O, come, let us adore Him.

Merry Christmas to all. May you experience the love of Christ today and always.

Baby Jesus is here!

Cookie family

Coffee mama

Mih-muh. May-may mih-muh.
(see previous post)

Before Midnight Mass


With love from all of us and our prayers for a blessed New Year.

Homophones and other baby talk

As Meghan ventures into speaking multi-syllabic words, we sometimes find ourselves guessing (and giggling) at the things that sound alike when she says them:

Doggie--Daddy ( both are dahhh-dee) this can be confusing at bedtime when we're not sure what (or who) she is asking to cuddle with.

Teapot--treetop--and something else that I can't remember at the moment (all three are "tea pot" said very distinctly and with a pause between the syllables): very funny when Rock a bye Baby is being sung

up--cup (both are "bup") but it's usually not too bad since up is in the kitchen when we are cooking and cup is mostly at the table

Mary--Meghan: both are "May-may" Funny when she says "Tih (kiss) May-may" and wants to give a kiss to my kitchen Madonna rather than receiving one herself.

bow--bowl understandable, and not a problem in context

bed-bread: both are "Bem" but again we have context to help us

There are some others, which I will add when I remember them.

I love that she says "bank-bee" for her blanket.

Other words:
dew--juice
mil--milk (in a cup)
Tommy--yep, she learned his name just a few days before he got home
boh-way--boy
Mah-moo--beginning to interchange with BoBo for Matthew
No--although usually not in defiance, just in answer to questions like "do you want some milk?" answered in a worried tone "No. dew." She's very sweet and funny when she worries that we are about to do something that she doesn't want us to do. Not one of us can continue with whatever we wanted when she does that. Ahhh....the life of the youngest child. :)
Bup-buh--diaper
bow (bowl)
pate (plate and placemat)
feet
hans
toes
cheek
mou (th)
tee (th)
hay (hair)
eye (s)
eah (ear)
tummy
poo! (for a wet or dirty diaper, as in "please change this thing ASAP")
go! (as in, "Hey, you people, I want to go, too.")
toat (coat)
mih-muh (mittens)
haaa (hat) usually she likes the idea of the hat, but pulls it off only moments after we put it on

bow (all hair clips, whether actually bows or not) she also pulls these out almost immediately if we don't sneak them in properly

shuh (shirt) and particularly "heh-ha shuh" for her shirt with the hedgehog on it which she asks to wear almost daily

pan--pants

sah (for socks or tights)

shoe--sometimes very insistently if we are going out and she thinks she might not be going along Meghan LOVES shoes. She is fascinated by big shoes and takes them out of the shoe cabinet and walks around in them: mine, Joseph's, doesn't matter whose really)

"Shuh" for "Sure" when asked if she will help with something or if she wants to do something she wants to do or eat something she wants to eat (otherwise, "No." See above)

"Tute" cute

"Nice" when she likes something--like her Christmas presents. Every time she opened one, she said "Nice" and sometimes she laughed with great excitement. We laughed when she spent the time between her turns to open presents by putting the gifts back in the bags, taking them out, putting them back in, taking them out, over and over and over. By this evening, she was actually calling wrapped presents "nice" even before they were opened. And she was almost as enamored of the tissue paper as she was of the gifts. Almost. It turns out she like clothes. A lot. And tries to put them on when she receives them. Who needs TV?

sho-shay (horse)
various other animal sounds and a few names that are more or less accurate
You should hear her roar for lions and bears.

angy--angry (for the baby's expression in her Baby Faces book)
sad--same as above
puh-pld--for the page that says "puzzled"

Dayce--for her friend Grace (although she sometimes forgets and calls her May-may)
Doshie--for her friend Joshua (never called May-may)

chay--chair
towtch--couch
bem--bed & bread

Read! said very insistently with books being handed to us. This is one area where we are working hard on attaching please to the request.

And probably the cutest thing:
"MAh-mee-mah, I neen you." For I need you. She only says my name with three syllables when she says this sentence. It's sort of a game in which I am supposed to reply "Meg-gy-gah, I need you." or sometimes, she goes around the dinner table inserting other names and adding an extra syllable (doh-doh-dah for Joseph, who is usually Doh-doh) It's adorable.

Other sentences or almost sentences:
She tells me what she wants to eat by saying the name of the food and mouth or bowl or plate
e.g. Mommy, cheese, bow. Or Mommy, tooh-tee, mou (cookie, mouth)

In a variation of this, today when she received a pair of pink corduroy polka-dotted pants she wanted to put them on immediately. She brought them to me and said, "Mommy, pan, tummy." Pretty good for a 19-month-old.

"Tute baby" for pictures of babies anywhere

Read boh-way. For books with pictures of boys in them or on them. And she calls snowmen boys, too. I guess there's some logic to that.

"Own bem" This is what she calls her new toddler bed, which she now gets into willingly, says "Head" as she carefully lies down to remind herself not to bump her head on the headboard. She still kicks off the covers, gets cold or lonely and crawls into bed with us in the middle of the night. But I now usually get my side of the bed all to myself for at least a few hours of comfy sleeping bliss at night.

A flash of her sense of humor. The other day, she, purposely I think, called a stuffed animal that was not a horse a "Show-shay". I corrected her and said, no, that one is a (whatever it was, not even close to horse). She said 'show-shay" again, and I said the correct name again. With a twinkle in her eye, she said "Show-shay" a third time. And waited. And grinned, almost giggling, for me to respond with the correct word. Another word-playing child.

One Matthew note: The day before yesterday, the kids were playing Risk in the living room. Matthew was alternately being on Tommy's team and doing his own thing. At one point in the game, he said, "You know what I think of when I hear you say 'take over'? I think of a black guy leaning over with his tongue sticking out." (by 'black guy' he means a man wearing black--all people whose names he doesn't know are labeled with the color they are wearing, as in "Mommy, why is that green lady going up the stairs?") A random glimpse into the working of his mind. We get more of these for Matthew than some other children because most of what goes through his mind comes out his mouth. It can be very strange and funny, and we smile a lot over this.

Happy 18, Patrick!

chocolate raspberry cake
Good choice!

As long as there are friends....

Make a wish.

Got it!

May God grant you many years, Patrick.
With love,
Mom

"O" Antiphons

To learn more about these prayers for the last days of Advent, go to this link:

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0374.html

Thanks for the link, Mom. We have a lot of fun with the "O" Antiphons. Today, for example, is the day that we buy our poinsettias for the house. "O flower of Jesse..." :)

Pious Sodality of...Marshmallow Shooters?

This is too good not to share. Should be a must-have for any family likely to be trapped indoors periodically.