Completing His First Year of Preschool

A Recent Conversation on Gender Differences

Talmage: "Pink was my favorite color, except I don't like it anymore. Pink's a GIRL color."

Mom: "Oh yeah? What's your favorite color now?"

Talmage: "Purple."

Is It Just Me? Or Has Tom Selleck Quit His Day Job to Work as LA Police Chief Charlie Beck?

Hide and Seek . . . With Asher

Asherese (ash-er-eez): A One Year Old's Lexicon

Asher can say roughly 18 words:

1. Uh-Oh
2. Dad
3. Cup
4. Button
5. Poop
6. Spoon
7. Book
8. Mmm
9. Moo
10. Quack
11. Woof
12. Roar
13. Kiss
14. Cracker
15. Keys
16. Dance
17. Up

And sometimes, but very rarely

18. Mom

However, these translate into about 5 sounds. For example, "bup" could mean one of several things. "Bup" translates as "cup," "button," or "up" and is not to be confused with "Boop" which could mean at any given time "spoon," "poop," or "book." "Ma," could mean, "I want food" or "The cow says," but means "Mom" so seldomly you can pretty much rule that option out. A guttural "Kkk" is either "cracker" or "keys" and sometimes "quack" meaning duck or any animal or object that moves around.

"Dad" always means Dad. And we've learned that Asher thinks about Dad roughly 83% of the day. It's kind of adorable.

Navigating the English language has proven difficult for both Asher and I. So Asher has resorted to the extremes of human emotion in order to communicate. Here's an actual transcription of a conversation we had earlier in the week. Keep in mind that I can't type in the full symphonic range of his joy and alternate misery (at least not at the decible he voices it), so I'm electing to translate his responses into grown-up language:

Mom: "Asher would you like a grape?"

Asher: "I would very much like that grape! That grape would make me very happy! In fact, I can imagine very few pleasures available in life that would make me happier than that grape! Maybe if we could nurse again--I think I'd like that too--but outside of that, I think a grape would be perfection! So I'm going to express my joy and happiness by my squeals of pleasure and delight. Did you hear that? That adorable laughter? That is my excitement for the grape I am about to receive!"

Mom: "How about a strawberry?"

Asher: "Are you kidding me? A strawberry? What in your prior experience would tell you I like strawberries? Maybe the strawberries I devoured earlier this morning? Well that is OLD NEWS, my friend. This is now and I strongly oppose strawberries. You know how some people feel about child labor and apartheid? Well, THAT is exactly how I feel about strawberries. I frown on you and your strawberry offering ways. Let me arch my back and head butt you to communicate how much that strawberry offends me and my morals. What, you think Nelson Mandela was above a little head butt? Well he would have done, ma'am, if you had offered him such an insolent fruit. In fact, while I think about it, your nose DOESN'T look distinguished, it's just bumpy. So there."

We're both looking forward a more communicative time.

Books, the audio version

I found a solution to my reading issues. Books on tape. Or CD. Or MP3 files, rather. See, then I can listen while I scrub the floors or drive to work or fold laundry. Genius.

I looked online for great books on tape and this book was suggested. I had heard this touted as cross between Harry Potter and Jane Austen and had long wanted to read it. I think because it was the first audiobook I had listened to I had many questions at the beginning (Who is this Childermass guy? And where did that other guy come from?) but by the end I was well practiced.

Book reviews seem to critique it for being a little slow to start off, but by the end--after I had spent 32 some odd hours with the story--I felt sad to hear it end. It really is an incredible novel and alternative history. I ended up checking the book out and reading a page here, a passage there. It just kept getting better and better.

I feel there's so much to be said, but instead I'm going to end with this quote, which I found the funniest in the novel:

"The light was watery, dim and incomparably sad. Vast, grey, gloomy hills rose up all around them and in between the hills there was a wide expanse of black bog. Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant.

'This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?' he said.

'My kingdoms?' exclaimed the gentleman in surprise. 'Oh, no! This is Scotland!'"

I have a feeling it would be even more funny if I were English.



My Dad gave this book to all his children several years ago for Christmas, and though I started it, I just couldn't push my way through. Not that it wasn't interesting. It was just non-fiction.

Tyler, however, read the book recently and refers to it in 87% of his conversation. He is the ideal audience for this book since he currently spends 90% of his work time in crucial conversations--times when tension is high and emotions run strong. I figured to understand what he was saying I needed to read the book.

