So imagine my surprise when Greg walked in yesterday and said, "I'm thinking of heading down to San Diego for a few days next week."
"Uh, you have to take the kids to school for the next 30 days because I'll be working.", I told him.
"That's really not going to work for me. Did you actually mean that you were going to work?", he asked.
That should make the transition easier having a reluctant husband, right???????????
So, anyway, we'll see how long this lasts. He doesn't seem overly enthusiastic about it.
"Can't you do something that's more flexible?", he asked.
More flexible than working at home??????????
Other than that, we did nothing all weekend.
Over the last few weeks, the kids have gotten to where they don't want to do anything anymore. They literally aren't interested in leaving the house. I made 20 different suggestions of things we could do over the weekend and they were completely not interested. They just want to play outside. I wanted to go hiking at Red Rock and they flat out refused.
They are eight years old and have already been everywhere and done everything.
I couldn't even get them interested in going to Target to get Valentine's Day cards for their party on Tuesday. It took me all day Saturday to get them to go and then at the last minute, Gregory stayed with Greg. He told me to pick something for him.
"I'm getting you Barbie ones then.", I told him on my way out the door.
We did get the 86 Valentine's Day cards filled out. So we accomplished something this weekend. The teachers sent home class lists.
Here are some of my favorite Valentine's Day names.
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| Pronounced Ab-sid. |
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| You pronounce the dash. Le Dash Shea. |
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| You pronounce the Z as a V. Qway-vee-on. No explanation required on this one, folks. |
I got in an argument with Austin over Qway-vee-on. I told him him it was Qway-zee-on.
He kept saying Qway-vee-on. I have a solid confirmation that Austin was pronouncing it correctly and I had to apologize and then we had a discussion about the letter Z and that, no, it does not normally also sound like a V.
Anyway, I call all the kids, "Hey there, kiddo!" and "Nice job, buddy." and "Atta, girl!" because I don't get this new spelling and I can't remember anyone's name, but I sure do love all the kids.
Can you imagine being a substitute??????????
"Is Lah Shea here? Lah Shea? No? What? It's, what? You pronounce the dash? I'm sorry, WHAT? Okay. Moving on. Is Abcd here? Abcd? Is the alphabet in attendance? Do you have a brother named Efgh? Ehf-gah?
28 comments:
Hillarious! I have heard of a "Shithead" pronounced shith-eed. Not sure if that's just an urban legend...
Renee
Are you working as a customer service rep from home? You might not be able to answer that. Hopefully, when I call The Gap to bitch someone out, you'll pick up.
An Urban Story- You won't be able to understand me because when I figure out it's you, I'll develop an Indian accent.
My husband works in a hospital, you cannot imagine the names he has seen. His favorite so far is "Everyoneistalkingabout" Which translates to "Everyone is talking about".It's the child's first name.
I saw Jason spelled the other day as Jaesun.
Considering I have spent my whole life spelling my first, middle, and last name, I gave my kids normal names with normal spelling.
My kids names are boring. Our last name is always fun to hear teachers, doctors, etc try to pronounce. Once the first name comes out then a pause followed by PPPPP I always know it's us. Anyway, the most exciting kid in our school is Orion. Do you remember this commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMe3WDmxBEI ?? It's still one of my favorites!
Wow. Le-dash-shae? It kind of screams 'my parents have very low IQs', doesn't it. And I thought the girl named Erynne (Erin, but with lots of extra letters) in my son's class was a little silly...
There's clinical evidence that badly spelled names have all sorts of social impacts on children all the way into adulthood, too. Even causing them to not get called on interviews and not getting promoted. Here's a good article about it.
http://www.livescience.com/6569-good-bad-baby-names-long-lasting-effects.html
"Kids who have names [that] from a linguistic perspective are likely to be given by poorly educated parents, those kids ended up being treated differently," Figlio said. "They do worse in school and are less likely to be recommended for gifted [classes] and more likely to be classified as learning disabled."
It's infuriating.
and I thought our daycare providers kids were unique with Forrest, Rivver (yes 2 v's), Parker, Landen and Emilie. I guess they are the norm and we were weird to give our kids names like James and Jack....with are actually spelled and pronounced just like they sound.
"Kids who have names [that] from a linguistic perspective are likely to be given by poorly educated parents, those kids ended up being treated differently," Figlio said. "They do worse in school and are less likely to be recommended for gifted [classes] and more likely to be classified as learning disabled."
Apparently "Charles" fits my son and I into that category because it can't possibly be the crappy math curriculum, it has to be something wrong with my kid. It makes me sad that these kids are going to be paying for their parents mistakes. I would change my name.
It sure looks like learning alphabets all over again :)
Warmest regards,
Ruby
In my job, I see lots of invented names. Some of my favorites are the girl named "Imunique" (it's pronounced "I am unique") and the twin boys named "Male A" and "Male B" ("Male" pronounced "Moll-ay"). Mom insisted that she didn't name her children, the doctor did. Yep.
I also have a friend whose name is Annikka. When her mother was still in the hospital and heavily medicated, the nurse asked her for a birth certificate spelling of Anika, and she tried to double all the letters, but was talked out of doubling the vowels. Perhaps we should not be allowing medicated people to complete birth certificates. At least Annikka got a real name...
Swear to God, I thought you were making the first two names up. Poor kids.
Someone named their child Abcd? WTH is that parent thinking?
