He ain't no stinkin' vegetarian

But he is a gymnast:

Here I am again. I love vacations! It's just a license to upload and crop and reduce the redeye and comment on on ridiculous photos of All In The Family. I swore to myself I was going to do something for ME such as continue to practice the five guitar chords that my poor, 20-years-of-piano-lessons fingers can muster. But alas, that lasted all of five minutes and here I sit again cropping, reducing, uploading, and commenting.

So I've been off for a couple weeks now and have made two road trips. Another one is coming up tomorrow ... the maternal family reunion at Turkey Creek Water Park: Grandaddy's big event wherein 1,046 lemons are squeezed and a good time is had by ALL PACES EVERYWHERE (except those in correctional facilities). Expect more pictures before next Thursday since I'm on vacation until June 4th.

It's lucky for me that I have some time off because life has been throwing lots of busyness in my direction. You'd think that after earning a master's degree one would be able to juggle lots of things since one is able to do lots of academic tasks with utmost ease. However, family life (real life) proves to be much more challenging than all of my 20-something years of school combined. And speaking of school ... I'm now approaching my junior year at the JEB University, where my major is (currently) potty training with a minor in Remaining Calm Under Verbal Assault. He turned 32 months yesterday.

And on Tuesday he "graduated" from the Toddler Twos class! They gave us a composite picture of all the students and teachers, a photo album of "Memorable Moments Throughout the Year," and enough ice cream with M&Ms (or cherries, or strawberry preserves, or butterscotch topping and whipped cream in one of those special foamy, aerosol, one-two-punch-to-the-ozone-layer cans). Sorry, Al, I had two bowls. Even the lactose-intolerant Dad had some.

Here's the cutest picture we got:

Bad, bad, bad, bad boys. You make me feel so good.

That's Warren. The other day when The Goose was extremely annoyed at me he, through crocodile tears, cried, "I WANT WARREN!!!!"

Everyday they both get their blankies taken away and usually one of them pushes down Eli or Samuel (who refuses to wear anything except steel-toed cowboy boots). When I picked him up from school last week and asked about his deportment, Mrs. Lorene said, "Well, he's very social and he hasn't yet developed a sense of appropriate distance in terms of personal space, but he can say lots of things that I am surprised about."

Hmmm ...

What could those things be? Might they be things such as ...

• "We don't needa wash hands. Just eat first. Ravioli and popsicles. Then we wash hands after the veejo (video)."
• "It's the rule! We don't hafta hold hands in a parking lot. It's the rule."
• "First we eat goldfish then we eat oatmeal. How 'bout that choice?"

But the linguistic development which most fascinates me now is QUESTION FORMATION. The main reason this is intriguing to me is because it's so similar to the problems that my students face. He doesn't switch the subject and verb in questions with single main or modal verbs. For example, he'll say, "I can have anunna popsicle now?" He's got the intonation down (yay for suprasegmentals!), but the word order is difficult.

In other news ...

I'm addicted to selling household items on Craigslist. So far I have sold a used crib, the mattress, a fondue set, and am waiting to hear about pending sales of our second refrigerator and a bike rack. Now I see how my friend Emily makes her living!

And so that's all for now dear reader. More is to come soon, be sure of it. After all, idle hands are the devil's workshop.