Translation

The multilingualism of the ordination made quite an impression on Joe. I've also been meaning to type up another little story...

Neil's vocabulary (by which I mean our ability to decode Neil's vocabulary) is continuing to blossom. He is at the frustrating stage where we sometimes understand what he wants and it is something that he can't have. It makes him so mad to be told "no" when he puts his whole heart into communicating. On a bright note, he really likes looking at books and telling us what he sees on the pages. One day Neil was sitting in my lap identifying and Joe and Ruth Anne were across from us with a book of their own. We turned to a page with a dog and Neil exclaimed, "Gog."
"Right," I praised him.
Joe wanted to know what the word was so I signed "dog" by patting my leg.
Ruth Anne also couldn't see the picture but she knows the sign. "Goff, goff" she interpretted.
So we went from signified to Neil's English to ASL to Russian animal sound.

Ruth Anne's imaginary life has also taken flight. There is a lot of Disney princess action even though the only movie she has seen is Frog Princess. She also pretends about Laura from the Little House books. Amazingly Ruth Anne is still interested in the series even though Laura is now almost sixteen. Ruth Anne plans to be a school teacher when she grows up. This is conflated in her mind with what I first told her about going to school in the fall. She told me she wanted to take her dolls. I said that the dolls would have to stay home but that she could teach her dolls and Neil what she'd learned when she got home. This became - I am going to teach Neil how to play with dolls when I get home from my school.

This morning when I sent Ruth Anne to sit by the blackboard to start homeschool. She knelt before the picture on the Regina Coreli (Holy Queen) prayer and told Neil, "I'm praying to Mary that when we get to Washington I have a baby because then I'll be big."