Aug

21

“Do you know where your son is?”

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Here’s one more vacation story.

I was helping Sharon and Nathan with Friday lunch when Michael came into the kitchen. He asked Sharon, “Do you know where your son is?” She paused and said, “No.” Michael suggested she go check on him and told her he was in their room. I followed her up. Luke (almost 4 years old) had first gotten into Sharon’s roll of trashbags. He had unrolled them through their bathroom, in the bedroom, down the hall, and into Michael’s room where the roll was pretty much finished.

Luke was only wearing a shirt. He said something about, “I was a little wet,” and launched into a long explanation of what he had done. Since he was a little wet he knew he needed to clean his clothes. This is what he used: all the baby shampoo, all of Sharon’s lotion (I’m guessing these were both small bottles), a Tide pen or Tide wipes (something like that), and all of Sharon’s chapstick (there may have been something else, but I can’t remember). I guess he wanted to make sure they were extra clean.

She commented that the situation wasn’t too bad, and she’s seen much worse from him. I suppose even though he didn’t clean his clothes properly he should be commended for knowing that they needed to be cleaned and giving it his best shot.

Aug

15

The Missing Hotdogs

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Michael reminded me of this story from vacation.

Sharon and Nathan were grilling hot dogs and brats for lunch on Friday. Before lunch Sharon went around to each person asking what they wanted and how many. She even double checked to make sure she asked everyone.

Halfway through lunch Aunt Debbie went to get her second hot dog. She came back to the table saying there were no hot dogs left. We asked if she ordered two. She had. Then Andrew said he hadn’t gotten his second one either. Sharon was at our table and was a little confused, “I even put three or four extra on.” Accusations were made to the people at the other table. “How many did you eat?” “Did you eat more than you ordered?” Everyone denied eating more than they ordered. Then several people at the other table said, “I didn’t get my second one either.” There were plenty of extra in the fridge, so Nathan went to put more on the grill. He came back in with the answer to the missing hot dogs. Nathan would put the hot dogs on the warming rack. Then they would roll off the rack into the hood. When he would open the hood the hot dogs would fall out onto the ground.

Moral of the story: when your hot dogs are missing, look behind the grill before blaming other people for eating them.

Aug

14

The Mouse in the Night

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Here is a story from the family vacation that happened to my parents.

My parent’s bedroom was off the kitchen. It was the only bedroom in this area, although the hallway had a bathroom that Aunt Susan and Uncle John used since they didn’t have one in their bedroom. My mom woke up at 4 or 5 am hearing a strange noise. Eventually (either because of my mom or the noise) my dad woke up. They laid there trying to figure out what the noise was. It stopped for a little bit and then started up again. Eventually one of them got up and turned on the lights. They explored the room and discovered a mouse caught on a sticky trap behind a piece of furniture. Only the back legs of the mouse were stuck, and the mouse was making a lot of noise running around a small space dragging the sticky trap with it. I can’t remember why (or if anything else happened before this), but my dad ended up getting a broom and whacking the mouse to death.

Meanwhile, Uncle John got up to use the bathroom. As he walked through the kitchen he heard a lot of noise coming from my parent’s room and decided that maybe he will wait to use the bathroom. Aunt Susan was awake too. She knows Uncle John got up, and she could hear all the noise coming from the direction of the kitchen. She got annoyed with her husband thinking he was making the noise and wondering what he was doing (maybe starting breakfast too early?).

Jul

19

New look

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See the new page link at the top.

Also, I have changed the RSS feed for the site. Please resubscribe if necessary.

Jul

5

Fourth of July weekend

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It’s been nice having an extra day off.

For the 4th, Radford has a day-long celebration at Bisset Park. We walked down and looked around a bit, but it wasn’t all that exciting, and it was starting to rain. There were a lot of fun-looking things for kids, and the demographics of people there tended toward families with young kids. The annual fireworks show started at 9:30. By 9, there were a lot of people around our apartment. We had suspected that our back porch might be a good place to watch from. It was. (See pictures below.)

Saturday morning we got up relatively early and went blueberry picking. It rained for quite a bit of the time, but the picking was excellent. We got 2 gallons in about an hour. Note the measurement mark on the side of the bowl below.

Radford Fireworks
More Radford Fireworks
Still more

A bridge from 1913 in Newport
A cooler full of blueberries
A bowl of berries



Jun

17

My first week of clinic

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This past week was my first week of clinic. I’m one of six graduate students in the phonological disorders group. A person with a phonological disorder (usually a young child) has created his own rule system for how to say words. For example, my client uses the “d” sound for all words that start with a consonant, deletes the last consonant, and whenever a word is two or three syllables, uses the voiced or voiceless “th” sound for each consonant. My job is to re-teach the rule system so that he talks correctly and can be understood.

The six of us were divided into pairs. The Lord blessed me with a wonderful partner named Jen. My disadvantage (or advantage depending on how you look at it) is that this is my first semester in clinic and everyone else’s third. Jen is very creative and has lots of great ideas. She also is well-prepared. She has been so great to teach me how to do everything. I feel spoiled at times because none of my classmates had knowledgeable people working so closely with them when they began clinic.

I’m in clinic for two hours twice a week. For the first hour I work with my client on his sounds. During the second hour Jen and her client join me and together we work on literacy awareness by reading books, learning letters, looking for letters in words, etc. Jen and I take turns being in charge of the group activity.

I can’t say a whole lot about my client, but he’s almost four and is very obedient. Oh yeah, he hardly talks. In the four hours we were together I think he said four utterances on his own. Whenever I ask him to say the words we are talking about he says them. If I ask him to go somewhere in the room for an activity he obeys immediately. I think the poor kid is just terrified. How would you feel if your mom left you with a stranger in a strange place in a strange room where the person said, “Say ‘dough, mow’” and other things like that.

Our group session is interesting. Jen’s client is about the same age. He talks a little bit more, but he’s quite different from my client. He attends a Montessori school, and his mother seems to have taken the “learning” environment a little too far. If he doesn’t want to do something (no matter what) he doesn’t have to. He shouldn’t be rewarded because doing something correctly should be reward enough. When the two clients are together not much happens. They don’t talk to each other. They don’t want to sit very close to each other. At the end of the session Jen says, “Say goodbye to [my client].” He shakes his head and says no while mine shyly waves goodbye. Hopefully as time goes on my client will warm up to me and both clients will get along better.

The other groups have 4 clients at a time ranging from 4-7 years old. Apparently after the first five minutes they were talking to each other like they were best friends that had known each other all their lives. Also, the clinicians said that the 4 can understand each other perfectly even though they all make different mistakes. Apparently the clinicians’ have no clue what the kids are saying and the kids are trying to help explain each other.

So, two sessions down, ten more to go for the summer. I’m enjoying it so far. Hopefully it will continue to go well.