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NaNi’s Words – Getting Beyond the R2-D2 Stage

Naomi is now 22 months old. She seems to have gotten remarkably taller in the past month, and also seems ever less the baby.

Photos in this post: top—Naomi the explorer (Rattlesnake Hill, elevation 1,231 feet, next to Squam Lake, Holderness, New Hampshire); middle—Naomi enjoys reading Calvin and Hobbes while on a trip to the Lower Falls, Kancamagus Highway; bottom—Naomi shows off her block-tower-building prowess.

Right now, she is in a fascinating speech development stage, after a fairly long plateau (if anything can be considered long in toddler development) of sounding like R2-D2, where we could figure out what she was saying by the emotion put into the words and sometimes matching syllables, to using new words every day. We repeat what we think she’s said back to her in an interrogative tone, so she can confirm it.

One funny example: We were watching the 2004 movie Thunderbirds, and she was watching it quite intently. I asked her, “Do you like this movie?” She replied, “[Unknown syllables], [unknown syllables], [unknown syllables] cute.” “What!?” I responded, “He’s cute?” (Probably referring to Brady Corbet, who played Alan Tracy in the film.) “Uh-huh,” was her answer.

Also like R2-D2, NaNi can understand just about everything we say to her, and has been able to for the past 9 or 10 months—even complex sentences with multiple commands, like, “Pick up your shoes and put them in your room.” Of course, she’s also at the age where she’s developing a strong will (or perhaps a strong won’t), so she is equally good at ignoring our instructions completely when it suits her purposes.

She’s also doing other cool things. She can identify just about everything in a picture or storybook we can name. She recognizes people in photos. She builds block towers, puts together Duplo, and will sometimes partially assemble Lego people. She can climb the long ladder to our slide, and slide down it without help, now that she’s learned to slow herself down. She will come over to me, lie down, and stick her feet up in the air, which means she wants a “pendulum” ride, where I pick her up by the feet and ankles and swing her back and forth while upside-down.

She recognizes the tunes of many songs, and can even hum along to the “Imperial March” from The Empire Strikes Back. She brushes her teeth by herself. She picks out which pair of shoes she wants to wear, and can put them on. (When we got back from vacation, she insisted on wearing her ruby-red dress shoes to bed, as she apparently missed them while we were away.)

In the past two week, she has started using new words, such as up, and even surprised us with lifejacket.

She has managed to wrap every one of us around her little finger.

So, I’m going to try to enumerate her vocabulary. (I’ll be updating this often in the next couple of days, as I think of new words she is currenlty using):

  • ah-ha
  • all done
  • apple
  • baby
  • backpack (to refer to her baby-carrier backpack that we wear, or to her riding onto my back without the backpack, with her arms around my neck)
  • Bible
  • Blue
  • Blue’s Clues (Her absolute favorite television show, although we limit her to about one hour of TV per day. For the record, Steve was a much better host than Joe is.)
  • bye
  • bye-bye
  • cheese
  • cyclopentanoperhydrophenanthrene
  • Chapstick (Yes, I know it’s a brand name.)
  • Chaz
  • Daddy
  • hi (She also—just yesterday—started using hi in conjunction with a person’s name, as in “Hi, Daddy.”)
  • ice
  • Isaac
  • keys
  • lifejacket
  • marble
  • me
  • mine (I taught her that one. I tried teaching her gimme, but Nichelle took issue with that.)
  • Mommy
  • no
  • nooooooooooooooooooooooo (used especially when her brothers are bothering her, or trying to take something away from her)
  • okay
  • oooooooooooooooooooooooh (drawn out with a long o sound, as if in realization or final comprehension of something)
  • ow
  • ooooooooooooooooooooooow (used especially if her brothers are touching her in the slightest way)
  • pee
  • Phoebe
  • please
  • plum
  • pool
  • Pop Tart (Another brand name)
  • stuck
  • thank you (more of a syllabic match than a phonetic one)
  • T.V.
  • up
  • uh-huh (for yes)
  • uh-oh (for no)
  • uh-uh (for no)
  • up
  • Yes, sir! (Only when singing “I May Never March in the Infantry …”; she also salutes with her hand, and does all of the other actions correctly.)

