubbie merchandise. As of this writing, he tends to use when he spills or drops something.

whee

I started saying this to let Walter know sliding down a slide is supposed to be fun. Now he often says it just as he starts down one. (And he does think they're fun.)

yay

When Walter does something right or good, we try to encourage him by saying "yay" and clapping. He picked up on it and will now clap for himself while saying "yay!" He's also started doing it when other people applaud, including people on TV.

yeah

Walter sometimes says this in response to a question, but I don't think he really understands its meaning.

[This was originally a web page at my personal site. It was created November 10, 1999 and last updated on November 15 of that year.]