I'm reminded of a bad joke from my Tulsa days at ORU... Why did the Indians lose in their fight against the white settlers? Nowata and Broken Arrow (both town names in Oklahoma).
We've got nowata in the Miller house and I'm feeling... well, like we're back home again. Unfortunately it seems to be a Murphy's law that the days when our pipes are dry, our toddler will sure to be filling his britches with a backlog of deposits for mommy.
Thankfully, his brother Samuel is full of smiles at the moment after a three hour mid day nap (a much rarer occurance in the Miller house).
Upon our return to our home in SE Asia, we were met with the wonderful reprieve of two weeks of rain and cooler temperatures. It's now getting toasty again, but we've had a chance to shed the socks and shoes and get back into life in the tropics.
I've been wanting to post so much about our time at home over Christmas, but it may be easiest to start today and work backwards.
Samuel is now officially a rolling over, banana spitting baby. We started feeding him solids a few days ago (coinciding with his six month' birthday) and he seems to be better at ejecting than ingesting. But we know it's a process.
On bananas, today Abe helped me make his first batch of banana bread. The consistency of the raw egg brought the most obvious intrigue. His favorite book these days has been Dr. Seuss' ABC's, and he can identify with delight the "A" and "B" in his name. It's one of our greatest pleasures as linguists to watch a child acquire language... but maybe I'll save that for a special post.
Mark is busy this month helping to host a linguistics workshop for a number of colleagues from different language groups. It's an exciting time to help them discover the aspects of their language that are key in writing good discourse.... but we're missing daddy being away more than usual.
Pictured: "ho...ho..." at our office Christmas party (in Jan), Sam's first apoon
3 comments:
What cuties, all! (Deja vu on the cutie comments. It's hard to leave out the ahhs though).
I can hear Sam talking through those wondering eyes (oiooiee...)
LaDena is from Nowata and I have spent a lot of time there. In the days when Oklahoma was a dry state it used to be referred to as Nowata and lots of whiskey, because it is just 25 miles south of Coffeyville, KS which was a wet state and the booze flowed freely from Kansas to Oklahoma. The story of the name is that the town, many years ago, hired a man to paint the word "Noweata," which means welcome on the train depot. He was a bit tipsy that day and left out the "e." But the die was cast at it has been known as Nowata ever since.
LaDena is from Nowata and I have spent a lot of time there. The story of the name is that the town many years ago hired a man to paint the word "Noweata" on the train depot. It is an Indian word meaning welcome. As the story goes the man was bit tipsy that day and left out the "e" but the die was cast and it became known as Nowata. Cy and LaDena Baker
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