What to do this fine morning?

Tete: How about A History of Western Philosophy, would you like that?
Girl: This is a movie?
Tete: No, it's like a radio show.
Girl: What's is a show?
Tete: That's something that entertains you.
Girl: Oh. And what's a radio?

You'd Better be More Careful When Misspeaking

My daughter meant to say pistoletas, which means pistol. By accident, she said pyzdoletas, which isn't a real word, but sounds like it could mean one of the following:

• pussy pistol
• pussy wagon
• cum dumpster

Yikes! I don't know which one is the worst...

Sleep Talking

"Ne. Ne. Ne. Ne. Ne."

The baby only says no in Lithaunian, not English, and she only says it if I'm not watching. She doesn't say it in a mean way, well, I guess that's not possible for a baby. She says it in a way that sounds mocking. I guess whatever she's dreaming, it ain't I.

Sisterly Advice

As the baby was walking around with a full diaper, the five year old says to her, "You know, you'll never land yourself a husband if you poop your pants."

A Stiff Drink

When you ask your kid to pour you a drink, make sure you specify how much...otherwise you may get a zealous glass of whiskey spilling over the sides.

First Word

Baby's first work in English is book.

I've been dragging the Lord of the Rings around the house with me recently. She kept pointing at it and asking Kas čia, and I kept saying What's this—book. Soon she started repeating, each time, ba.

Ba = book

What a Stand Up Baby

On the 4th of July my special baby gave her first standing ovation--to herself for standing up! She stood straight up for the first time in her life a started clapping. She kept doing it for nearly a minute, right up until we got the camera out. Then she toppled over and cried a lot.

Kooshonite

I found out my baby daughter's kryptonite, it's koosh balls. We got this big koosh ball that she'll pull on the little strings or whatever they're called, but she's afraid of actually holding the whole thing. I realize that's the perfect way to keep her away from my computer tower. And if you roll the koosh ball at her she scrambles away hilariously!

Tooth Fairy

Thursday
Kid's got a loose tooth. I thought five and a quarter's a little early for loosing teeth, but having spoken to my father that's exactly when I lost my first one too. I take a wiggle at it, and it's loose alright, but not loose enough for it to drop out and get swallowed by accident. Let it be. Thank God, cause for some reason I find the idea of pulling someone else's teeth out kinda disgusting.

Friday
Kid comes home sans her bottom front right tooth. Just as well, cause apparently it was starting to get in her way: Friday mornings I teach English to her kindergarten class, but she didn't attend that morning because she "couldn't barely talk through her loose tooth!" Say what? Anyway, we got Tetukas on skype to show him, and he asked her if she lost it in a bar fight. "Nooooooooo," she said, "I pulled it out myself!" She might have said pull, actually, she hasn't quite mastered past tense use in English yet.

Saturday
The tooth fairy came in the night and brought her a fiver. I can tell you it certainly wasn't I, I was too afraid of getting caught--I'm not great at sneaking quietly. Five is sort of alot, I think, and Tetukas agrees, but my special lady insisted that you can't buy anything with two, which is the next unit of currency down. That turned out not to be true. The ice cream she and I buy costs 2.50, but the ice cream my daughter chose only costs 1.59, a disgusting lime ice cream/sherbet, so two would have done it. Would it be weird if the tooth fairy brought less next time? We could always say it's normal to get more for the first tooth, just to make losing teeth more appealing, the old bait'n'switch. On the other hand, it makes little difference: what my daughter did with her five is buy herself an ice cream, me an ice cream, and then chip in the rest of her five for the ice creams I bought to bring home to my special lady and Egle, who was visiting.

Kindergarten Boozebags

Last week in my kindergarten English class we did vegetables one day. We learned the words carrot, cucumber, and tomato, and then each child told me which vegetable he likes most. Yesterday I decided to do fruits, but I only had two typical fruits. Two isn't a good number, though, so I added a lime. It's colorful, so who cares, right? Here's the really odd thing, though: two of the kids then told me limes are their favorite fruit of the three choices! I'm thinkin' damn, these two must really hate apples and oranges to choose an unknown, or else we got a couple margarita swilling kindergarten boozebags on our hands!

Ramaroddi

Last night I took my womenfolk out to the Ramazzotti Concert (kids under 7 free, otherwise there's no way in the whole wide world I would have taken them). I'm not really into his music, by my special lady is gaga for it, and I'm happy to expose the children, because most of it is quality music, not pop shit.

My special lady was thrilled to exhaustion, and the baby jumped herself into exhaustion too, passing out half way through the show. I was left with the child, and kept he behaved enough that the woman sitting in front of her only had to turn around twice. She like the show, but who has the patience for two hours of it? There were two major additions to the activities. One was watching me play backgammon on my phone...I mean, playing team backgammon against my phone. Then she requested we play normal backgammon rather than team backgammon, so I said we can play pretend backgammon: I feigned a roll of the dice and told her I got a six and a one; then she did the same, but she got double sixes!

