The Joy of Homonyms

Great visit with Aunt Amy this weekend! AA continues in her role of Aunt as gatekeeper to forbidden but largely harmless things. In previous visits she's had a faux picnic on the kitchen floor, wherein she and Sam got to bang pots and pans and throw around plastic-ware.

This time, babysitting Sam while we were at small group, they began the evening by deliberately running around the house waving their arms and yelling like maniacs. This activity was to be repeated at other times during the weekend.

In other Sam news, he's now spotting homonyms. It's not too surprising that he gets the concept, or that he knows the word, but he's actually doing a nice job of spotting them. Yesterday he came up with shoo and shoe. And hare and hair. Even better: read, Reid (the name) and (double) reed. We'll be playing together, and he'll say excitedly, "Hey! Reed and read! That's a homonym!"

He's also been writing. At school they teach cursive, so I am not sure why we have him using capital letters at home. Last Friday he just wanted to sit and have Susan spell words for him so he could write them down. It's a little hard to read, so:

• SURPRISE
• BUNNY
• MONSTER!
• MAZE
• ZOESTER (nickname for Zoe, our cat)
• TICKLE
• SHARK
• BANANA
• GHOST! (Yesterday in church when the preacher referred to the "Holy Ghost" Sam excitedly whispered to me, "He said ghost!")
• SAM LIKES TO BOUNCE!
• COOL
• SAM COOL
• SCOOBY DOOBY DOO

Which gives you a good idea where his thoughts were on Friday, or about any other day.

He continues to love using the marble racers. Friday while thinking hard for ways to keep Sam occupied in the living room while we were talking to guests, Susan suggested we put a drafting board at a shallow angle and place blocks on it, and then let marbles roll down and bounce in paths created by the blocks. (Sort of a poor man's pinball machine.) I am sure we spent over at least an hour on marble-racing this weekend.

I thought we had seen the last of the ducks, but Saturday morning as we were sitting on the couch reading I noticed a green-headed mallard (thanks, Uncle Paul!) strolling slowly across our lawn, maybe 20' away! Sam and I eagerly watched him for some time. Brought to mind that the stream isn't the only draw for fowl: ducks sometimes like to hang out in our neighbor's above-ground pool.

You'll be glad to know this weekend I put up a disk swing. Much less noose-like.

Finally, a kitchen movie from last week! Susan was understandably not thrilled by a movie of a messy kitchen, but got on board. Walls still need to be stripped and painted, but the rest is finished, and the contractors have folded their tents and stolen away into the night. Great guys--I highly recommend them.