"Amn't"

Salt Lake

Hello,

“Amn’t” is what I hear three year old Nora saying declaratively. What can that be? When she uses it the second time I realize that she is coining a word by contracting “am” and “not”. Besides memorization, surely that is how children learn language sensing the pattern and using it as required.

I will continue to talk about by granddaughters. When Leroy left, the girls did not realize he had gone as we made the plans after they were in bed and he left before they awoke. These girls like to come in our bed in the morning. For some reason it took them a while to notice that grandpa was not there. Shortly after learning that he was gone, they both left the bed and went into their parent’s room. Now I wonder if they had a need to check on Mom and Dad’s availability in the house. As Nora was leaving me she tucked her special bear up next to my ear and said, “So you will not be lonely Granny.”

One night I woke up in the middle of the night listening to an intermittent sound that almost seemed metallic. After about five minutes I just had to try to track it down. Was a faucet dripping? No. Was it the furnace? No. It was coming from Olivia’s room. Olivia was hiccupping forcefully in her sleep. When I came closer to her it did not seem so metallic. I did not know that you could hiccup while sleeping.

We have lost a library book. It is a skinny book so skinny books are now on the children’s banned list. We have had the book so long that today is pay or renew day. We have looked everywhere at least once and many places twice. We have even looked at the library on the shelves. I thought maybe it could have slipped inside another book so we checked that possibility in many places. We talk about this book often and the girls have decided they did not like the book. Grandpa is the only adult who read it. Do you suppose that he did something silly with it? Anyway, the plan is to keep looking and renew it the maximum number of times before paying for the book.

Paula