NaNi loves to sing. Some of her songs are more phonetic or syllabic than verbal, but here are her favorites:

  • Blind Man (an old chorus I learned at Camp Fireside)
  • The Emperor’s March, from The Empire Strikes Back
  • The Farmer in the Dell (which her See ‘n Say® plays)
  • Happy Birthday (She surprised us by knowing that one today.)
  • I May Never March in the Infantry
  • Jesus Loves Me
  • Old McDonald had a Farm (another See ‘n Say® one)

And she can identify the following body parts:

  • belly button
  • ears
  • eyebrows
  • eyes
  • fingers
  • hair
  • mouth
  • nose
  • spleen (I’m not kidding)
  • toes
  • tongue
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Nichelle and NaNi Play Dress Up (At Clark’s Trading Post)

We spent part of the last day of our vacation at Clark’s Trading Post. Nichelle decided that she and NaNi would have one of those old fashioned photos done. (This is exactly the kind of thing my parents would never have done because (1) it might have been fun, and (2) it cost money. According to Nichelle, Naomi had a great time.

Below are the results, with some fun effects. I got tired of just the original and sepia, so I tried Lego (0fficially “Kids Blocks”) and stained glass, which I modified to look more like a mosaic. Click to view the enlarged versions.

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A Crocodile Monitor on the Loose …

Today I took Isaac, David, and Naomi to RJ’s Exotics to buy some food for the critters. I too was on the lookout for a new snake. (See Jaeden Has Escaped.) As we checked out all of the cool creatures they carry, I spotted some corn snakes.

I was holding Naomi, when Isaac and David quickly came to the front of the store and I heard that a crocodile monitor had escaped. One of the employees came charging up front looking for his gloves. We were told that the front of the store was safe, but not to enter the back of the store. In the meantime, I had Isaac and David go outside and wait by the door.

Things settled down a little and at that time I had narrowed my choice of snake down to two. The monitor was still on the loose, but I finally decided which snake I wanted to buy. Unfortunately, the containers to transport the new Wilcox addition was in the back of the store with the monitor. I told the employee, not to worry, I’d come back in about half an hour or so to buy the snake then. When I returned, I was informed that the monitor had been captured, and that no one was hurt. They can be quite vicious.

So I now have a new female corn snake, which looks pretty much like this one.

See “Name That Snake” for some pictures.

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Nichelle Has Been Scheming

My wife has been scheming for the past few weeks. I knew something was up, because she would do things like call me on my cell phone, and have the kids chorus, “Neener, neener, neener.” I also ought to have been extremely suspicious, because she volunteered to drop the kids off at day camp, which involved the extra task of getting Naomi ready to leave the house early. All of the usual items were off the list. It wasn’t my birthday, and it wasn’t our anniversary, and Father’s Day has already passed. I have a history of puzzling things out from the smallest of clues, so she wasn’t going to provide even a hint as to what she was up to.

Today was no exception. I knew she wasn’t home because she’d said she would be out of the house all day, and she hadn’t logged on to the computer. This time, however, she assured me that I would find out this evening what was going on.

To my complete surprise (I don’t think I would have figured this out even with a small hint), Nichelle presented me with an extremely well-made dress that she made for Naomi. With the help of our friend Trish Dunn, Nichelle has been learning to sew, something that she has wanted to do for years.

Typical of my wife, her first project was amazingly well done, as the photo above shows. It seems that anything she wants to tackle comes easily to her, from sewing to cutting hair.

Of course, she’s really looking forward to sewing all John’s school clothes for next year. 😉

I’ve already quoted part of Proverbs 31 when talking about Nichelle, but here are a few more appropriate verses from the same chapter:

19She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. 20She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. 21She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet. 22She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.

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Naomi and John’s Return

John returned from Jamaica at around 11:15 p.m. on Saturday. It was a great trip, and he, Nichelle, and I spent the next few hours talking about it. (We’ll post more on that later.)

Sunday morning, I went to wake up Naomi in her crib. She was fussing because she didn’t really want to get up. (She’s a Wilcox.)

