A-B-C… as Easy as 1-2-3..

First off, congratulations to Elizabeth of Hearth, Hearts and Home, whose vignette on her daughter’s ability to sing in her sleep is the latest to be featured in “Mommy Story of the Week.” Click on the link in the sidebar, and don’t be shy to submit your own! New stories are posted each week.

As for my talented little munchkin, out of the blue, while standing in line at the grocery store today, counted to ten out loud for the first time. Wow. I count to ten everytime we okay hide and seek, and he loves to say his “Num-bahs!” out loud. Up until now, he’s been counting everything “wun-two, wun-two!” but today in the grocery cart, he looked at the things I was placing on the belt and the inspiration sprung forth: “Wun. To. Free. Fowa. Five. Seek. Seben. Ate. Niiiiine. Tenn!” I looked up at him in surprise, and then sputtered, “Did you just count to ten?” “Num-BAHS!” he answered, smiling from ear to ear. Then, as if on a roll, he shouted, “A B C D E F G!!!” The checker, a nineteen-year-old with more piercings than ten looked unimpressed. I was quivering with praise. He did it several more times today after Casey got home, and Casey was even more proud than I. What a kid.

In fact, there seems to be little that Kenny doesn’t “pick up” in the course of a day. Shortly after he woke up from his nap today, we had a record number of rings on the doorbell: a friend of mine stopping by, the airconditioner repairman, the post man, the repairman again and then the Fed Ex guy. Keep in mind that Dudley goes slightly deranged when he hears the doorbell or sees a “stranger” on the front step. On the fifth ring, as Dudley was attempting to tear down the door with his teeth, I muttered, ‘Oh, for Goodness Sakes!” The Fed Ex guy delivered a box, whose contents were padded in mounds of that little styrofoam popcorn. As pieces floated to the floor, Kenny lifted up his arms in glee, yelling, “Sakes! Sakes!” Picking up a few pieces, he started running in circles, ‘Sakes, Mama!” I let him play for a few minutes, then said, “Ok, Buddy. We’ve got to head out to the grocery store.” Kenny looked up, hope and excitement filling his face: “Mama? Sakes? Kenny hold some Sakes?” Yes, folks… Kenny wanted to take the precious “sakes” with him everywhere for the rest of the day.

On a more serious note, he got a mosquito bite on his ear on Saturday in the exact same spot where his Staph infection was last month. Over the last 48 hours it’s gotten considerably swollen and red, and we visited his doctor / angel, this morning for a verdict. She is unconvinced that it’s Staph again, but to be safe he is on an oral antibiotic and a topical one, and on close watch from me and Casey, with the instructions to go straight to the hospital if it gets any worse. So far it’s holding steady, thank God, and we are praying hard that it will only get better from here on out.

We are now considering moving to any part of the world where mosquitos don’t exist. Are there places where mosquitos don’t exist? Last year here in Arizona, we saw nary a bug, but this year, due to a cool and damp winter, they are breeding out of nowhere. So much for the desert…