This morning I took the kids to practice.
It was cold and rainy.
First Zoë practiced—in the rain—but they were pulled from the pool after half an hour and sent home to warm up. Except for the kids who have siblings in other sessions, of course. I made Zoë change into dry things, though, and that helped her stop shaking.
Then Alexander practiced—in the rain—and again they were pulled from the pool after half hour, their coach deciding it was simply too cold to keep them in the water any longer. Again, I just had Alexander change into dry clothes.
Then Benjamin coached the juniors, who were all shivering. They only practice for half an hour, anyway, but it certainly was a chilly half hour!
Then Benjamin stayed for his practice, and still the coach let them go fifteen minutes early...because the pool was really too cold for comfort. The pool was 75°F today (I hear it was a bit cooler yesterday when they cancelled practice for the little ones). For the record, most competition pools are at least 77°F (source) and competition pools are known for being cold.
In all, we were at the pool for three hours this morning...in the constant drizzle that has been our weather today (I'm super-duper looking forward to our four-hour swim meet this evening).
We got home and Phoebe met us at the door.
"Hey, guys! Guess what! It's raining!" she told us.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Alexander agreed to go outside to stomp in puddles with her, even though he'd been wandering around in the rain for the entire morning. He's a good big brother.
*****
This afternoon I was drawing event numbers on all my swimmers, who were packing up their snacks and things for the swim meet. Phoebe decided she needed snacks and went to the pantry to get something for herself.
"Phoebe—no!" Andrew said. "No more snacks!"
"But all the kids are getting snacks!"
"Not to eat now. They're packing them for later. You don't need any more snacks right now."
"Ugh!" Phoebe said quite angrily, stomping her little foot. "I just want some graham crackers!"
Andrew's mouth dropped open.
"Graham crackers," I translated.
"Yeah...okay..." he said, a little shell-shocked. "Fine. Have some...graham crackers."
Here's the thing:
While the British pronunciation of "graham" is two syllables—sounding a bit like "gray-uhm"—the American pronunciation for "graham" is a single syllable—sounding synonymous with "gram."
I have a friend who goes by his middle name (Luke) because his first name Graham is, in the opinion of his mother, constantly mispronounced. His name is "gray-uhm," not "gram." So to avoid the constant mispronunciation, he just went by Luke.
Anyway...in our house we tend to use the monosyllabic pronunciation for the "graham" in graham cracker.
That's the first thing you should know.
Next, you should know that Phoebe struggles with consonant clusters, and to solve this little problem she typically drops a sound. So instead of saying, "I'm driving my car," Phoebe would say, "I'm diving my car."
The last thing you need to know is that she also has an issue with fronting her /k/ and /g/ sounds.
So she wouldn't even say "I'm diving my car"; she'd say "I'm diving my tar," moving that /k/ sound up to the front of her mouth and ending up with a /t/ sound.
When you add all this up, she didn't say/shout, "I just want some graham crackers!"
She shouted, "I DUST WANT SOME DAHAM TATTERS!"
It was a little bit shocking for us since, uh, that particular word ("daham") is not a word we use in our house. We are more of a ding-dang-darn house (and even that is getting a little spicy).
So we'll, uh, keep working on her speech...
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