Turkeys!!!

OMG!!! Blurry Turkeys!!!


Wildlife is awesome! While feeding Tyoma his late afternoon snack, movement in the backyard caught my eye. A flock of turkeys! Yay! Ten birds milled about the backyard. At first, I thought they were peacocks (go figure!), but on closer observation, they were way too goony. I dashed up the stairs and took some stills reminiscent of bigfoot footage. Yay, turkeys!!!

The first part of my day was taken up by a dental appointment. I dread the dentist, especially a new one, but this guy was really personable. He was one those guys who looks good with a shaved head and goatee--and he didn't even have a biker vibe! He looked so familiar to me, but I just couldn't place him. As I left the office, I realized he looked just like Terry O' Quinn from Lost. Not that I watch Lost. I remembered him from the Stepfather movies. Whoa, '80s flashback!

The rest of the day I felt wrung out, I stressed over the dentist appointment unnecessarily and was thus over-relieved and tired. Sure, I need to floss more often, I need a shield for tooth grinding and I only gagged three times out of  18 tooth x-rays. What was the worry? Probably the idea of being scrutinized by yet another medical person. Tyoma's docs and therapists are quite enough. Tomorrow Tennisfiend has a day off work, so we will do fun stuff. Yay!

Creepy Spider!

This is for you, ewbliette!!! Whilst surveying children's nursery rhymes I came across this:




Lordy, this made my skin crawl!!! It's not that the spider is creepy in a generic cartoony way, but rather that its motions are so uncannily realistic. The juxtapostion of genuine spider movement with huge bouncing, bulging eyes and chicklet teeth is too much! Like this goofy grinning devil is going to crawl right out of the computer and up my arm! Auugh! Somebody get a newspaper!!!

Target Verbs

Eat        Sleep        Shake     Touch     Sit

Read     Smile        Play        Draw      Crawl

Drink     Jump        Kick        Pet         Walk

Clap      Bounce     Brush      Hug        Tickle

Lick       Paint         Pull         Wiggle    Roll

Whisper Chew        Go          Run        Open

Peel      Fly           Write      Turn       Wave

Smell     Close        Cry         Lift         Bang

Spell

Target Nouns

Body

Nose     Eyes         Ears        Cheeks   Chin

Mouth    Teeth        Tongue   Feet       Hands

Fingers                 

Giraffe   Fingers      Tub        Crayon    Monkey       Clown

Bicycle   Penguin     Girl         Candy     Pizza   Table

Tractor  Dress        Toes       Merry Go Round Puzzle        Hippo

Vacuum Button      Boy        Ice cream Tree   

Motorcycle            Egg        Watermelon      Sweater     Woman

            Potty        Pajamas  Umbrella Carrots        Mouse

Tummy  Turtle       Sand       Glasses   Man    Tiger

Alligator Juice         Frog       Rollerskates       Hair  

Lion       Bird          Feet        Bib         Balloon        Apple

Truck    Blocks       Bowl       Boat       Elephant      Key

Doll       Horse       Stroller    Hand      Clock  Blanket

Drum     Bear         Swing     Hat         Hammer     

Train         Pig            Dog           Nose         Mouth           Shoes

Plane         Cow          Cat            Ear            Eyes             Bus

Ball           Bottle        Book         Cup           Car              Flower

Baby         Banana      Spoon        Fire truck   Teddy bear

Rabbit        Broom       Bulldozer    Comb        Slide             Shirt

Fish           Cookie       Bubbles      Duck         Brush           Phone

Wagon       Water        Tricycle      Pants         Squirrel         Legs

chair         Boots         Helicopter  Arm          Orange                      

These are the words that I have chosen to help Tyoma say.

Pinkeye!!!

What better way to spend a Sunday, than with a toddler who has pinkeye? Oh wait! Make sure you get pinkeye, too!

Yep, the wee one woke up with a bloodshot, crusty left eye. It looked mild enough, that I debated about making a big fuss with the doctor, but worry (naturally!) prevailed. Back in New Mexico, you could call an answering service and some nurse would phone in a prescription for you. Out here, folks is par-tic-ular, you gots to be SEEN!

