Me:  Let's get your shoes on.  You said you'd try your new brown shoes today.

Ian:  I said I would try those tomorrow!

M:  Tomorrow is today.

I:  Today is never tomorrow!

M:  Ian, yesterday when you said you would try the shoes tomorrow, you meant today.

I:  Oh.

M:  Will you try the shoes.

I:  Okay.

Yes, you can defeat indexical claims, if you try hard enough!

A conversation had today between myself and my three (almost four) year old son Ian:

Me:  Ian, today I would like you to try wearing your new brown shoes.

Ian:  Um... I think.... I think I will try wearing them tomorrow.

M:  Tomorrow?

I:  Yes, tomorrow.

M:  Do you promise you'll wear them tomorrow?

I:  Yes.

M:  Okay, you can try them tomorrow then.

I:  But today is never tomorrow.

*grimace*  damnit.

Ian has been adding too many syllables to his words.  He's said things like "ba-rey-ed" for "bread" and "to-ast" for "toast".  And so on.  Ring any bells?  Sounds rather southern, no?  So today, I reminded him that he's from Indiana.  He looks at me and says, "No, mama, I was bor-un in Aaaaaaalla-BAMA!"  (and he's right)

Does southern-ness actually get into the genetic structure somehow?

Yeah yeah, so it's late, what can I say?  Anyway, Thanksgiving was generally great.  We got to relax a bit, and we even got on well with everyone (at least, I think we did).  There were a few "incidents", notably one between B & I, but things were resolved and we still had a good time.  Brian's mom seemed to have come with the intention of getting each of us some big thing that we want, but perhaps wouldn't buy for ourselves, which was cool.  So now I've got an AeroGarden--a somewhat silly, quite expensive thing that I've lusted after for years.  It costs far more than it's really worth in some ways, but I'm gonna have fresh lettuce in December, so I think I'll try to cope.  =)  Brian got a gorgeous pair of Harley-Davidson boots, which was really great as his old boots were actually split all the way up the back.  The kids had a blast, and it was nice to see how well Alex and his cousin Sophia play together--I don't think they fought more than once during the whole weekend (of course, they were both programmed for auto-destruct, so everywhere they went looked like a tornado had hit).

I was reminded of how very fond I am of College Football as I watched Mizzou take the Big 12 North title, and the first #1 BCS ranking in over 40 years.  Now I'm hunting for a TV to watch the Big 12 Championship game on--damned Dish Network doesn't carry ABC?!?!?!  I think we're gonna end up at BW3's.  Ah well, there's worse fates.

Sunday will be Ian's birthday celebration.  Ian's actual birthday is Dec. 24th, but I think there are pretty obvious reasons why we might want to celebrate it early.  Christmas season will start in our house after his birthday party.  Alex and I are going out shopping tonight for him to get Ian a present.

So Ian wakes up at 11pm puking all over himself.  Ho-boy, it's gonna be one of those nights, eh?  Get him, bed, pillow et al. cleaned up, get him back to bed.  1:30am, Alex wakes up screaming, trying and failing to vomit, boiling hot, shaking, and wheezing.  Five-year-old crouched on bathroom floor not breathing well = me panicking.  After consulting several books and finally the on-call doctor, we are advised to take him to the emergency room.  We are admitted remarkably quickly, with me taking Alex to the exam room and Brian filling out paperwork with Ian.  They diagnose Alex with croup (!)--our handy-dandy medical book said that croup only occurs up to 3 years of age!  WTF?  Anyway, Alex is doing very well with the hospital routine (there's been a promise of a popsicle in the offing), and I'm wondering where Brian is.  Could he still be filling out paperwork?  Poke my head out of exam room and find out that, no, Ian is puking again.  Great.  Well, at least we're already at the hospital.  Ian proceeds to vomit through most of the visit (they even give him a little emergency-room disposable barf-bag), while Alex is putting up a fair fight against the respiratory tech trying to use a nebulizer on him.  Finally administer most of a dose of steroid to Alex via nebulizer (and I'm pretty sure I got a good dose of it myself), get informal diagnosis of flu for Ian from the nurse, get popsicle, get scripts & discharge papers, go home. 
The children have been more-or-less totally fine ever since.  But then, croup is supposed to get bad at night.  Hopefully the steroid prescription will prevent breathing problems tonight.

But I can honestly say I don't remember the last time I was so terrified as seeing my child lying on the bathroom floor wheezing for breath.  My heart was thudding, it felt like it had shot up to my throat.  :: shudder ::

Zoh. My. Gods.

Okay, Ian really really really loved the gymnastics class today.  We did a trial-class of the "Mommy & me" section, and he had a blast!  The first half of the class was a big circuit that the kids could run through:  bear-walking over a mat, crawling through a tunnel, headstands with feet against the wall, climbing up a propped up thick sticky mat, then rolling down the other side, running and bouncing off a springboard to a thick mat, somersaults, hanging on the low bar, across the balance beam, bounce on mini-trampoline, hands down on mat & jump, then start over.  He did all of it, over and over and over.  Then they raced back & forth across the gymnastics floor.  Then they worked on hanging from the low & high bar of the double-bar set, and worked on holding themselves up at the waist on the bars.  I was honestly amazed at how much stuff these little kids could do!  Anyway, as soon as we were done we went right out to the lobby and signed him up.  I hope his enthusiasm lasts--he sure did enjoy it today!

And yesterday I got some more lurvely yarn to knit more stuff for xmas. 

Now I'm going to go indulge in what's left of my consumerist instincts and flip through the "Gaiam Living" catalogue while sipping "Wake the Fuck Up!" coffee.  Me legs are soooore from the cardio kickboxing yesterday (and a lot of biking this week, too), but not too bad.  It made my body sculpting class tricky today, though.  Bah.  So be it--working out is good.  I've just about got my schedule worked out these days, such that I can still workout while doing most everything else I have to do.  Biking to the gym is great, but it really does take a chunk out of my day.