Alicisms

Having said recently that Alice speaks clearly and has eliminated most mispronunciations, we wanted to document (and hang onto!) those she does still employ, while they last:

blub   As noted previously, that red stuff that doctors draw from your veins, or if you're a toddler, that oozes from your scrapes. Or if you're a Coloradan, that's apt to well from your nose in the dry air.

snoggy  Fortunately (and knock on wood), we've had only a few blubby noses this winter, and even fewer snoggy ones.

privery  When Alice uses the potty, a concept with which she continues to dabble, she wants her privery.

slippely  Be careful: the remaining ice on the sidewalks is quite slippely.

ronkin' chair  Alas, this pronunciation is already headed toward extinction, which is too bad for such a cozy place to snuggle.

crackamole  I completely agree with Alice that the avocado-based condiment for chips or burritos is crackamole.

tawbing  a.k.a. skyscraper. Though in Colorado, even 8 or 9 stories might earn your edifice recognition as a tawbing.

out the crunky  There are not usually any tawbings out the crunky, where we sometimes drive on Sunday afternoons.

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Playdates for everyone! 

On my birthday, we hosted the family down the street for dinner. The woman in the family shares my birthday, and her husband's birthday is the next day. Their youngest daughter is Alice's age, and their second youngest daughter is Edith's age...though Edith gets along best with the two boys, a first and third grader. Any way you slice it, everyone had a friend over.

A few days earlier, Edith had had a playdate with another neighbor, a boy from her kindergarten class. We actually share a surprising number of connections with his family as well: Not only are Edith and M. in kindergarten together, and not only do they live around the corner, but M.'s father is my colleague at CC, and his mother and Tom went to the Fletcher School together, earning their Master's degrees in diplomacy the same year. That said, we hadn't seen too much of them since school started. But after Edith's playdate, the father called to ask if Tom wanted to go out for a beer with him and two other guys from the neighborhood, both of them (incidentally) fathers of kindergartners--one of them the same father we'd had over for the joint birthday celebration. At dinner that evening, Edith and Alice were sympathetic to the idea that as the only boy in the household, Daddy needed some time for playdates with other boys, so he didn't go nutty surrounded by all girls all the time.

But now the mothers are thinking about their own girls' night out...

Meanwhile, Alice may soon be having her own regular interactions with other kids, as we think we've found a good childcare setting for her, to begin when Tom starts his part-time internship at the end of the month. Details still in the works. Stay tuned.