Yesterday I read the book “The Prince of Ireland and the Three Magic Stallions” to the kids. It includes some Irish expressions, which I generally don’t try to explain — I just keep reading. For example, at one point the prince of Ireland comes upon an old washerwoman who was “keening as if her heart would break.” He asks her what’s wrong and then helps her.

Well, after bathtime last night, I was helping Kaeta put on her pajamas, and she said, “Does keening mean crying?” This was a couple of hours after reading the book. I wonder how long she had been thinking about that.

Hooray for context clues!

Whenever we do our phonics lesson, I give Kaeta some letter blocks so she can “build the letter” that we learned.  Usually I give Jonah the blocks too, because he likes to “make an A” (which usually means he lines the blocks up or sets them up side by side or something).  But last Friday when we studied the letter J, I was watching Kaeta make her J, and when I turned around to look at Jonah, I saw this:

He made a J all by himself!  I ran to get the camera as he started to take it apart, but thankfully he recreated it briefly for me.  And then, of course, Kaeta wanted me to take her picture with her J too.

So there you have it.  More proof of how brilliant our children are.

When I read this article and started thinking of all the people I wanted to email it too, the list was so long, I figured I’d better just link to it from a blog post.  It’s called Confessions of a Car Salesman.

Basically, the author got a job with Edmunds and they immediately gave him an undercover assignment. Instead of coming in to the Edmunds office, he got a job as a car salesman, so he could report on their practices from the inside. He worked for a couple of weeks at a high pressure lot, then switched to a no-haggle lot.

Here’s one small sample:

The process begins by asking the customer how much they want for a monthly payment. Usually, they say, about $300. “Then, you just say, ‘$300… up to?’ And they’ll say, ‘Well, $350.’ Now they’ve just bumped themselves $50 a month. That’s huge.” You then fill in $350 under the monthly payment box.

Michael said you could use the “up to” trick with the down payment too. “If Mr. Customer says he wants to put down $2000, you say, “Up to?” And he’ll probably bump himself up to $2500.” Michael then wrote $2,500 in the down payment box of the 4-square worksheet.

I later found out this little phrase “Up to?” was a joke around the dealership. When salesmen or women passed each other in the hallways, they would say, “Up to?” and break out laughing.

The article is long but really interesting!

I’m listening to The Time Traveler’s Wife audiobook, and I noticed a character misused the word “momentarily.”  This is one of my pet peeves — “I’ll be with you momentarily” is wrong unless you mean, “I’ll be with you for a moment, and then I’ll be gone again.”

Anyway, now I’m wondering, did the author (Audrey Niffenegger) use the word wrong, or did the character use it wrong?  If it was the character, then the author was astutely observing that people use that word wrong all the time, and her characters should be no exception.  But in a way that’s worse, because it reflects poorly on our culture’s literacy.  So I don’t know who to be mad at, Audrey Niffenegger, or society!

On a different note, this is the second time I’ve read this book, and between readings I read The Odyssey.  It turns out that there are quite a few references to The Odyssey in The Time Traveler’s Wife, and I totally missed them the first time!  They aren’t crucial to the story or anything, but I enjoyed “getting” them this time around.

A couple of nights ago at dinner time, Kaeta said (apropos of nothing):

“If we get a new house, we have to bring the whiteboard, and the drill, and your tool stuff.  And the brownies, and the bookshelves.”

“Oh?  What else?”

(Looking around…) “Marty.  And his crate.  And the new baby.”

Now we can see what’s important to her  I second the vote to bring brownies and the bookshelves.  And the new baby.  Not sure about Marty.

(We’re not looking for a new house, incidentally, that’s just what she was thinking about.)

The kids were all the way at the other end of the house, but when they heard we were taking pictures of Coco, they came running.  We couldn’t even get the first picture snapped before the little blurs came running over to give the baby kisses.

Our kids are so silly.

And cute.

And sweet.

Plus a bonus cute shot of Kaeta and Daddy.

I was really nervous about how Kaeta was going to like homeschooling.  She’s been looking forward to it for weeks, and I was a little worried that she would be disappointed.  But so far, that has not been the case.  We only have formal lessons (and I use the word “formal” pretty loosely) three days a week, but every day she asks, “Are we going to do HOMESCHOOLING???”

Here are a few of the highlights of the week.  The rest are here.

Making necklaces was one of Kaeta’s absolute favorite activities.  I read that it develops fine motor skills in preparation for writing.  Kaeta doesn’t know that though.  She just likes the pink heart-shaped beads.

The kiddos are enthralled by the white board.  They’ll draw on it for hours.  Or, they would, if they were also allowed to draw on the wall.  Which they are not.  So the markers go up high.

We decided to celebrate the first day of homeschool by going to Gattiland!  What fun we had.  Jonah couldn’t stop gazing at his lollipop.

Kaeta made this A all by herself:

Our first week included our first field trip!  On Labor Day, we took advantage of Daddy’s day off to go Spelunking!  Our trip was inspired by this book, which we checked out from the library like a month ago.  The kids have not stopped talking about spelunking since.

Check out the complete gallery here.

This is a rough recording from a few weeks ago. I keep thinking I’ll re-record it, but who am I kidding, that’s never gonna happen! So here it is:

Download the MP3

Hugs and kisses for Coco at 17 weeks.

The news from today’s sonogram could not be better.  We won’t keep you in suspense any longer: The cyst is gone.  Did you hear that?  THE CYST IS GONE!  Baby Coco is a healthy, cyst-free, fluid-free baby!  And oh, so cute:

The doctor said that if today was the first time he had seen us, he would say the baby looks great.  We’ll take an extra close look at the heart at 24 weeks, just because of the single-artery umbilical thing.  Before that, we’ll go in for our routine 20-week sonogram in three weeks.

We can hardly believe it.  After so much worrying and wondering, we get to finally let our excitement about having another baby take over once more.  I think “the cyst is gone” might be my four favorite words since becomming a mother.  Well, might be tied with “the fluid is gone” or, “I love you, Mommy.”