November 9, 2010: Liesl Learns Her Alphabet

I accidentally left my alarm set this morning so it got me up at six thirty from across the room.  Once I was up I decided that it just made sense to go ahead and get up and get in to work.  There is always plenty to do.  Brian was up to so we ran to Panera for breakfast and then he dropped me at the office and he went on to deliver bagels to Dominica who was just getting up by that point.  Liesl had gotten up and was watching Dora when we had left the house.

For lunch I had things that I needed to take care of at the house so I walked home and ended up on the phone for two hours.  Fun.  Then Brian and I ran to Potbelly really quickly to grab sandwiches and then it was back to work.

The afternoon was extremely slow.  Almost nothing happened at the office.  It gave me a chance to get a little bit of writing done which was nice.  Good to get on top of that.

I’ve been reading the book (via Audible) called “Things White People Like” but I gave up on it today.  I read some reviews online and discovered that no one else likes it either.  It isn’t entertaining in any way nor is it informational.  Failing to be funny it also fails to be observational.  While the author seems to know a few white people he does not seem to know very many and no white person that I have ever met and certainly not myself fits the stereotype given in the book.  Of course, no one ever wants to admit that they fit a stereotype but in this case I don’t even know what he is talking about.  He goes on and on about how every white person listens to X music, reads Y books and sees Z shows, none of which I have never heard of.  He talks about how all white people discuss this or that, things I’ve never heard anyone discuss before.

The book also acts as though “white” means something non-racial.  Like “white” is used as the opposite of “poor” in some places and the opposite of “educated” in others.  I’m sure non-white people would find the book more offensive than white people do.  What is most odd is how the book expects all white people to be snobby about something except the people that they are being snobby to are other white people – so it makes no sense.  The author seems to be very confused.  The book is poor at best.  So I stopped reading as it was wasting my time.  I’m moving on to a book on the Lewis & Clark Expedition that should be much more interesting.

I got home a decent time.  Watson came over not too long after I got home.  We all ordered in from Italian Crust and ate dinner with we all worked out of the apartment.  It was a busy evening.

Liesl has gotten even better at using the iPad.  She is now selecting different games that she wants to play and switching between them.  I bought her an alphabet game last week and she has started playing that as a break to the Monkey Lunchbox game.  She also plays a shape matching game that we got for free and have on both the iPod and iPad.  I was amazed at how many shapes she knows now.  She can go through that game without any problem which is amazing as I have never seen her play it for more than a minute before.  She is learning so quickly.

At one point this evening, Liesl was sitting on my lap at my desk and she just pointed to the keyboard and ran her finger down the top wrong of keys and named the letters one after another as she went!  Apparently she has learned her alphabet without us evening knowing!  Between the Fisher-Price alphabet game that she plays on the computer in the living room and the alphabet game on the iPad and all the normal alphabet stuff she has just picked it up, I guess.  Truly amazing.  She knows tons of Spanish words too from watching Dora.

Liesl also has a large vocabulary of fruit and animals now.  Very impressive.

Liesl didn’t want to go to bed at eleven when Dominica and I were turning in so we let her bring the iPad to bed so that she could play.  She is so cute propping herself up in bed like she is old and reading a book.

Leave a comment