Gerunds and other language acquisition tales

Like Rachel, who coined the terms "scissoring" and "markering" to describe the act of cutting paper with scissors and the act of colouring with felt pens, respectively, when she was younger, Miriam is all about gerunds lately.

Anything can be verbed and from there turned into a gerund.

For example, when I took Miriam out of the bathtub today she informed me that she was "outing."

Another one of our favourites is "pantsing." This describes the act of putting pants on, contrary to the more widely known definition (at least in junior high schools) of pulling someone else's pants down. Still, it's humorous to hear our little baby walking around saying "Pantsing! Pantsing! Pantsing!"

I can't say, "Let's get dressed!" in the mornings, otherwise we have to rifle around through her drawers to find one of two play dresses. Skirts, shorts, pants, shirts are all out of the question. If I say "get dressed" Miriam has to put a dress on. I've been making an effort to say "Let's put some clothes on!" instead but old habits die hard and I'm still more prone to saying the former term.

Rachel is still asking for help with un-insiding-out things, and it's still wonderful to hear her use that jumbled up term. She recently made up another word: yewerit.

It sounds like a horrible creature, but really it's part of the game known as "tag."

"You're my you're it!" she'll declare, before running away and taunting, "You can't get me!"

Doesn't the way she say it make it sound like a monster of sorts?

A Yewerit. Sounds scary.

When I tagged her I said, "Now you're my it, right?"

"No. I'm your Yewerit!"she replied. 

I wonder if I did a master's degree in language development, would anyone object to a thesis documenting my children's language development in anecdotal form? Is that academic enough? 

I'm partial to anecdotes and find language development so fascinating; I love listening to (and uncoding) my children's language evolution. But! Only one parent in grad school at a time; that's my rule.

Ghana: Everything

Since lots of my posts from Ghana were posted at random times (and some like a month late…), and because I’m using all these blog posts as my required (and graded) trip journal, here’s a list of all of them in one convenient place.

• The Journey (April 26–27)
• First impressions (April 26)
• Ghana, Day 1 (April 26)
• Client visits and the temple (April 27)
• Forward, ho!… to Ho (April 28)
• Waterfalls, nails, and monkeys (April 29)
• The Island (April 30)
• Unexpected General Conference and Tour Buses (May 1)
• Makola Market (May 2)
• Koforidua and Burro (May 3)
• The most intense market I’ve visited. Ever. (May 4)
• I looked out my window and what did I see? (May 5)
• Third world field research = chaos (May 6)
• Slave castles, jungles, and crocodiles (May 7)
• New Life Orphanage and the Ghanaian LDS Church (May 8)
• Back to Accra… with more dancing! ( May 9)
• The calm before the storm (May 10)
• Final presentations and the end (May 11)

You could also just look at the Ghana label, but you’d get them all in reverse chronological order, and that’s lame :)

Final presentations and the end (May 11)

After a fitful sleep last night (I was still completely stressed out by this presentation. I don’t know how I can convey the extent of the data that we weren’t able to collect or the lack of any tangible conclusion or recommendations for the PEF), the three people in my team that were chosen to give the actual presentation (me, Talia, and Hugh) woke up early to run through our PowerPoint a few times during breakfast.

We were scheduled to present to the PEF missionary couple, the head of the Employment Resource Center (ERC), one of the heads of PEF, and possibly Elder Sitati, a member of the Area Presidency (and member of the 1st Quorum of the Seventy) at 9 AM at the area offices in the temple complex. A few of us left the hotel early so we could get everything set up—they were supposed to provide a projector for the laptop, so we wanted to make sure everything was set up and ready to go.

The calm before the storm (May 10)

Or maybe the storm before the even bigger storm.

Today has been chaotic and extremely stressful. Because of random national holidays and miscommunication, we haven’t been able to visit the vocational schools we wanted to until today, the day before we give our presentation to the PEF missionaries and probably someone from the Area Presidency. The IDE market group has been done with their visits for a few days now and has had time to gather their thoughts and plan out what they’re doing. As of this morning we still hadn’t even finished our research.

Back to Accra… with more dancing! (May 9)

We left our paradisiacal hotel fairly early this morning and headed back to Accra for the final (stressful!) part of this Ghana trip. We’re done with all the touristy things now—all we have left is project work. All those PEF interviews that we (haven’t) done so far? Time to synthesize them into some logical report that will actually be useful for the PEF.

