PhiLLy RoLL

The Extensions of Cat

Weeble (almost nine months old) loves to use the word cat (pronounced either kæ or kæt) when she sees one of the cats around and we never hear her use it otherwise, leading us to believe that she has acquired something close to the correct meaning of "cat". Last night I got a new glimpse into what she considers relevant "cat" material. While I was changing Squeakles into his pajamas, Weeble was in the crib babbling to herself. Suddenly I heard an unmistakable (if you are one of her parents) "cat, cat". I looked over, surprised to hear her saying it without a cat around, and saw her with a plush puppy toy in her lap, looking at its face and saying "cat!" I said good job, then corrected her saying, "that's a dog", but then I wondered if the distinction would be harder than it's worth and I didn't want to undo whatever was right in her meaning of cat, so I repeated, "yeah, cat!" She grinned as wide as she could and repeated "cat" and then laughed, as if really pleased with herself and her observation.

(Huh, and we wonder why Squeakles spent almost three years referring to himself as "you" and thinking that the way to say yes is "ga".)

Ohhhhhhhhhhh

Squeakles seems to think that he can trigger realization, memory, or even new knowledge in other people, just by saying "ohhhhhhhhh" in the way people do when they realize or remember what someone is talking about. Like if someone asks you about that thing you did yesterday and you're confused, but then they clarify, you know that thing you were doing yesterday out in the backyard, and you say "ohhhhhhh, right, I was ..." and then you explain whatever it is they wanted you to know about it.

But Squeakles seems frustrated when other people don't know what he's talking about and he urges us to remember or understand. In the last five minutes I've heard him do this three times to the babysitter.

Squeakles: What's that blue and white thing?
Babysitter: What blue and white thing?
Squeakles: Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, that blue and white thing over there? [pointing]
Babysitter: Oh that blue and white thing on the floor? (She was right.)

Squeakles: [asked something I didn't quite catch]
Babysitter: When what?
Squeakles: Ohhhhhhhhhhh, when you throwed up last night?
Me (from my desk where I'm supposed to be working and not paying attention to them): Oh, you mean how you threw up this morning? (He only threw up a little bit.)

Babysitter: [Brings sponge over to clean up the high chair.]
Squeakles: Can I have that sponge?
Babysitter: What do you need that sponge for?
Squeakles: Ohhhhhhhhhh, like I did? To use to wipe so I can throw up lasterday tonight?

Have I mentioned that Squeakles is also totally confused by time terms? He uses past tense terms to refer to things that happened in the past, but he is pretty much never correct about whether it was actually last night or yesterday. And he doesn't ever say anything means "more than 24 hours ago" (like "last week"), though he clearly remembers things from a long time ago.

And "lasternight" is his own brain child.

Suspended

Well. So that's what I get for having a paid blog account. (Yes, paid, I know it is totally ridiculous, and I swear that in no longer than a month I will finally have moved this blog off of Typepad and onto my own domain where I only pay something like a $10 yearly fee and will use some free blog software.) Anyway, long ago I set myself up on Typepad because I suspected I would too greatly enjoy tinkering around in the html (either to make the blog work just so, or to prettify it), so I purposely chose a level of service that gives me slight bit of flexibility in the design of the blog, but otherwise no real access to the html code behind the site. To be honest, it's been nice. But it's also clearly ridiculous to pay every month for a service that the rest of the world gets for free and they are managing just fine.

This is actually related to where I've been for the past (more than a) month.

So there I was, procrastinating moving my blog, and thinking about posting, when all of a sudden my blog was suspended. Because my credit card was cancelled. Because someone had fraudently charged $4500 in pipe material to the card. And although my credit card company didn't bat an eye at the obvious fraud, they also didn't send me a replacement card. Or maybe they did, and it ended up in someone else's hands, in which case I will get to experience fraud on my card for the third time in my life. Anyway, eventually my company did send me a new card. But in the meantime, Typepad tried to charge my card and were unable to do so, so they suspended my account. (You could post comments, but I couldn't make new posts.)

I have a backlog of about a million things to post about, but don't have the time to do it now, but at least now I can post again!