The Pronunciation EXPERT

Thank you Nana and Poppa for having the kids over for a slumber party. For the record, the night you have described happens almost nightly and is the reason we jumped on the chance to have the kids stay at your place for a night. It was a wonderfully peaceful night at our house and an even better morning!

Here are Nana's notes about the sleep over. . .

July 12, 2008:

Zoey and Zander came to spend the night while their Mommy and Daddy had an anniversary to themselves. Zoey was introduced to where she would sleep for the night (a twin size blowup mattress laid out on the floor of Nana's bedroom) and after 2 seconds of shyness she ran and leapt ca-splat into the made up bed. Looks like she will be fine, I think.

Zander is a new baby altogether. He is smiling and crawling and standing and cruising and climbing all over the place and heading for any door he can open and shut. We spent a lot of time guarding the TV cabinet glass doors and the kitchen cupboards. He follows his sister as fast as he can and gets in her way constantly. She is tempted often to haul off and whack him a time or two.

We have a nice supper and both eat great. We take a walk with the stroller and the babydoll wagon up into the park to tire them out. We give them both baths but had to cut it short when Zoey wanted to pour water over Zanders head and Zander wanted to stand up in the tub. Have you ever tried to dry off a baby that's constantly moving and crawling away from you and almost stronger that you are while his sister is running around the house doing the "naked baby run?" Whew!

We get them both partially dressed and big sister decides to scream at the top of her lungs while viewing herself in the mirror. What is the top of the decibel scale? Well, she topped it with piercing vocals while admiring herself doing it. -- Zander is diapered and handed off to Poppa -- I then steer Zoey away from the mirror with some insightful explanation of what she was doing to our hearing and could she find something else to do.

It seems some quiet time was desperately needed or they'd never go to bed. They are wound up big time and escalating. How much sugar had they had today? Poppa finished the pajamas on Zoey and I finished the pajamas on Zander and we sighed relief.

Time for the reading of "Lion King." Now there's a lot of words on each page. More than I've read to Zoey before. She said she would listen to all of it. "Simba" and all the characters have African names. I was reading these names pretty good. But, every third word Zoey would pipe up and say the "correct" pronunciation. Double take -- read it again -- still not right. Pretty soon I was being corrected no only on the African names but the general text. I was pronouncing the words correctly but not good enough for Zoey. Finally, I couldn't even say a complete sentence without a correction from my young grandchild word savant. I stifled a smile that became a grin then an outright burst of laughter. I couldn't stop laughing and neither could Zoey. I laughed through to the end of the book every so often looking up and checking to see if my word pronunciation was right or not. It's a pretty serious book and I laughed through the death scene and the scary parts. I couldn’t help it. Finally I asked Zoey if she had cleaned out her ears because she wasn’t hearing my words right. She laughed at that and we got through to the end. We read the book again in the morning and I did much better.

Zander was put to bed fairly easily at 8 after a bottle. Zoey was calmed by watching Barney and she and I went to bed at 9. She laid down on the air mattress while I had to get my nightgown on and I hear this serious little voice tell me, "Nana, you’re a naked baby, too." I guess she'd never seen me in a nightgown before. I started laughing again. Zoey thought that my nightgown was really pretty and I promised to buy her a nightgown for Christmas. She wanted to sleep in my bed with me but I convinced her my bed was way too small and she'd be better off of the air mattress. So, as I'm laying there in the dark, I had firsthand observation of her night time ritual of how she settles or tries to settle herself for sleep.

It was like watching a fish out of water flopping around on the sand. She was all over that mattress in 150 different positions trying to get comfortable.

She and I had all her night time rituals done and the last was telling me about her day. Here I must point out that she told me she had broken my necklace from the wedding and that she was very sorry she had done that. I told her I knew she had done this and I was happy she had told me about it. That she was really great to be honest. But it was OK because I had fixed the necklace. Now this necklace incident happened last week! Not to mention how did she know the necklace was from the wedding??? She never saw me get it from Tammy. What a memory she has not to mention a sense of honor and honesty.

She said it was time to go to bed because she saw the moon in the sky. Finally around 10 p.m. silence. No lead up by being quiet then sleep -- just sudden sleep... I made sure she was breathing because it happened so fast! The flopping fish had found comfort and relaxation.

One footnote: Prior to the "Lion King" book she sat forlornly on the buffet and said she missed her Mommy and Daddy and wanted to go home. Poppa and I said we knew she missed them but that we would take care of her and make sure she was fine and she would see them in the morning. She was fine after about one minute and no more was said about going home.

I had to take a 2 hour nap after Daddy came to pick them up on Sunday. Yow, kids are meant for the young.

Love,

Nana