It was actually a great read and I enjoyed it and have tried to apply the principles. In fact, after I was done with book, I approached Tyler and we had several conversations we've avoided in our marriage for several years--my housekeeping and Tyler's driving. Not bad, eh?

My chief thought, however, was that while these would be good principles to apply at any time in my life, I think I'm more apt to right now. I think I focus more on self-improvement while I'm raising such impressionable little children. I want them to learn good principles for dealing with people, so I feel a greater obligation to be better myself.



I loved the previous books in the series. This one was all right. I don't think that's actually a reflection on the book itself, I think it's more that I was IN the Fablehaven world last summer and needed that fantastical immersion to truly appreciate the series finale. That said, it was a lot of fun.

One other thought. I was CERTAIN that a plot/character twist I had been anticipating since Book Two would happen, and it didn't happen. It was like if Snape had really turned out to be the bad guy. Now, I know enough about character and plot development to know that there's no way he didn't plant plot twist seeds along the way. So I'd love to talk to him and find out why he didn't follow through with it. Was he intentionally trying to throw off the reader? Was he developing the idea that you don't know who to trust? C'mon Brandon Mull. I need some explanation.



This book wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I knew it had been made into a film with Keira Knightley, and I was expecting a saucy romance. But it wasn't. (Note, I'm probably going to spoil it if you haven't read it.)

A couple of years ago I saw a play called "Stones in His Pockets." It was pretty amazing. It had a cast of two actors playing roughly 15 characters switching genders and accents and was generally hilarious. But it wasn't strictly a comedy. I forget the details, but in the course of the play a boy commits suicide and other generally terrible stuff happens. If it were real life, the events would dictate a black tragedy. But the town decides to make the story into a movie, and through the movie of it, they are able to make it a positive experience. Sorry that's a terrible summary of the play. But what I felt the point was is that art is necessary to make sense of life. Art is necessary to make life--a generally depressing and mundane affair--wonderful.

I felt a bit of that them with Atonement. A girl commits a terrible sin--falsely accusing someone of rape--and based on her sin an innocent man (her sister's love, no less) is sent to prison and to war where he will die. Her sister, estranged from her based on her sin, will also die before she can make amends. So the girl spends the rest of her life wallowing in her guilt, trying to make her atonement by writing it, exposing the guilty parties and giving the two doomed lovers a place of happiness. I continued the conversation I had in my head after I watched Stones; can art be a means of atonement? Can art, with it's Greek catharsis, assuage guilt by making sense of it? I'm not sure I have an answer, but I enjoyed thinking about it.



So, I discovered that far too few of the books I enjoy reading are available in audio format. Generally bestsellers get made into books on tape, but while I certainly enjoy some bestsellers, I have very little interest in the autobiography of Barbara Walters. Or even less, Maureen McCormick. Which leaves me with a whole lot of nonfiction. That's okay, there's plenty of nonfiction I've been meaning to get around to for years.

Michael Pollan BLOWS MY MIND. He outlines the history of four domesticated plants--the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato, and examines how these plants have flourished by capitalizing on human desires for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. I liked it because one of my pet theories of life is self-mastery, or as I like to say it, putting my spirit in charge of my body. He constantly referred to the human desire to revel in carnal pleasure (he referred to Nietzsche and called it the Dionysian tendencies) and the human impulse to organize and master those pleasures (what Nietzsche called the Apollonian tendencies). In any case, I had never thought about how plants play with and exploit those desires and how humanity reacts by organizing (domesticating) nature.

See what I mean? BLOWS YOUR MIND.

Walk Like a Man

From Talmage and Asher - Happy Mother's Day

Well, If You Thought That Getting Invited to This Blog Meant That You'd Get To Read Something Interesting, You'd Be Wrong.

But welcome to the new and exclusive blog, "Howe Thoughts: The Private Edition." We'll be updating and changing over the next little bit, and that plus my floor that needs immediate attention means that I won't have a good entry for a week or so. Tyler will probably post a movie for you. And some cute pictures of my kids. Who, I think, are reason enough to go through the inconvenience of typing in your email address to read about my life. Well, Talmage is at least. Asher's been grumpy as of late. (Try refusing him the medicine cabinet. He'll head butt you and scream as if you're attempting to remove his kidneys. Without anesthesia. And without sterile instruments.)

