I fired up the blog because there was something bugging me but then my brain betrayed me again and I forgot what it was. So annoying!!! I just remembered…

Anybody who knows me has heard the story (probably several times) about how Aliya had an extremely advanced vocabulary and her pediatrician never believed me because she always cried when we were at his office. Well. Norah’s 18-month appointment was yesterday. Her vocabulary is advanced as well, and as I told the doctor, she is actually putting small sentences together. It took Aliya a while to do that. Norah is saying about 100 words (that we understand and about 500 that we don’t), and phrases, like “Here you go Mommy”, “Bye-bye Aliya,” and “Daddy…Where ARE you?” The kid talks CONSTANTLY, and I have witnesses.

So I proudly tell the doctor about her verbal ability, with examples, and this is what he says to me: “Well, the next step is for her to start using words on her own, rather than just repeating what you say.” WHAT?! She IS using words to communicate HER wants/needs. She says “more” when she wants more food, “all done” when she’s done eating, “up” when she wants to be picked up, “ow” when something hurts, “dirty” or “uck” when something’s dirty or ucky, “shhh” when Annie won’t shut up, “cup” when she wants a drink, and “banana” when she wants a frickin’ banana! She’s not a parrot!

I really like her doctor but this is a hot-button issue that bugs me. The other disagreement we’ve had was when the hearing specialist wanted Norah to have tubes surgically installed in her ears and I chose instead to take her to a chiropractor to see if he could help clear the fluid. After 3 or 4 visits her ears were miraculously clear and her doctor said that it was probably just a coincidence. Whatever.

Update: I took Norah to the Dr. today for possible conjunctivitis. While I was talking to the Dr., she fell off the scale and yelled “Whoa!” and pointed to the poster on the wall and excitedly said, “Apple!”. When he asked her questions she responded with “yes”, and “no”, and when he looked in her ear and then said, “This one looks good,” she said, “Thank you.” Too bad she isn’t capable of using her own words.
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I can’t watch the news. Just like I can’t watch TV shows or movies about bad stuff because I start to worry that it might happen to me – I avoid the news for the same reason. If I spend all of my time obsessing about global warming, bird flu, the sad state of our government, world hunger, the imminent recession, and why Brittney went out in short-shorts and no bra, I won’t get anything done. I don’t want to be ignorant, but I really think the media constantly reports the bad news to get us all whipped into a frenzy. Have you ever tried to buy bread, milk, or eggs, when there’s a snowstorm in the forecast? With the amount of food stored in my pantry, we could survive for an entire winter! Why does the Stormcenter5 logo and sound effect inspire me to immediately jump in the car and head to Stop & Shop?!

So I decided to find a source for some good news. There are actually sites that specialize in good news!!

http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
http://www.happynews.com/ .

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Another interesting source for news is http://nuttynuttynews.blogspot.com/. It’s not all good news but you will find headlines there like:

~ Beautiful Girl: Camel Beauty Pageants Become Popular Pastime
~ Drunkorexia: Women Are Increasingly Skipping Meals To Save The Calories For Booze
~ Burger Joint Adds Spitzer Burger to Menu
~ Boy Says Teacher Forced Him to Urinate In Lunchbox While Everyone Watched
~ California Student Stops Out-Of-Control Bus, Gets Detention For Skipping Class
~ Armed With Ham – Restaurant Owner Fights Off Meat Thief
~ Top 10 Interview Mistakes – Answer the Phone? Sniff Armpits?

Or this lucrative story which you may have missed…

PTA Raffle Rigged, Woman Charged With Cheating

(Northfield Center Township) – When you win a lot, people will wonder if you cheated. In this case, police say she did.

Summit County Sheriff’s Deputies arrested 31-year-old April Nellie of Beechwood Dr. Thursday night for cheating during a school fundraiser. During a January Parent Teacher Association (PTA) event at Northfield Elementary School, Nellie was in charge of a reverse raffle. Nellie was responsible for maintaining control of the raffle tickets prior to the drawing on January 25. After Nellie’s name was called and she had won six baskets during the raffle, folks got suspicious. Deputy Roger Morgan investigated and determined Nellie bought an additional 1,943 tickets from a local party favor store, wrote her name and some others on them and then added the tickets to the other legitimate raffle stubs. The value of the baskets she won was $2,450. Nellie was booked into the Summit County Jail for cheating, a felony of the 5th degree.
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Update: Here’s another good site for off-beat news (thanks Johnny!) – http://www.7dvt.com/2008/news-quirks-9

It has been a long and messy couple of weeks, but after an incredible amount of help from Grampa B and Grandma Ginny, we finally finished Aliya’s room and the two new closets for Aliya and Adlani. We had the big reveal last night and Aliya was blown away. At bedtime when I said, “I’m glad you like your room,” she said, “I don’t LIKE it…I LOVE it!!!” She said it made her feel like a big girl. That’s not surprising considering that she still had her Noah’s Ark nursery wallpaper. One of her comments was, “I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you guys.” She’s such a mini-adult. The closets are a huge improvement over the 15″ closets that couldn’t hold a standard hanger. Aliya also ended up with a shoe cubby that holds about 24 pairs of shoes, and lots of dresser drawers for clothes, art supplies, etc. I’m hoping with a nice fresh start she will be inspired to keep it clean and clutter-free. If anyone likes the colors we have a leftover gallon of paint in each color.

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It’s time, once again, for the biannual trip holiday trip to Portrait Simple. The bunny pics didn’t come out as well as they have in the past, but we got some good non-bunny shots. When the photographer sat down with me to review the pictures she said, “The group shots are a little hectic, but hey, that’s life, right?” Right.

Check them out here: http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/thumbpage.aspx?r=1&e=3628821

Click “continue” (not “login”) and you may need to type the last 4 digits of our phone number – 0558.

This weekend we were working on Aliya’s room and we suddenly heard what sounded like a zillion crows outside raising hell. They were going absolutely nuts. It turned out that our neighbors’ cat killed a crow and the rest of the “murder” of crows (that gives me the willies but that’s what a group of crows is called) was freaking out. It was really interesting. Since we’re city dwellers, we’ve got to get those nature lessons in whenever we can.
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