Ussins

This morning mom took him outside. He frequently signs and says “water” in reference to the sprinklers outside, which he enjoys simply watching at work - or playing in. That’s not why they were outside this morning though - in fact I don’t really know what they were doing. But he called for me (”da-da!”) and mom took him back inside the house to me, and I smiled at him. In succession he signed “cold”, pointed at me, and then signed “hat”. It flashed through my mind that this could be a funny way of saying I am cold-hearted, which is often true, but that wasn’t it. This sequence of signs meant “Go out into the cold, you, with me, and put a hat on me before we go.” He wanted me to go outside with him, for a walk, and I was charmed and happy to oblige.

[He’s 14 months old. Also, his signing vocabulary is getting ahead of me because I haven’t yet seen the new signing videos he sometimes watches (Signing Time).]

Here are pictures of him from yesterday and last month. The ones with me and with red jello all over his face - he got into a bowl of it, and this looks like RED RUM! - those are from last month. Clicking the images will bring up larger ones.

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We had fun seeing everyone who came to the reception for Tia’s BFA final. And.. it seems like I should have something more to say, but I don’t. Well, the gallery is still up.

We also discovered that most people feel they have a divine right to food set out in public places. I lost heart telling all the students from the state high school orchestral competition that they could have the cookies if they strolled through the gallery. Amazing some people won’t take twenty paces for a cookie.

One kid told us we picked a bad time for our reception. Did we? Yeah, I guess we should work our schedule around you and your want for free cookies - either that or you picked a lame-brain comment.

An older lady (a high school teacher I assume) came to the punch bowl and asked, though it wasn’t a question, as she was hastily getting herself punch at the same time, “Is this for me?” I answered “No.” - she hurried to fill up her cup and said “We’ll I’ll just steal some anyway!” - and hurried off with it, spilling punch all over the table in the process. This is one of those situations where you repeatedly retroactively fantasize about what you might have done otherwise. If I’d had my wits about me, I’d have said firmly: “Ma’m, that was rude.” I don’t think that would have had an effect - she was shameless. What I really wish is that I’d bumped her stolen red punch to spill all over her blouse and declared “It looks like you’ve been caught red-handed.” But maybe that’s too far.

I think this is why the Lord gave the Israelites in the wilderness quail until it came out their nostrils.

And you know me. I am so like Moses. No. I give up. She can have the punch. Well, she already did.

SO.. anyway.. it was really fun to see everyone who came to the show..

Two weekends ago (13th-14th - it’s taken me a while to get to this blog) was our anniversary, my birthday, and mother’s day.

We went to Timpanogas cave to hike through it and then realized from what the lodge guide told us that we didn’t want to take Mago through those near-freezing temperatures, so we took a different hike for maybe a third of a mile before we were exhausted and hot.

Last weekend with my birthday money, I scavenged in a bead store (Born Again Beads in the University Mall, Orem) for the beads I love most, and a charm (they corrected me when I called it a pendant), and made two necklaces for me and Tia, and a bracelet for me - these are pictured here

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The main beads in my necklace are yellow turquoise, copper, and metal-plated (don’t know what) plastic, framed with lapis lazuli and olive jade, on a metal wire, with a sailboat charm.

Tia’s necklace is of many ocean jasper beads (which is ocean creatures and/or coral fossilized in quartz), and the same copper beads as mine, between smaller Botswana agate (eye agate) beads, on a metal wire. The first time I made it she loved it and wanted changes (out with the yellow beads it had), and we collaborated on a redesign that I love more. Also I added a silver fish-hook clasp to it.

If you can’t see the picture, the metal beads in mine have watery-misty streak engravings, and the copper beads have a.. cool.. how to describe.. kinda brutal, geometric (circles and triangles) intricate pattern cut out of the columnar bead so you can see through the openings to the other side.

My bracelet is of moss agate, obsidian, and ocean jasper, with a sterling silver clasp - and I made it this weekend, not last.

The blue and gold beads in my necklace are our high school colors (Orem High). The sailboat has many meanings for me (the following three paragraphs).

My mother’s father was a boatman and fisherman (not by profession), lived on the U.S. western seaboard (Pacific Northwest), and he recently died, which in pagan Irish mythology is identified with sailing or going into the unknown west, and there’s a tradition of Irish blood in his ancestors (yada yada YADA, I keep remembering a feeling I should do genealogical research there). I remember enjoying boat trips with him.

Thinking in scriptural types, Nephi, in the Book of Mormon, built a boat to sail across the ocean to his Promised Land, and I need an education (which I have avoided most of my life) to get my family to our own promised land; to me education is a boat. To get that education, I need the disciplined hard work ethic which my grandfather had. And my fooling myself that idleness is a better life needs to sail into the west and die.

On top of all that, the bead store clerk, looking at the boat charm on my finished necklace, mentioned a book she recommended to her children at their graduations (hello, the education theme! - and I hadn’t told her my meanings for picking a boat), in which a captain of large steam and power boats who lives in the Pacific Northwest (where my grandfather lived!) related: when he was a boy he was at the docks and told a dock worker, pointing to a very large boat, that he wanted to operate it. The worker told him to start with a small row-boat. Start small. That applies to me - I’m grandiose and want everything now or I won’t have any of it. Well, I’ve gotta say, where I’m at, I’m starting small.

This number is probably inaccurate, but searching my blog for the word “update” returned six entries related to Mago. And I can’t think of a better subject header. And 7 is a nice, magical number.

This morning I forgot to say goodbye when going for work and he cried. I hurried to him and apologized, and picked him up, and he calmed down and gave me a tight hug for a long while. I want to forget tomorrow so I can have the same thing again. Though he often gives hugs after naps and in the morning.

The other day while Tia held him, he forcefully turned her head to the side to examine a hair clasp on the side of her head. She turned her head back and he forcefully turned it back again, all of this with a very serious expression on his face.

He looks at and grabs my new self-made necklace, specifically the boat charm/pendant on it (about that next entry, pending), and says “Boa.” he says water (”Wawa”), flower (”Fwowa” or “Fowa”), apple (”Appum”), and a baby-sitter apparently taught him “Hippo”. This morning he clearly said “Happy”. Also this morning he heard me say doggy (I forget why) and he sniffed like a dog.

Tia’s Photography BFA Final Show is entitled “Tiny Fingers” and is a series of portraits of infants and toddlers using sign language in familiar settings.

If these images don’t show in your browser, the photographs will be on display in the Brigham Young University Harris Fine Arts Center, Gallery 303, May 16th-31st. The gallery is open 9 to 5. There will be an opening reception May 19th, 7-9pm. The boy in this photograph is 21 months old and is signing “mom”.

He ate one. Tia hurried to get the chewed up bits out of his mouth.

Mmm..