Easter 2009

rooster eggs

The term "rooster egg" has a new meaning for me.

Why would "rooster egg" have any meaning for me in the first place?

In an essay I wrote a few years ago, I mention "Uncle Raymond [who] is a famous logician. (Also a magician, a musician, and a mathematician. I'm not making this up. His stage name was Five-Ace Monty.)"

Most of his logic puzzles are fantastic. Some of his basic, introductory puzzles aren't his own, and these aren't always as great.

Here's one of them:

Question:

If a rooster lays an egg on the exact top point of a roof that slants off at 30° in one direction and 45° in the other, which side will the egg roll down?

Answer:

Roosters don't lay eggs.

Yeah? So? I know roosters don't normally lay eggs, but the puzzle doesn't assert that they do. It asks a conditional question. What if a rooster laid an egg…

Obviously the whole thing annoyed me enough to stick with me three decades.

But now I have a new association with the term. Benjamin asked me if we could look for rooster eggs in the back yard.

Rooster eggs? Is this some wild-goose-chase term he learned in preschool? No, apparently it's a small child's misunderstanding of what he overhears and what he dimly remembers from a year ago.

"Is it Rooster yet?" he asked.

"Ah! No, my boy. You mean Easter. Easter eggs. And no, it's not Easter quite yet."

---

Postscript Nathalie points out that the basilisk (aka cockatrice) is born from a rooster's egg.

Thanksgiving week in South Carolina

I expect Nathalie will be posting some beach pictures soon, but meanwhile, here's a shot of Benjamin at the aquarium, taken by his gramma:

back from the coastal south

We're back from an oceanside Thanksgiving spent with both grandmothers in South Carolina.

(No, none of us is from South Carolina, but that's nevertheless where we gathered by the ocean.)

Benjamin got to put his toes into the Atlantic for the first time. He was also in a richer bilingual environment than he's used to, because there were more people speaking each language, or sometimes both languages.

Here are his words from the past week:

159. ketchup
160. papier (paper)
161. ça (this, that, as in "mo' ça!" — meaning "give me more of that")
162. Josh (Miss Angel's husband)
163. Mick (Miss Angel's youngest)
164. apple
165. coucou (peakaboo, pronounced like the cuckoo bird)
166. couvercle (cover)
167. tache (stain)
168. ceiling (pronounced "see" or "seal" and referring only to ceiling fans)
169. mouche (fly)
170. bounce
171. baiser (kiss)
172. douche (shower)
173. picture (as in photo)
174. dehors (outside)
175. keys
176. packing
177. clock (pronounced without the L, unfortunately)
178. nounours (teddy bear, pronounced "noorsh")
179. piano
180. poireau (leek)
181. computer (pronounced 'puter)

My favorite of his new words are "papier" and "packing" because of how he demonstrated that he knows their meaning.

Papier: After Nathalie demonstrated the French word for "paper" (we went through a lot of paper products this past week) Benjamin walked over to a cardboard box and said, "Boîte papier!"

Packing: Benjamin is at a stage where he wants both his parents around all the time. If I'm not there, he apparently says "papa" a lot. When he's with me but not Nathalie, he spends the whole time asking after maman, plaintively.

While we were getting ready to leave South Carolina yesterday morning, Nathalie needed me to keep the boy occupied while she packed (because when he's around for this activity, he spends the whole time undoing everything his mother does).

So he kept asking "Maman?" to which I would at first reply, "Maman's packing. She's packing her bags."

Then when Nathalie took a load of luggage down to the parking level, I changed the answer to "Maman's packing the car."

Then when it was my turn to pack bags and load the car, Benjamin was asking his mother, "Papa?" And she replied "Papa fait sa valise," at which point Benjamin turned to my mother and explained in English, "Papa packing."

- papa

Halloween words

It was 2 years ago today that we first learned of Benjamin's existence.

That's why we call him the pumpkin.

His new words today are appropriate to the event:

104. outside (pronounced "aside")
105. pumpkin (pronounced "punkin")
     

- papa

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