AC Capehart capehart

Well, OK, she didn’t write her name by herself today. This morning, we practiced together with pen and paper. I tried to get her to hold the pen “properly” but didn’t get far with that. Her ‘S’ looked like something between a “d” and a squared-off “o”. But later in the afternoon, I set her down in front of AlphaBaby, and I pointed out some of the letters, drew her name with stars, etc.

I am having Geek Gasm, I just came across Jott.com and astonished. I’ve already Jotted my Google calendar and I feel I can Jott my To-Do list, Remember the Milk too and now I am Jotting this blog entry. I called that in it gives a home meeting to some event(?). I am really impressed. listenPowered by Jott WOW. Speech to text has become useful at http://jott.com/ The above is a blog entry “written” by voice.

Dear Sam, I’m writing this to you on my 38th birthday. This morning when I got you up out of your crib, you asked, “What day is today?” I replied, “Monday.” Then you said, “It’s Mommy’s birthday! Happy Birthday, Mommy!” And you gave me a hug. Best. Birthday. Present. Ever. A few hours later, we were running errands on foot and you wanted me to carry you, and I was already lugging two bags of groceries, and you wouldn’t wear your sun hat, and you kept telling me to take mine off, and you cried and complained for the last two blocks.

Dear Sammy, For your newsletter describing your 30th month of life, I’ve been collecting phrases that we’ve heard around the house. These are the ones that make your Dad and me grin, or gasp, or sometimes grimace. But in each case, we look at each other and mouth “did she just say that?” Here you go. Soundbites from a 2½ year-old girl: “Mommies don’t go to work. Daddies do.” “I’m not a big girl yet.

As a preface to this post, it’s important to understand that Sam still doesn’t enunciate very clearly. She can’t properly create all the phonemes in the English language. Sam’s babysitter was impressed with how much Sam talked, but bemoaned how little she could understand of what Sam was saying. We’re pretty good at making it out. After all, we’ve been listening to her since she was born! Anyway, words like “Turtle” don’t yet sound like “turtle” It’s more like “tor lul”.

Dear Sam, I’m not sure where to start for this month. I suppose all months are continuations of the previous, but that seems especially true this month. Probably because it took me getting half way through this month before finally abdicating last month’s newsletter to your mother. Regardless, this month was full of growth and change for you. Mom indicates that you’ve been “speaking in paragraphs” for some time now. I’m not really sure how or when that happened, but you do string together related sentences.

Dear Sammy, Dad and I are a few weeks late with this newsletter. You (and the people we share this letter with) will have to forgive us: your 28th month was a difficult one"not because of you, but because this past month saw the death of a longtime family member: our beloved kitty Camus. I’m going to start there. He died near the end of the month, but his death has colored the entire month.

My wife already blogged the Salsa Cat story. But I’ve been amazed at Sam’s story-re-telling ability. She’ll “read” books almost word for word that we’ve read to her. Sure, we’ve read them a lot, but not enough for us to be able to recite them. Anyway, here Sam is re-telling the Salsa Cat story.

It’s funny to me how apt a name Camus was for our cat. While perhaps only in stereotype was our cat an absurdest existentialist cat. He hardly qualified as warm and friendly. Really, if you imagine a cat named Camus, you’d probably be pretty spot-on. But he wasn’t always called Camus. When I first met him, his name was “Match.” I don’t know what, exactly, inspired me to give Carolyn a cat for her birthday in 1995.

We euthanized our cat, Camus, today. It seems such a strange way to say it. But easier than “we took a family member to be killed today.” I guess it had been coming for a while. A long while, really. He’d had feline mega colon for years. Mostly we’d managed it medically, giving him 4 different medications ((cisapride, lactulose, mineral oil and metamucil)) twice daily. Still, cleaning up errant poop or vomit wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.