In the meantime I'll throw this one at you:

10 year old boys are difficult to buy presents for. My nephew recently celebrated his birthday and we were a bit stumped. I went through several suggestions and actually bought and returned two presents before I landed on a Super Soaker. One of the brainstormed gifts was a Magic 8 Ball. First I tried to decide if it was cool, and then Tyler wondered aloud if my brother and sister-in-law might frown upon the whole possibly Satanic element. "You know," Tyler mused, "If they are Satanic, you got to think the Prince of Darkness gets frustrated with his options." We imagined the fourteen-year-old boy faced with the possibilities of the Internet. "Should I look at pornography?" he asks the 8 ball. Lucifer reaches out from his realm of darkness.

"Reply hazy. Try again later."

Chess

I'm sorry to go directly against Laura's posting boycott and ruin what, otherwise, could have been the boringest month in Howe Thoughts history. But, this one was too good to pass up.

As an offshoot of his Stratego obsession, Talmage has recently enquired about chess. He found a chess set at Papa's house. I tried to convince him it wasn't the right game for him by telling him that's a game for twenty-year olds. He insisted, so I taught him the best I knew how. I had to keep running to Papa to ask the rules.

After his second game (and second defeat) featured in this video, Talmage regained his composure by saying, "Maybe you keep beating me because you're over twenty, and I'm not yet."

"Maybe that's right," I answered.

This Message is Supposed to Stay On Top, TYLER

We're going private. If you would like to continue reading this blog, please leave your email address in a comment on this post, or email me at lauraphowe@gmail.com.

Towel Cupboard

We'll Keep This Message Up Until the End of the Month

We're going private. If you would like to still read this blog, either leave your email address in a comment on this post, or email me at lauraphowe@gmail.com.

Happy Easter 2010

If I End Up in the Telestial Kingdom, I'm Blaming the Digital Revolution

I can't get a signal for conference on my TV. Curse you HDTV!

In the meantime, do I really have no immmediate family members who read and would like to continue reading this blog? I've been sorely misled.

And For Those of You Who Don't Want to Read Laura's Long-Winded Explanation Below

We're going private. If you would like to still read this blog, either leave your email address in a comment on this post, or email me at lauraphowe@gmail.com.

Don't You Hate When You See This Message on People's Blogs? Me too.

One of my mother's greatest talents is that she believes her children are very smart. This doesn't necessarily mean they are very smart. But she is certain that her children are more intelligent than all the other children. As a child, I trusted her, which meant I believed I was very smart, too. And somehow, whether it was due to my own ability or the confidence in my ability bestowed to me by my mother, I did well in school.

Similarly, my mom has always known I was an excellent writer. I remember once in high school lying on my bed reading a book--probably A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or Dicey's Song--and hearing my mom shout up a flight of stairs, "LAURA!! Come downstairs IMMEDIATELY!!!" I raced down the stairs, panicked that her office was on fire, or that the computer had exploded, or, at the very least, she had run out of Diet Dr. Pepper. "What!?" I exclaimed bursting into the basement. "You're going to win Reflections!" she announced, joyfully handing me the entry form.

I did win the Reflections contest.

But I'm not sure that I loved writing. I just believed my mom that I was good at it. My best friend Shelley spent hours chronicling her thoughts, her feelings flowing through images that leave me pondering them fifteen years later. (She still does.) Shelley loved to write. I envied her. I didn't love to write. My mom just knew I was good at it. Something felt a little false, rang a little hollow. My writing was a breach of integrity.

In college I grew satisfied with my writing. I still sent essays to my mom--academic essays balanced with logos, pathos, and ethos so that I could convince my audience of the correctness of my argument, that Mrs. Freake and Baby Mary was fraught with Puritan propaganda, or that the fine arts museum was truly the best place to display Navajo baskets. I hated gutting through a five, ten, twenty-page essay, but in the end I felt what my mom felt, that I had written well. And that, though it wasn't quite as honest as loving writing, was something I could be proud of.