The other addition was saying one of the following ("do like this" = indicating tickle me around my neck):

"Tete, now I gonna stand up and you do like this!"

"Tete, now I gonna sit down and you do like this!"

Thirty Count

Granted, when I was in first grade, and the teacher told me to count to one hundred, I said, "ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred."

The kid says when can I go play, and I say, when you count to thirty. She says. "But that's so much!" I ask her how high she'd rather count, and she says, "I'll just count to three."

Laaaaaaaaaaaazy!

Bad Day

This post from my other blog was family related, so here you go!

Surf & Turf

After a mini-salami lunch, Daughter walks out of the room and shouts, "Tete!"

Tete says to Mama, "Is she crazy?!"

"Tete!"
...
"Tete!"
...
"Tete!"

Daughter comes back in and says, in exhasperation, "Tete!"

"Daughter, are you crazy? We were just sitting right next to each other, why would you leave the room before asking me something?!"
"Tete, can I have these red and white in the kitchen."
"You want to have the fire extinguisher?"
"No-oh-oh! I gonna show you."

Daughter comes back with a bag of crab (fish) sticks. I tell her "Oh, sure you can. So you like the surf & turf, huh?"
"What's is surf & turf?"
"That's when you eat land meat and sea meat at the same meal. The fish sticks are from fish, and the sausages are from pigs that live on the land."
"YOU MEAN CANDY LAND?!"

Thanks for the birthday present Loky, now every time I use the word "land" that's her response!

Can I be a booze hound? Not till you're fifteen!

Kid: Mama as noriu i miesta su Tavim. (I wanna go to town with you)
Mom: Tevas varo miestop sivak, paklausk jo ar gali kartu (Your father's going to town tonight, ask him if you can go along)
Kid: Tete, can I go to town with you tonight?
I: Nope.
Kid: why not?
I: are you 21 years old yet?
Kid: mmm...(to her mother) i miesta tik suaugusiems?

I guess she didn't want to answer my question until she knew what the consequence would be.

Hukt on foniks wukt fo me!

I thought my daugter was doing really well with her English, until one minute ago. We were playing this game where she asks me something and I pretend I don't understand. It goes like this:

She: Tete, let's play animal yatzi!
Me: What?
She: I say let's play animal yatzi!
Me: I "said"
She: I "said" let's play animal yatzi!
Me: What's manimal rocky?
She: "Animal Yatzi!"
Me: I don't know how to play kugelis lassie.
She: No, I want to play "Animal Yatzi!"
Me: Well I'd like to play too, but I don't know this minimal matzoh ball game.
She: No, say "Eh"
Me: "Eh"
She: "ri"
Me: "ri"
She: "mo"
Me: "mo"
She: "ya"
Me: "ya"
She: "tzi"
Me: "tzi"
She: Yes!
"Ehrimo Yatzi," that's what you've been saying this whole time?!?! I must have a hearing impediment!

We've been playing Ehrimo Yatzi for about a year and a half now, just about daily. It's her Fireball Island.

Let's watch some pointless gay softcore porn with dinner, shall we?

We usually eat in front of the boob tube, which is the custom of my family. Tonight my special lady was all about desperate housewives, as usual but not always, but I suggested we watch a film. It was early, we had plenty of time. Do we have anything we haven't seen yet? Yes, indeed, the film adaptation of one of my favorite stories, The House of Usher, but Edgar Allen Poe. Since I began teaching American literature Salinger and Poe have been my clear favorites. I've been sitting on this movie for a while, because it's older (1960), and I usually can't talk the wife into watching older movies with me.

I was a little surprised when I saw the motorcycle because the story takes place in the 18th century. I was further surprised by the terrible acting, because the movie has a 7.0 rating, meaning good. I kept thinking to myself, which one of them is Vincent Price?? Man, he's so young I don't even recognize him! Soon enough I had to yell to my daughter "Don't watch!" My wife remarked, "I don't remember this from the story." That's because it wasn't in the story. She was referring to Victor and Roderick making out. What?!

Oops, I accidentally popped in House of Usher (2008) instead of House of Usher (1960).

Rote Learning?

Many lessons begin with me introducing myself as Birdie (with a bird puppet on my hand):

"Hello, my name is Birdie. What's your name?"

They tell me their names as I go around the circle, and sometimes they say the whole thing, but usually they'll just say their names, and I'll correct them:

"Jack."
"Say, 'My name is Jack.'"
"My name is Jack"
"Good."

So today this girl comes up to me (not during class) with some other rug rat with her. She says to me,

"Čia mano brolis. Jo vardas my name is Jonas. Bye bye!"
("This is my brother. His name is my name is Jonas. Bye bye!")