So Tyoma skipped his nap and we spent the afternoon waiting with the other unfortunates at Nashua Pediatrics. I managed to keep him on my lap with much effort, I didn't want him to single handedly infect greater Nashua by smearing his fingers on every inviting surface. The Doctor saw him and prescribed two bottles of eye drops. She asked be if I'd every given a toddler eye drops before. Soberly, I replied, "No." She laughed, gave me a wise sidelong glance and commenced to give me a few strategies to get the drops in. Heh.

Well, I dropped off the prescription and did tomorrow's shopping (can't bring the infectious one out for 24 hours) and braced myself for the eye dropping ceremony. Tennisfiend held Tyoma as he screamed bloody murder and I tried to get the drops in his eyes. It was like trying to tattoo a cat. Good Lord!!! Such straining, struggling and shrieking--and that was just Tennisfiend yelling at me to "Put the drops in, already!" After four frustrating minutes, we traded places. I held Tyoma down and cursed at Tennisfiend while he tried to get the drops in. Success! My curses were obviously much more effective than his.

After all the excitement, my eyes itched. And so did Tennisfiend's. Thank you Doctor for giving us two bottles of eyedrops!

ETA: Pardon me for adding some pictures of the boys doing yard work together! I took these in the morning before I completely convinced myself that he had pinkeye.

In the bottom picture, Tyoma is so serious about clearing the yard of debris that he's pulling up handfulls of grass to add to the trash!

Speech Therapy

Well, another day has passed and again the speech therapist seems to think Tyoma’s autistic.  She sweetened it with a “But he would be clearly a very high functioning autistic”. 

Sad!

Poor Tyoma looks sadder and sadder as a video palys on Youtube! He's watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MdS3yQfRxI Whe he sees Grandma cry over her missing geese, his face droops. He'll even say "Sah" mournfully as it plays.

Autistic Traits

This is a list of Tyoma's behaviors for future reference.  Some are "autistic" others seem normal.

Hideous Green

So, a few weeks ago I picked up a sample of the green paint that would transform our kitchen into a tranquil oasis for cooking and dining. Foolishly, I primed the sample area with a paintbrush, not realizing that I put the primer on a bit thick. Result: the wall looked like a vertical karesansui garden.

I sanded it before painting with the green, but the underlying texture came through, nevertheless. Not that it mattered, the green totally did not work. Despite my careful color selection, it still looks hospital green. Would you like some appendix with your gazpacho?

In the photo above, Tennisfiend is sanding away the bumpy primer (you can't see his scowl from this angle) so we can begin again. Heh. Anyway, we ordered four new paint samples online, using some suggestions from Papa Sasha plus our own eyeballs. We picked out a lovely pale greenish-yellow which works very well. I didn't dare paint the wall again, so I painted scrap wood and we chose the one that looked best. The new color had better work! I'm going to perish if we have to stick with the yellow!

Happy Halloween!!!

How's this for a jack' o lantern? I wondered what odd little child put this pumpkin picture together when I saw it posted across the hall at the preschool.

Spooky, ain't it?

In response to his jumbled creation, Tennisfiend commented that Tyoma would clearly have no idea how to put a pumpkin face together since he'd never seen one before. I reminded him that Tyoma has been playing with the plastic jack' o lantern on the kitchen table for most of this month. The truth is, our lil' prodigy has a plan. He was clearly inspired by Klee:

You might think that his pumpkin is an homage to Picasso, due to the distorted facial features, but Tyoma is a student of  Expressionism and he favors Klee's color tonalities. 

Coming soon: I justify Tyoma's restricted speech at daycare as "performance art!"

Honk!

We were sorting through Tyoma's "odd box" of strange things that Mom compiled for Tyoma when we came across this winding/drinking horn. My Dad picked it up for me when he was in Russia in the 90's and I'd almost forgotten about it. Since I know that you are giant nerds, just like me, some trivia: an animal horn that's used as a drinking cup is a rhyton. And when used as a bugle it's a shofar (Jewish) or dungchen (Tibetian). :-)