This blog, this little space I've carved out in the internet world, has made an honest woman out of me. I still write for my mom, because sometimes I need to believe that I'm an excellent writer, better than all the other internet writers, though I don't think that's true. But now I write for a whole host of people. I write for Chelle, a tangential turned good friend who I know mostly through writing. If I run into her at the store tomorrow, I will smile and we will say hi, but on our blogs, we share with each other whatever ideas are taking up space in our heads. I write for my cousin Kari, who was my older and elegant relation who I didn't really know, but admired. But through our blogs, I feel she knows me better now, and now I know her. I write for that unnamed guy I went out with a couple times in college who I wonder from time to time how he's doing, and think that if he wonders from time to time how I'm doing, he can find out here. I write for people I know. I write for people I little know. I write for people I don't know at all.

This blog has made me love to write.

Tyler is going to be a principal this fall. (Insert celebratory band music here.) With all the recent education on the news, we've started to realize that he's now a public figure. As brother-in-law Scott R. pointed out, a perusal of our recent blog posts could yield mild child pornography, a tribute to guy love, me filming while driving, and a whole bunch of rather personal stuff that probably shouldn't be made known to the public at large. So despite my desires to the contrary, we're making this blog private.

I know I flatter myself by thinking that there are actually people who read this blog. But if you do read this blog, I'd love for you to continue reading this blog. If you are Chelle, Kari, or the guy I went on a couple dates with in college, let me know. If you are one of those people I know, one of those people I little know, or one of those people I don't know at all, I'd love to still share my thoughts. Either leave your name and email address attached to this post, or if you feel uncomfortable publishing your email address on the world wide web, send me an email at lauraphowe@gmail.com.

And if you're my mom, I'll add you, too. Because I still need to believe I'm a good writer.

Sense and Sensibility

I think the only really appropriate adjective to describe Jane Austen is "delightful." Yes, I am aware that I overuse the word. But it's Jane Austen. I dare you to read her without musing to yourself, "This truly is delightful." (And yes, you'll muse the word "truly.")

Here is the passage I found the most delightful on this read:

"Edward was now fixed at the cottage at least for a week; for whatever other claims might be made on him, it was impossible that less than a week should be given up to the enjoyment of Elinor's company, or suffice to say half that was to be said of the past, the present, and the future; for though a very few hours spent in the hard labor of incessant talking will despatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet, with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it has been made at least twenty times over."

Remember that? When there weren't enough hours in the day to discuss all that needed to be discussed, so you and your intended had to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to get all that discussion discussed? What with all the talking and the making out and the more talking to override the sexual tension, and then a little more talking about more discussion, Tyler and I didn't get to bed until 2:00. And that's after he very responsibly left my apartment at midnight because we were Very Obedient Followers of the BYU Honor Code. FYI: A six-month Mormon engagement is too long an engagement.

Also delightful is Emma Thompson and her movie adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. A classic. Go watch it with your lover and then discuss.

Maybe After Tyler Posts Five Videos in a Row, It's Time for Laura to Write Something

Nothing makes me happier than Talmage loving Asher.

I was, well, panicked frankly about adding another child to the mix. I worried that Talmage would be jealous and angry and feel all of those feelings that What to Expect told me he would feel. I was immensely relieved when Talmage told me he wanted another baby. "How many more babies would you like?" I asked him. Talmage furrowed his brow before he suggested optimistically, "Um, twenty-one babies."

He's grown up a little, and so the number of desired babies has decreased. Talmage would now like four more babies. Besides the obvious I'm not sure I'd like to raise six children concern, this raises big problems. Namely, I'm not sure Tyler and I can name four more children. I've referenced Tyler's and my struggle with naming children here, here, and most recently here. (And if you want to know, Eva, Mae, and Catherine are now off the list.) So to resolve this issue, Talmage has decided to step up and take over naming responsibilities for the family. He's thought of a good boy name. Wintertime. If the anticipated baby is a girl? Summertime. Ooo! And he's got a great one that would work for either a girl OR a boy! Nothing. We'd like to introduce you to our baby: Nothing Wintertime Howe. (Or as the case may be, Nothing Summertime Howe.)

But, as I've noted before, no child has been conceived. Tal's a little impatient with my pace. So he's taken to giving the present members of his family alternate identities. He, for example, is Brade. Daddy is Grade. Asher is Hade. I (lucky me) am Lazorblade. These new names come with superpowers as well. I (Lazorblade) am able to break lightbulbs. And also, I have a gun.

Macho Men