He’s been “reading” his (excellent) book Snugglepuppy by Sandra Boynton, complete with pointing to the “oooooo”s in the story every time the dog says it, and has even constructed new ooos in the bathtub with his bath letters and numbers.
He’s saying what sounds like “mehmeh” for “mama.”
He’s finding ducks in books, on TV, among his toys or wherever and yelling “gak, gak” (the Q sound is tricky) when his search is a success.
And, the other night, when he was done with dinner, he signed “all done” (brushing invisible crumbs away off your chest) and pushed his food away.
He’s not doing any of it but the oooooos and the gaks consistently, but he’s picked up the regularity of all his speaking and signing. His baby talk days are clearly coming to an end.
Jenn hands me a kid’s plate of spaghetti from Pizza Factory to give to James. To get his attention away from the toys and onto mealtime, she signs “eat” (clasped fingers going into the mouth) and says it to him.
James responds by doing the same, both signing and speaking as he heads toward the table.
As our eyes go wide, he erases all doubt by doing it again.
James now uses the “more” sign (touching the fingertips of both hands together) all the time and then points to what he wants. He seems to think it means “want,” but “more” is probably a bit esoteric. He’s also super-interested in flash cards and picture books, anything that can build vocabulary, really. He’ll often drag me to point at stuff, either at home or at the park, and point at things in rapid succession, so I’ll say their names. He’s not saying any of it back yet (most of the alphabet is “E!” in his vocabulary, for instance), other than “CAT!” but he’s clearly prepping for it.
And yes, his site is down. When I updated this blog to the latest version of WordPress, I did the same for his site, and got the White Screen of Death as a result. I’m transitioning between two computers, and once that’s complete, I’ll spend an afternoon reinstalling his site from scratch, which should hopefully resolve the issue.
As the drumbeat of bad news beats on, with the very real possibility that San Francisco will be without a major daily metro to call its own soon, Time Magazine asks the musical question What Happens When a Town Loses Its Newspaper? (Spoiler alert: It’s bad news.)
The study is very small in scope, since the Post had a total of only 27,000 subscribers in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky. And it measures only the outcomes in northern Kentucky, since Ohio has not had municipal elections since the Post’s closure. But even with those limitations, a few trends seemed to emerge: in towns the Post regularly covered, voter turnout dropped, fewer people ran for office and more incumbents were reelected. That is, when there were fewer stories about a given town, its inhabitants seemed to care less about how they’re being governed.
It’s not a particularly big study, to put it mildly, but there will likely be ample opportunity to get more data later this year.
The study’s conclusions match up with my personal observations of what happens when local politics aren’t covered extensively.