You need to read the book "Freakanomics" which goes into detail the effects of weird names parents give their children. Like the boys called Winner and Loser. Seriously. Lots of other interesting chapters which will get you thinking.
I have met a little boy called Rage, another called Ehren (eh??!!).
On another note, as it is childhood heart disease awareness week do you read the blogs of "The Bissing family" and "a story of two moms"? Both have bbb triplets. The former had a baby die at 7 months old and ultimately donated his heart to a little girl with CHD. The latter have a little boy with CHD and have just updated to say he is due for more surgery next week. Thought it might interest you.
Emma Rose is still an enthusiastic adventurer. She will go anywhere and do anything. I don't look forward to the days you describe, though it did just occur to me that my income would DOUBLE if she wanted to stay home and play all the time, because I would actually have enough time to work!
Leslie- it has occurred to me that their new Blah Phase is going to work out well with my new Trying To Work Phase.
Allison- In reality, Ab-sid is a fifth grader and Le Dash Shea is either 4th or 5th grade. However, we do actually have the pleasure of Quaizion in one of our grades. Amanda's class has exactly four normal names in the entire classroom!
A girlfriend of mine, whose first son is named Justice Joshua, because his father works with Civil Rights education, was in a 23 car pile up when she was 8 months pregnant. After a quick check by the doctors that told her she was ok, an OB came in, checked her, and informed her if they didn't deliver her baby in the next 45 minutes, he would die. Afterward, her husband was so relieved they were both OK, he let her name the boy anything she wanted. She chose Journey Miracle. For a boy. When she told me, she admitted he might get beaten up a bit in elementary and middle school, but she was banking on it getting him laid in college.
I really believe all those books on how "creatively" spelled names can negatively impact a child are going to have to be re-written. These days it is the norm to have stupid spelling or a completely made-up name. Celebrities may be fueling the trend, gawd forbid. And when people starting giving surnames as first names, I rather liked it, but some of them end up sounding terrible. I hate it the most when someone gives their baby girl a name that sounds totally masculine, first and middle. What screams more "we wanted a boy?" I worked at a public agency for years and was astounded how many men with awful names had a Jr, II, III or even IV after it. The family can't come up with any other name? But you know what, those ditto kids seemed very proud of a moniker that would've made me cringe, or change it. Go figure.
My dad taught on the reservation and he had a student named Girl and there were twins in his class named Little Feather and Heather.
Steph P - My middle child's middle name is Scott, but she's named after my father. Emma Scott Varney. I thought it worked becaust of Ella Scott Fitzgerald ;)
Plus my BFF's name was Emily Michael. I have a "man's" name (Loren - I dare you to find a woman with that spelling, although I'm sure my mom didn't pick that spelling on purpose!)
I don't think odd names will become the norm. There will ALWAYS be odd names, and some previously odd names will BECOME normal names (like Madison and Kale to name a couple). Employers will always shy away from ghetto-sounding names because they look for people who can speak well and present themselves professionally... unfortunately, the stereotypes make people lean away from La-shauntels and Shaniquas because they think they'll speak in ebonics and have a tramp-stamp hanging out of their whale tail.
I forgot to write: F Scott Fitzgerald + Ella Fitzgerald
As a joke, people call her Emma Scott Fitzgerald ;)
I had the "trendy" name of the day and always hated it because there were so many of us and really, it did not suit me at all. Mom had planned a perfectly nice name for me and when I was born the nurses all said I looked like that cutesy name. Yuck.
I posted earlier this week about the mat program a few months back I posted about take home laptops that our school district gives to students. This is a write up in the NY Times today about our district. Thought you might enjoy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/education/mooresville-school-district-a-laptop-success-story.html?_r=1&hpw
Kim NC
Kim- What a neat, neat, neat article. I loved it!!!
We have a K8 (Kate)in our school! Seriously!
In the NICU the baby next to Eli was named A'Ryc. For weeks we never saw anyone visit that baby, and none of the nurses knew how to pronounce the name- so we lovingly called him Baby A.
Many weeks later his birth mother was there to see him for the first time, I had to ask- I had to know what it was, so I said, Your baby is darling, I don't have my glasses on, what is his name? She said, Eric.
A'Ryc = Eric
I still wonder what happened to that sweet little peanut
Hmm, I have the BEST name story ever. While I lived in Orlando I worked with a lady named Linda. She had 13 year old BG twins named Mollay and Famollay. She told me she had them when she was 15, with no one around and that the doctors had named her children. Male and Female. Yes, their names were MALE AND FEMALE! Mollay went all unique and put a dash between and a ` behind the e. So he was now Ma-le` so he wouldn't get beat up.
Considering our names are as follows:
Maija, Saima, Elsa, Kaisa, Koy, Luc, Jani, Nils, Johannes, Clara and Rea, one may think they were odd. But if you visit Finland where my dad is from, everyone is named Maija, Saiima, Kaiijsa, Koi, Luc, Jani, Johannes, Klaara, and Reea. Once my dad figured that Maija was a hard name to pronounce in the states, he made sure we "fixed" the spellings to sound as much like "English" names as possible.
AND to top it all off, we are all named a Finnish first name and an Inupiaq Eskimo name as our middle name.
Maija Katak, Saima Iksrik, Elsa Argagiaq, Kaisa Ahluniq, Rea Iksrik (Named after my sister) Clara Itiptigvik, Koy Upiksaun-Taliiraq...etc.
I like our names. They have meaning, as we are all named after family, and I can guarantee, no one else shares them!
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