Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Four Years of English

Alright, I've been sitting on this because I wanted to write something up about Nathan since the last post was rather Jonah-centric, but if I don't write these out I'm going to forget, and then it'll never happen.

It's really interesting to see how the English language develops in children. And having two of them close enough together to remember, it's interesting to see the differences between individuals also! Jonah has definitely built his own choice vocabulary, and there are certain words and phrases he uses a lot. Some of them I know where he heard, and others I haven't a clue. Sunny and her sisters pointed out that he has started saying "Niiiice!" about things he likes, which is apparently something I say often (I never noticed). Then the other day at church, I heard him use some word (I really wish I could remember what now) that was a full five syllables! And he used it in the proper context! I have no clue where he got that one.

It is also interesting to see how his mind works at times, and how he chooses to utilize his vocabulary to express his thoughts. Most people just think of these as those cute mistakes little kids make while they're learning. But I've noticed with Jonah that in a lot of cases, it isn't that he's trying to repeat something he heard someone else say and getting wrong, he's trying to use the words he already knows to get a concept across. For instance, instead of saying (pardon the incorrect grammar) "Me and mommy are going to the store, and you too!" he'll say "Me and mommy are going to the store, and also you!". "And also you" is one I hear him use all the time.

Anyway, that's probably far more interesting to me than it is to you :) And to be clear, I'm not just talking about Jonah (even though I pull my examples there). I've heard the exact same things from other kids his age. It's just very interesting to see how they develop and build their language skills :)

Anyway, I recently wrote down a couple different Jonah Stories, if you will. Things I found rather humorous and thought I'd share :) Enjoy!

Sunday School

I recently started teaching the youngest Sunday School class. We have three students in that class: Jonah, Lauren, and Nathan. One Sunday we finished the lesson a little early, everyone went and got a drink and no one needed to use the bathroom, so I let them play with some toys until Sunday School was over (about five minutes). This was a little interaction between Lauren and Jonah that I started writing down (Nathan was busy vacuuming).

Lauren: I'm going to play with the dollies. Here, -handing one to Jonah- you hold this. You'll be the brother and I'll be the mommy.

Jonah: Wait... Are we playing house?

Lauren: Yes.

Jonah: But... I don't like House.

Lauren: Well, fine, I'll just play with... -pause, then a little sad- I'll just... -another pause, and this time begging- pleeeeaaaase?

-- Jonah just stared at her for a little while, giving this some serious thought --

Jonah: Well... okay...

-- At this point Jonah's tone and posture changed suddenly. He'd obviously realized something he overlooked before --

Jonah: Wait, I'm the... shouldn't I be the... What if I'm the daddy, and you're the mommy.

Lauren: Yeah! I already said that! Put the baby down -pointing at a crib-.

Jonah: Okay... Here, like this?

Lauren: Yes, because she's a girl.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At School

After dinner tonight I asked Jonah what he had done today. I didn't actually expect to get much of an answer, but I was wrong.

Me:
So, what did you do today?

Jonah: Well, I colored. I was on the blue team today, and so was Lauren. And... another person, but I don't remember the name.

Me: Oh. Was it a boy or a girl?

Jonah: A girl. -thoughtful pause- And I played a lot with E'gar.

-- At this point I instantly thought of Men in Black, "It was like he was wearing a suit, an E'gar suit..." --

Me:
With.... Edgar?

Jonah: Yes. E'gar. He's kind of funny sometimes. He's as funny as me! One time there was a bug on him, but it wasn't a spider. It was just a little bug, with gray stripes. And its legs were little like this, so that's why it's called a little gray bug. And I was like, get on his shirt! But it didn't, and I was like...

-- I missed a couple things here when I realized, "I gotta write this down..." --

Jonah: And we were on the -very punctuated with a pause- "grass, area".

Me: Oh... Is that what they call it?

Jonah: Yes. It's the "grass, area". They call it that because it is a place with grass on it. It just has grass. It's not a lot of grass, just a bunch of grass. So because of that they call it the "grass, area". There's only one "grass, area". That's why they call it that. But you have to go through the gate to get to the "grass, area", because there's a gate. You have to go out the door, and then that way, and then through the gate to get to the "grass, area".

He went on explaining this concept and a few specifics of the "grass, area" (yes, he punctuated and emphasized it that way every time he said it...) in some greater detail, but I'm afraid I wasn't able to get those all down. Ask him about it some time, I'm sure he'd be more than happy to tell you.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Jonah and Pokemon

If any of you read my wife's blog you're no doubt up to date on all the latest antics of our boys. Jonah is loving going to school two days a week, and Nathan is having all sorts of adventures in learning the English language, and getting into everything, and tormenting his brother, and, well... being Nathan.

Jonah has taken up another interest as of late: Pokemon. His grasp of numbers and basic strategy is finally strong enough that I decided to have a go at teaching him the basics of this card game. And he picked it up fast! Much faster than I expected, to be sure. It was rough going at first. During the first two hands he was quite sure I was insane, and that this wouldn't be any fun at all. But then he started getting it. And then he started getting competitive. And then even devious...

I was pleasantly surprised to see his grasp of numbers was beyond even what I had thought it was. He easily and quickly identified all of the numbers between 10 and 90. However, when he drew Arcanine and put him into his hand (we play open handed right now) his eyes grew wide for a moment, then he asked me, "What's that number?" "That number?" I asked. "Oh, that's 100." This blew his mind, for two reasons. First, he immediately recognized that having a third number made it very big, and to him (as Sunny and I recently discovered) 100 embodies everything huge and vast ("There must be a hundred of them! Or maybe a hundred and thirty!"). Second, that meant Arcanine was huge, and "really hard" (as Jonah puts it), so he was now well situated to waste me.

Then the unthinkable happened. He had already played out his Growlithes. Now, as he was well aware, but some of my readers may not be, you cannot use Arcanine without Growlithe. All three of his had already been discarded. This is when I learned something else about my son. He really doesn't like to lose. I saw some faces during the next ten or fifteen minutes that I had never seen before (and I've seen quite a large range of his vast set of facial expressions).

Anyway, this didn't turn him off to the game. He still likes to play every couple days or so. This evening when I got home from work he had somehow found a large assortment of those erasers you can fit to the end of a pencil in various colors, about six colors, and must have been around forty erasers, and he had them all arranged on the coffee table. He explained to me that they were his deck, and started going through the list of what color was what type of thing, so on and so forth. I think we'll have to see about getting him some actual pokemon toys for his birthday this year...

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Google Chrome

Alright, I figure it's natural that when I start a new blog, the first thing I should do is talk about whatever the latest cool thing is that caught my attention. And today, that's definitely Google Chrome!

If you haven't heard yet, Google has released an open Beta of their own web browser, Google Chrome. I've been playing with it while I can today, and I have to say my first impressions are positive. There are definitely plenty of bugs that will keep me from making it my default browser today, but I'm sure those dedicated Google engineers will be sifting through thousands of bug reports to get us a new build by next Monday. Can't wait to see what they give us next!

For a little "under the hood" perspective, they posted a very cool comic that explains some of the fundamental design concepts and practices they've put into the work. I'll definitely be watching to see where this one goes, and to see what other people take from this, if anything. (Oh yeah, didn't I mention? It's open source!)