The Art of English

John's command of the English language cracks me up on a daily basis. He often searches for the right word/phrase and comes up just shy. Here are a few examples:
"Will you play tic-tac-two with me?"
"Why you use that chowder on your face?"
"I got fruit by the toe!" (Fruit by the Foot)
"Mom, I saw seven o'clock on my temperature."

He also has this way of talking about things that happened hours earlier as if they happened years ago.
"Mom, [re]member that time we went to my school for the ice cream social?"
"Last night?"
"Yeah. That was fun."

"Member when we ate that circle food?"
"Circle food?"
"Yeah, the one with the crab in it?"
After some thought, "You mean the sushi we ate for dinner yesterday?"
"Yeah. I like shooshi. Can we have it again for lunch?"

Sometimes we are at a loss as to what John is trying to tell us. I have learned to search for clues in his thinking patterns to figure out what the object or idea is that he can't quite name. Recently he was trying to tell me about "the thing that takes cars up into the sky" and I was completely stumped. Crane? Tow truck? Hot air balloon? Alien spacecraft? 50 guesses later he proudly announced, "Oh yeah. A tornado." Huh.

SNOW!

For the second year in a row, we are having a strange winter. Our area is known for its snow. Snow that starts in November (sometimes October) and does not let up until March. As a kid, your major calorie burner in the winter is sledding; as an adult it is shoveling. Part of the reason we moved back was because my husband loves the snow and wanted to share that love with our boys. But sadly, since coming back to the area there hasn't been much of the famed fluffy stuff. We have a great sledding hill near our house, and last winter I never even made it out there. CJ took the boys a handful of times - I think John only went with him once. When I think about my childhood and how many hours I spent careening down the hills in the parking lot across from our house, it makes me sad to think the boys are missing out on all that dangerous fun. This year didn't seem like it would be much better. We didn't get the usual lake effect storms in late fall, and we've had freak periods of extreme cold and extreme warm. Instead of snow we've had rain. It feels like I am back in the Pacific Northwest. Yesterday we finally got a nice dumping of lake effect fluff, and CJ actually got sent home early from Drill. We headed over to the hill and watched the boys have the wintertime fun they've been waiting for. Paul is learning how to ski and the hill is a perfect place for him to practice. He's only been on skis three times so far and is doing remarkably well. His biggest frustration comes from trying to click the boots into his skis!!
John has taken to sledding down the hill, face first, as fast as humanly possible. I love listening to his squeals of delight although I must add that it makes me a bit nervous to watch. As to be expected, he does not like dragging the sled back up the hill and spent some time yesterday convincing other people to do it for him (his brother, his father, our neighbors). Twice he went far enough to get stuck in a pile of fresh snow, but that only slowed him down temporarily. He even lost his boot at one point. He found it in the snow, stuck his foot back in, and kept going. It warms my heart to see such snow spirit in my boys. After all, this is now their "hometown" and I hope someday they can share good snow stories with their children. Hopefully the weird weather won't continue and we can go back to the way it was. So much snow and cold that when you get to March and the temperature reaches 50, you open up all the windows and go outside in your shorts. That's the way it should be around here!