Corynn is finally starting to talk a bit. It has taken quite some time (at least it seems so to her impatient Mama) but this past week, great strides have been made. She constantly asks "What's this?" Time after time. It is like the incessant "WHY?", except with one saving grace...it can be a one word answer! The other day we were in the bathroom and she was pointing at a clear glass vase filled with flowers. She asked, "What's this?" and I said, "It's Mama's vase with flowers." She said, clear as day, "Yeah, but what's THIS?" She was actually pointing to the marbles at the bottom of the vase. I was amazed. Here is a child who is barely saying individual words, yet put a four word sentence together-and understood that my one answer was true but she wasn't talking about that. Wow. I was flabbergasted. The last time we were at my parents' house, one of the children who is nearly Corynn's age, pointed at her shoe and said "Shoe." Corynn shook her head yes and repeated it. "Shoe!" She hasn't done it since, but she doesn't know I heard her and know she said it! My last brag story for the day is a tub-time story. The other day Corynn was taking a bath and playing with a bunch of leftover rubber duckies from Elizabeth's shower. I counted them, counted them, and counted them some more. Then, I went out of the bathroom to go and get her pajamas. As soon as I left, I heard "One, Two, Three, Four..." I stopped and stood still. Again. "One, two, three, four." I poked my head around the corner and she was counting the ducks. Posted is a picture I snapped in disbelief. I really think she doesn't want me to know she can talk, because she is doing a lot of it behind my back! :-) So-I am very excited. She isn't talking my ear off (except with jabber that doesn't make any sense to any one except her) but she IS getting somewhere. I am just thrilled and can't wait to actually have interactive conversations with her!
On a related topic, I read an article in a magazine my MIL had at her house called the The American Educator (or something like that) this past weekend when we were visiting. The article was called Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. It was an expose (?) about punctuation and grammer. The title was a joke about a Panda walking into a bar, eating, shooting the place up, and then leaving. When asked why he did that, he replied-"Look my name up in a dictionary. Panda: Wild black and white bear that eats shoots and leaves." After reading the article, I felt like a complete idiot. The author wrote an incredible amount of absurd and illiterate grammatical/punctuation errors that were supposedly obvious and ridiculous. Half of them, I didn't even realize were mistakes! I need some serious help in this area of writing, I suppose. I am going to look for a book that teaches these things so that I can get a hold of this problem before I look like an idiot. As it is, this blog must be just saturated with proof that I am a written word nincompoop. My first question (knowing full well a former English teacher occasionally checks my blog)is this. When do you use this ';' mark? I don't know. I kind of make it up as I go along. My use of it always seems right. :-/ Be merciful to me and my shortcomings, please....
3 comments:
Thanks for all the pictures of the shower. Elizabeth fairly bursts with smiles in some of the pictures! She looks like the archetypal beaming mother-to-be. I'm glad it went well, and I'm sure Bob's mini-chef helper played no small role in its success.
The pictures of Corynn are fabulous! Please keep eavesdropping on her to reveal her darkest secrets to us; no doubt she has some fluently spoken Greek up her sleeve, and I'll wager she snickers while thinking that you have no idea.
See my use of a semicolon above. They are fun to use. Of course, I'm only a punctuation specialist leading an empty and dull life, and you should receive anything I write with that knowledge. (Unapologetically taking Scott's comments out of their context because I, as a not-so-specialized mother, like to stir up trouble...)
One should use semicolons only between two independent clauses. Lengthily put, one can use a semicolon instead of a period to string together two sentences that can stand alone but have similar enough content to be linked. To refresh your memory of grammar school rules, an independent clause has a subject, a verb, and expresses a complete thought (e.g. Specialists are boring people.). To link two related independent clauses without using a semicolon, one should usually use a comma followed by a coordinating conjunction (these include and, but, for, nor, and yet).
An inexpensive book that's fairly comprehensive is The Elements of Style by William Strunk (or by Strunk and White). It's a slim little number that touches on just about everything necessary for grammatically correct writing. It's dull but useful, just like specialists.
I also googled "semicolon" and offer you the following two links. The first is a helpful explanation of proper semicolon use. The second is a link to a silly band I've never heard of who named themselves "Semicolon" to confuse seekers of punctuation knowledge.
1. www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/semicoln.html
2.
http://www.semicolon.info/
I can see already that I am going to need an editor for the many books swirling around in my head, waiting to be written! Our friendship could prove to be quite useful! :-)
(That was a joke for those who missed it.)
I can see already that I am going to need an editor for the many books swirling around in my head, waiting to be written! Our friendship could prove to be quite useful! :-)
(That was a joke for those who missed it.)
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