Random Thoughts about Adorable Things

There may not be a whole lot of cohesion to this post, because I'm just going to sort of ramble.

This Norman Rockwell illustration is one of the ones I considered for yesterday's post; however, since I was talking about my son who just got his first teaching job, I wanted a piece of artwork that showed a male teacher. But this one is so cute, too, that I needed an excuse to post it. This Rockwell painting perfectly illustrates the fact that every time this artist painted a little boy's head, my #3 son--my middle child--could have been one of his models. (I mentioned this once before, in "Art Appreciation.") Those thin little necks connected to those perfectly formed little skulls...wow, it brings me back. That's him in the red, although the others aren't far off either. When I look at this painting, my eyes go right to those little boy heads, and my heart wells up with love for my third son, who was an absolutely adorable little boy with a Norman Rockwell head. (Do you think I'm weird?)

Moving on, now: a couple of days ago, I was reading one of my favorite blogs, ThePioneerWoman.com, and P.W. had a post with a picture of her cherub-faced little nephew. She said that he never asks for a cup of milk; he asks for "Milkie Milkersons." It's funny little tidbits like this that keep me going back to her site. I mean, I was really amused by her nephew's moniker for milk! It reminded me of my husband, who insists on calling a hamburger a "burgatroid" and a hot dog a "hot diggity dog." So I got to thinking...perhaps Papa and I need to start calling milk "Milkie Milkersons" around our twin granddaughters about a year or so hence. You know, to plant the seed...

But little kids don't really have to come out with funny sayings; when they say regular things in their own funny way, that's equally adorable. This brings me back to my middle son, who for the longest time couldn't pronounce his r's and l's--a real bummer for a kid whose last name was Pearl. (Thank goodness we didn't name him Earl.) The problem worked itself out, without any speech therapy intervention; but for a long time, he struggled with those two letters. Anyway, my second son loves to tell the story about the time I took the four older boys to the library to get their first library cards. When the librarian asked son #3 his name, the best he could do as far as his surname was "Puh." She made him repeat it a few times (Really? She hadn't noticed that we'd all come in together, and therefore assumed that he would have the same last name as the others?), until finally, one of the other boys set her straight.

When my middle son was about four, my father, an incorrigible tease (and a bit of a giant child himself), once asked him, "Who are you supposed to be? Buggs Bunny?" With absolute seriousness, my boy replied, "No." Then he pointed at the top of his head (his perfect Norman Rockwell little boy head) and asked, "Do you see any ee-oh's?" As soon as he skipped out of "ee-oh"shot, my husband said to my father, "He's not Buggs Bunny, silly; he's Elmer Fudd." Of course, as a parent, you always hope your children will eventually outgrow their speech problems; yet when they do, it's really sort of sad. I miss the Elmer Fudd accent. My son was cute enough without it, but that was the cherry on top.

Okay, now how to wrap this up? I guess by saying that I can't wait to hear the twins speak--to hear what their little voices will sound like and the cute things they will say. And I can't wait to spoil them with homemade cookies and sippy cups filled with nice, cold Milkie Milkersons.