Some Vignettes of life in the Allen Household.
1.
"A is for apple, Isaac, and B is for Ball."
"And G is for Google!"
"...uh...that's right. G IS for Google."

2.
While playing "snow plow" (a game in which Isaac pretends to be the giant crane and load the salt into the salt truck (the couch) and Daddy pretends to be the plow driver, which involves reclining on the couch and pretending to be a snow plow driver on "take your extremely squirmy baby to work day"), Isaac announces that there's "Big trouble up ahead."
"There's been an ice avalanche, and we'll need to rescue them. We'll need 200 helicopters, Two hundreds of thousands of planes, and two hundred hovercraft."
"Wait a minute," I interrupt. "Hovercraft?"
"That's right, 200 hovercraft!"
"Do you know what a hovercraft looks like?"
"What?"
"No, I'm asking you, do you know what a hovercraft looks like?"
"...no."
So we proceeded forthwith to that great sort of live, noisy movies about all things mechanical (to say nothing of eruptions) YouTube.
"Wow!" says Isaac, shouting over the roar of the Channel Hovercraft getting ready to leave from Dover, "Hovercraft are NOISY!"
3.
While I have always known that were he to become a Hip Hop star, Isaac's stage name would be Noy-Z (pronounce the 'Z' the American way), I have always struggled with what Sam's stage name would be. I have decided he would be Fussmaster Flex. Which raises the question - does anyone remember Funkmaster Flex at ALL? I know all I have of his is a couple of voiceovers - one on a Quincy Jones album, the other on a KRS-ONE album, so not exactly a startling body of work. But I do like to pay my respects to the old school (skool), so Fussmaster Flex it is.
4. Sam is, (see above) teething. And BOY does he not enjoy it. The problem is, that he's been teething for a year and a half now, and only has half of them. When talking to other parents of kids with DS, this is normal, but still unpleasant. Also, Sam is no longer a lamb, he is a Monkey. In fact, he's more than that. The other day, while out with Sam, I referred to him as "Captain Monkey of the Monkey Patrol," and Isaac loudly corrected me - "NOoooo, he's Crown Prince of the Monkey People." So there you have it.
5. Auntie Sib, in the great tradition of "Mixed Tapes" of old, gave me a mixed CD of music when she was here featuring Belinda Carlisle (ahhhh...Belinda), Madonna, George Michael, and a wide variety of modern Top 40 songs that I had either never heard, or had only heard in passing. So while driving to get Isaac Skates on Saturday, I was playing it, and halfway through the chorus to George Micheal's I'm Your Man, I realized that Isaac is REALLY good at picking up repeated lyrics. Too late, as I turned it down, I looked in the rear view Mirror and found him singing "If you want to do it, do it right - RIGHT, do it with me..."
Which wasn't as bad as us getting home and him singing "All the single ladies, all the single ladies..."
6. Years ago I worked in a high end shoe store in Calgary, and one boxing week, we did the usual put one of each pair of all of our close-out stock on a table, so a) people could see what we had to offer, but b) couldn't wander off with a complete pair without paying (we were in a moderately dodgy stretch of 7th ave). So a gentleman wanders in, and after a minute of rumaging around three 6x4' tables of shoes, looks up very quizzically and says "Is this all you have then?"
We were taken aback, and replied "Sir, I think if you'll look, there's quite a selection there."
He replied "Just lefts then..."
So on Saturday I went to buy skates from a used sporting goods...well...guy...who advertised in Kijiji. We showed up at his house, and he let us in, and in the living room were probably 20 different golf bags, and then he took us through one locked door, down a flight of stairs where there were three more locked doors, unlocked one, to reveal probably 100 pairs of skates, and 200-300 golf clubs all laid out in a wire rack with the club heads facing forwards. "This is about 1/5 of it," he said, as if to comfort us. Meanwhile, I'm looking around for Clarice's body.

Anyway, we try on some skates for Isaac, and he finds a pair that fit, and Al says to us "Make sure they're the right ones, a right and a left." So I do a cursory glance, and all seems good. Then about 3 hours later, we get to the flooded outdoor rink near our house (about a 6 minute walk - 10 if a little boy stops to jump into every snowbank) and realize...."Just rights then." So back to Al's place the next day to get the other one.
Long story short, Isaac needs a whole lot of practice, and when the big boys aren't using them for goal posts, they are more than happy to give him a traffic Pylon to hold onto.

Daddy, however, who has been on skates on just one other occasion since he was 8 years old, and who could not hold on to a pylon (a), it was too short, and b) there was considerable ridicule to be had should I have tried), and had no boards to cling to, did fairly well.