Instrumental

Tonight, snuggling a bit before bed, Wild Thing reaches around and begins tapping my neck with his fingers in a strange way.

Me: "Wild Thing, what are you doing?"

WT: "I'm playing the French horn!"

Language development: random notes

As he nears the end of his 27th month, Wild Thing's sentences are getting more complex. "I am TRYING to reach this snap!" he informed me today at the grocery store, after I asked him why his head had joined his feet on the footrest in the cart. I notice that he sometimes tries to avoid irregular past tenses of verbs by using "did." Instead of "I fell," he tends to say "I did fall." Sometimes this is said thusly: "I DID fall." But other times it's more offhand. "I did fall off the chair," where "I fell" would be more correct.

He's also very proud of himself now that he can get his shoes off all by himself. Unfortunately, this new ability combines with an old, old habit of trying to go barefoot whenever possible, including the car, the store, etc. Once upon a time, he would take his socks off even in subfreezing weather, and it was only when he started wearing shoes that we could keep his feet covered. Looks like those days are gone ...

Winter wonderland

The sun is shining. It's 41 F outside. So how is it that there are also snowflakes the size of quarters falling outside my window?

Research topic: History of Ethnic Slurs

This is apropos of nothing, but I was idly curious after hearing a prominent conservative pundit refer casually to Middle Easterners as "ragheads" as to where this term comes from. I had a faint recollection that it originally had nothing to do with Arabs or Persians, and wondered if it perhaps dated from the nineteenth century British Raj. Turns out I was half right.

Oddly, the term (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) can be traced back only as far as the University of California, where it was used to describe any "Asiatic" wearing a turban, circa 1921. The term has since metastasized, obviously, but the OED offers no indication of when the term was first used for Arabs or Persians.

The OED is clearer on the term "gook," which underwent a similar shift. Originally used in the US to refer to Spanish-speakers and/or Filipinos, it was increasingly used to describe Koreans, Japanese, and (eventually) Vietnamese.

No real point to make about all this, except that it is interesting that both terms appear originally to have described immigrant communities in the US, but migrated abroad to fill the need for racial or ethnic slurs in new contexts. Americans don't have a ready term to use to denigrate the leaders of Iran, so when needing to get bigoted-up, some borrowing must be done.

Musical guests

Scene: Tonight, after the light is off, before Wild Thing gets into bed. (Typically this involves rocking, a little singing, a little chatting.)

WT: Oh oh. I see a big helicopter outside. It's very loud.

Me: Oh. I hope it won't keep you awake.

WT: Oh! I hear it! It has Billy Joel inside!

Note that Billy Joel appears in Wild Thing's Sesame Street video to sing the ABC song.

A bit later:

Me: Do you want to get into bed?

WT: Oh! The helicopter's going away. Goodbye helicopter with Billy Joel in it!

Jobs

Since I'm still working on this whole html thing, I thought I might practice a bit by posting a link to this unnerving account of the seamy underside of the academic job search. Very worth reading if you're on the job market and aren't quite depressed enough.

Stock phrases

Two-year-old: "Where's daddy?"

Dr. Mommy: "I think he's in the living room."

TYO: "I think not."

Reboot

I'm trying to get this blog started again, so however you got here, check back soon for more updates. As opposed to, say, six months from now, which might be the time-scale you'd think of after surveying the posts below.

Orange spiders

The two-year-old this morning, observing that a tiny stain from last night's lasagna remained on his placemat: "What's that?"

Me: "I'm not sure, but it looks like some spilled lasagna."

2-yr-old: "Maybe it's an orange spider!"