“John is back,” I said, “Do you want to say hello to him?”

She stopped crying instantly, and a big smile appeared on her face. She jumped up, and was off and running to find John almost before I put her down.

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E-Mail from the Edge of Emily (Jamaica Missions Trip Update)

We’ve started to get e-mail from John with information about how the missions trip is going. He agreed it was fine to post the e-mails on the BLOG. I’ve included my own comments [in brackets and italicized]. I will add e-mail as it comes in. Below, with some minor edits (mostly for spelling), is what we have received:

Saturday, July 16, 2005:

Dear Slackers,

I landed in Jamaica around 5 in the afternoon on Wednesday. Our flight to Jamaica was delayed an hour and 45 minutes. (Good thing I brought those books, huh? :))

[For the first time, John took my advice about bringing a couple of books with him to read, because you never know when you’re going to be stuck somewhere waiting, with nothing to do.]

When we had landed we all waited for our luggage. To our dissatisfaction, only 3 of us had gotten our luggage back. Lori, me, and Rachel, but I had to wait for my big black suitcase for 20-25 minutes. And so I was like, “Well, I don’t think I’m going to live much longer when I return home.”

[We threatened John with death if anything happened to our huge, virtually indestructible, Samsonite suitcase.]

Then came the immigration forms we had to fill out when we landed. It was pretty wierd filling those out because I felt important. When we had to load the luggage I saw Mrs. Hinxman get into what I had thought all my life was the driver’s side of the vehicle. But to my surprise, the steering wheel was on the right side and I thought that was really cool. Well when, we had started to drive I felt like I was in the passengers side of a vehicle that was being driven by the Terminator. Right then I prayed to God and thanked him for seatbelts. To my surprise, our driver was driving 60-65 mph the whole time (1 hour), but we did make frequent stops. And I thought Massachusetts driving was bad!

I was dead tired; I had only had 2 hrs sleep the whole trip because of the girls and their non-stop talking (no offense, Mom). When we arrived at the Reese’s house, I was like, “Wow this is a beautiful house.” We were told to make ourselves at home, and, well, I did. To me it’s like a mansion. I thanked God for His taking care for us and where we were to stay.

Currently, myself, along with Ken, Mr. Small, and Tim, are staying at another missionary’s house that the Reeses work with (the Harmons). You may have heard of the name, but they are not the same missionaries. His brother [Jerry Harmon] is a missionary that our church supports.

I’ve been doing devotions every day, and it is a beautiful country, but the people that we see every day as we drive on the streets. I mean, I feel like giving them money and helping them out. And I know that I wouldn’t feel this way if I didn’t pray to God about the Jamaican family situation.

[John was in an really bad foster home (long since disbanded) which was run by a family of Jamaican descent. He had to overcome the all-too-human tendency to transfer blame to all citizens of a country based on the actions of one or more of its citizens. We’re very proud he was able to do this.]

You may have heard that there was a hurricane that was headed for us. I had gotten scared and I prayed, and when I had woken up I saw the news and God answered my prayer. It had totally missed us. But the day before that, we (the men) had done some work to prepare for the hurricane.

Right now I’m just having fun and enjoying the kids. Tomorrow comes the real work: Vacation Bible School. There will be a little bit more than 300 kids, and the environment around the church is rough. Yesterday their was a gun shot across the street from the church, and so I ran into the church. I pray to God every day for the safety of our trip. So please continue to pray for our trip and I love you all and hope to see you guys on the 25th.

Monday, July 18, 2005:

[We informed John that we’d commandeered his X-Box while he was away, and borrowed Star Wars: Battlegrounds from the Dunn family.]

Oh, so you borrowed my most loved thing in my room. lol. Well, ok, just make sure when they get mad they don’t throw my controller. lol. Yeah, you can write that on the BLOG if you’d like.

The kids get their luggage back today, so they are all happy.

[The luggage also contained many items they needed for the VBS, but I can imagine that not having to wear the same clothes every day was quite appealing.]

