Lots of new words, and the Amish

Quin’s been quite the learner the last few months. I think since our vacation in April he’s been picking up an average of a couple new words a day. He has his favorites, though. My latest favorites are “nan” which means “dance,” and “nonut,” which means “donut.”

Quin has a definite love of dancing. He has figured out how to turn on various CD players and radios throughout the house, and once they are on, he will come and grab one of us to come and “nan.” Today he figured out how to turn on Jenny’s iPod and was “nan"ing to that. Not surprisingly, he’s the best dancer in the house.

He’s also a sucker for “nonuts.” The other day Jenny started the bribery phase of parenthood with Quin by telling him that if he was good for the YMCA daycare people, she would buy him a donut. He was good, so she kept her promise and bought him a “nonut” at Starbucks. The next day, we were on our way to Neillsville and swung through Starbucks to fuel up. Even before we got into the parking lot, Quin started chanting for a “nonut.”

Some of his advances have come in the form of sentence formation. The other day Ethan asked for a bowl of cereal as a snack (his favorite). Quin, of course, needs to have pretty much anything Ethan does, so he wanted some cereal as well. I got him a bowl and put some Cookie Crisp in it for him. He looked at it, looked at me, then pointed at the cereal and said, “cereal toostie,” which of course means that the cereal is thirsty. I poured some milk on it and he was happy. Of course, he didn’t really want milk on his cereal - he just saw Ethan had milk on his. Instead of eating it, he poured it on the floor…

Quin is a very helpful person to have a round almost all the time. He always wants to help regardless of what I’m doing. It’s pretty rare, though, to have Ethan interested in helping. Last week I was tending to some yard work, planting, raking, watering, etc. Ethan was outside, and apparently had gotten in some trouble with Jenny earlier in the day, so he decided he was going to help to try to get back in her good graces. I happily obliged him, putting him to work. After about 30 minutes of straight work, he said to me, “Dad, we’re working so hard, people are going to think we’re Amish!” To give just a little background, we recently purchased some woodwork from an Amish businessman in the Augusta area (no, they don’t have a website). While we were there we pointed out to Ethan that there was an Amish boy about his age, and that he didn’t have a DS or all the toys he had, and that they worked really hard. Apparently working really hard to Ethan means spending 30 minutes holding a hose and rake one night a year!!!