Words!

oliver's crawl
Originally uploaded by Wingates.

The crab crawler has his first "real" word--light. He says "ight?" in a singsongy elfin whisper and gazes at the ceiling in every new room. He first said it on Thanksgiving day sitting in Granddad's lap. Oliver suddenly lunged at the lamp over Granddad's shoulder and said "Aight!" like he had just put it all together in his mind. He's been saying it constantly ever since. He also said "hat" when Anne walked in yesterday wearing--you guessed it--a hat.

It's neat that Granddad was with Oliver when he said his first word because "light" was my first word too. Deja vu!

Hmmm....

On the way to school this morning Cora said,

"Dad, it would take one hundred days to drive to the sun."

"Really? How would you get there? That's a long way."

"They should put some gravity in outer space and then we could put gas stations there. I'd bring a biiiiiig bottle of glue and we'd glue them down."

Cora's Message to Elise and her parents

g'ma carol and cora
Originally uploaded by Wingates.

"To Elise and her parents:
I like you and I hope I see you at the beach at my birthday party. And I hope you have a very good time with me at the beach. It's fine over here but Ollie is crumpling up my stuff and eating my books. He's really good to me but he's just a little too silly for me. He sticks out his tongue but I really don't like seeing his tongue. Elise, I'm already four. Oliver is already almost standing up.

Love,
Cora"

(Transcribed verbatim)

Slackin'

Yikes! It's been a slack November on the blogging end of things. Not that things have been dull around here; on the contrary, we've just been trying to keep up with ourselves. We went to Kentucky for a mountain retreat a few weeks ago and had a grand time. Winter is slowly encroaching here and we're seeing colder days and nights. The full moon seemed to disrupt the emotional equilibrium of at least half of Nashville last week, and we slogged through several days of emotional sludge. But the experience did provide some valuable insights and all has been much better since then.