New Life Orphanage and the Ghanaian LDS Church (May 8)

For our second Sunday in Ghana, we headed off to church again, which was fortunately a far better experience than last week’s sleepy General Conference sauna. Because Cape Coast had done their conference rerun last week, today was fast and testimony meeting, which ended up being completely fascinating. Most of the members bore their testimonies in some mix of English, Twi, or Fante, and a few Ivorian refugees spoke in French.

I was reminded of how much I like Ghanaian English when one of the members of the bishopric praised all the mothers in the congregation (apparently it’s mother’s day in Ghana today too), saying that they “discharge [their] maternal duty with great diligence, even when it must be done with single-handedness.” I feel really bad missing out on Mother’s Day today, leaving Nancy home alone with the girls, but she’s a fantastic mother who truly discharges her duty with diligence. This evening I was able to eke out a short Mother’s Day Skype call over this hotel’s horrible internet so I could tell her. She rocks.

E-I-E-I-O (May 30)

It's been raining a lot in southern Alberta this year (northern Alberta is, ironically, experiencing forest fires) which has turned numerous fields more or less into lakes. I snapped this picture (at about 9:00 PM, mind you) on our way to Auntie Colleen's farm:

The gold stuff is last year's wheat stubble. The blue stuff, you probably guessed, is water (except for the sky). And this wasn't an uncommon sight on the drive. I saw more ducks than I've ever seen in my life. They're having a heyday with all this water around!

Goodbye to cousins (May 29)

Luckily Rachel was feeling much better in the morning. She only threw up that one time so we're thinking it may have been something she ate, though what that something was we have no idea. 

We all got ready to go for church, which was somewhat of an ordeal with eleven people trying to use one washroom! We were even only a little bit late. 

Rachel surprised me by wanting to go to class. She went to Sunbeams all by herself and spent most of Sharing Time sitting on Piper's lap. Miriam also surprised me by not wanting to go to class. She usually loves nursery, but this nursery class was small and foreign and she spent most of the time crying so I took her to Sunday School with me. 

Brother Lonsdale taught the class; he happens to be Professor Lonsdale's brother (I know because I asked him). Lonsdale was one of my favourite teachers at BYU—I took my first linguistics class from him as well as theoretical syntax. It's a small world!

Malachi's Baptism (May 28)

The main purpose of our visit to Canada was because Malachi was getting baptized. Unfortunately the kids were at their dad's house all day on Saturday because they were supposed to be having a family reunion with his side of the family (that ended up being cancelled) so we didn't get to see them until Saturday night at the baptism. I may or may not be a little bitter about that; I'm sure I'm not the only one. I can't think of a single reason why they even needed to have a family reunion the weekend we came up from Utah since their whole family lives within an hour radius of each other, except for one sister who didn't even come out that weekend. *grumble*

Anyway, we spent Saturday day playing games, going to the park, and (for some of us) preparing talks for the baptism. Abra has this fun game called Bananagrams. It's like Boggle and Scrabble teamed up and made a beautiful baby. It's seriously so fun!

I think it's the first time in my married life that I said, "You know, honey, my birthday is coming up..."

Let's go to Canada (May 27)

Fourteen hours in a car is a long time. For some reason I thought for sure it was only twelve hours—that’s how long it’s been since I’ve been up to Canada—but twelve hours only takes you to my aunt’s house near Taber. My sister lives in north Calgary so we had two more hours to go when I thought we should be done.

My poor children never want to hear the phrase “we’re almost there” ever again. I think I started saying it somewhere in Montana. Their poor mother never wants to hear the phrase “are we there yet?” ever again. I think they started saying it somewhere before we even turned off of our street.

It’s funny to be on this side of childhood. I remember doing exactly the same things my children do…well, at least some of the things they do. When we were saying goodbye this afternoon (yup, I’m writing about our trip TO Canada on our way HOME) my niece, Piper, was going around hugging everyone and when she got to her mom she hugged her, too, and said, “Goodbye, Mom, see you later!”

My cousins and I did that all the time. And we thought we were both hilarious and creative for doing so. Now my nieces and nephews are doing the same thing. And they think they are both hilarious and creative for doing so.