Tuesday, July 18, 2005:

Well, I thank you for your prayers for my safety in the hurricane. And I thanked God for His safety yesterday, because there was man that was chased down the street that the church was on and was stabbed to death. I thanked God that He protected me. But I can see what you are saying with the questions. It is a very good conversation to have.

[I’ll be posting an entry about God’s sovereignty and luggage; I had outlined it for John, trying to frame my thoughts a bit. That’s the conversation to which he was referring.]

Yes, I do think that this would be a life changing trip, because I am already starting to pray to God and asking him to forgive me for my hatred in the past towards my biological parents and the Jamaican foster home. Even though they did something terrible and wicked to me doesn’t mean I should not love them and not care for them. But you know I am doing devotions much longer and having more prayer time and praying for people who I would never have even think to pray about.

I gotta go now, and I hope to see you soon. Oh, by the way, how’s the weather up there? lol. Well, catch ya later, and thanks for being my Dad, and I love you a lot; and tell Mom that I love her, and thank her for being my the best Mom that any teenager could ever have. But I gotta go, and I love you guys.

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John Is Off–On A Missions Trip to Jamaica

Early Wednesday morning—at 2:30, actually—John will be leaving with a group of teens from Tabernacle Baptist Church for a ten-day missions trip to work with missionaries Quentin and Sally Reese in Jamaica. During their trip, they will be running a week-long Vacation Bible School, working with the Manna Care Ministry (which brings food and medicine to poor and homeless children), and taking part in two different Sunday services at God’s Way Baptist Church. They will also be passing out gospel tracts, and doing other work to help the missionaries in whatever way they can.

This will be John’s first missions trip. In fact, it will be his first trip out of the country. He is, admittedly, a little nervous. Tonight after dinner we read a short devotional by Corrie Ten Boom about worry. A few days ago I encouraged him not to be afraid, as the worst that could happen is he’d get to go to Heaven soon, and I’d get his X-Box.

This is a great opportunity for John. I know from my own experience that such trips can be profoundly life-changing. Seeing how much of the world lives–or struggles to live–is eye opening. Meeting and spending time in fellowshipping with those who share the common bond of brotherhood in Jesus Christ is enriching.

I’ll update this post throughout the week, as news comes in. Most likely most of the details will need to wait until John returns.

Update–Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Well, the group made it safely to Jamaica, albeit after some delays and sans about half of their luggage. I hope the latter arrives soon for them. On one trip to the Dominican Republic, Nichelle and I were warned to bring at least three days’ worth of clothing and essentials as carry-on. It took exactly that long for us to get our bags.

Update–Saturday, July 16, 2005: Luggage and Hurricanes

We heard that the group’s luggage had been flown to an airport near Kingston, Jamaica, and was supposed to be delivered to them by yesterday or today, if I have the details right.

Hurricane Emily (I still think all hurricanes should be named after women) didn’t hit Jamaica directly, but judging from the satellite photos today, they’re getting some serious wind and rain. That should keep the teens’ lives interesting. Here’s the word from The Weather Channel:

Emily: the Atlantic Basin’s strongest July hurricane
2:55 p.m. ET Sat., Jul.16, 2005

M. Ressler, Meteorologist, The Weather Channel

With winds of 155 mph, Emily has beaten out Dennis for the honor of strongest July hurricane on record in the Atlantic Basin. Emily remains a small but very strong and very dangerous major Category 4 hurricane. If the sustained wind were to increase 1 more mph, Emily would become a Category 5 hurricane. Emily continues to zip to the west-northwest at 18 mph heading into the western Caribbean. The torrential outer rain bands may dump from 6 to locally 10 inches of rain over the mountains of Jamaica and 4 to 7 inches over the Cayman Islands. Flooding and mud slides are possible. The rain bands may possibly produce a few wind gusts to near hurricane strength in the mountains and along the south coast of Jamaica today and then over Grand Cayman Island later tonight into Sunday. A tropical storm warning has been dropped for the southwestern peninsula of Haiti. A hurricane warning is in effect for Jamaica and for the Cayman Islands. A hurricane watch is in effect for the Caribbean side of the Yucatan. A tropical storm watch is in effect for the northern half of coastal Belize.

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