Barking at a knot.

 I really want to know what some of your favorite expressions and phrases are.

My Nana drove us to the airport yesterday, so we had a nice hour to spend talking about the world, our family and life in general.  It was during the car ride that I realized I hardly know any sayings that my Nana uses in normal conversation.  (And apparently these are common things that people used to say.)

So, I'd like to know what some of the prized and best known ones are, that have been used in your family.

Some of the ones that were new to me were:

    * "Cut one's teeth"  meaning to getone's first experience by doing (although I have to admit the visual I got for this one was quite interesting)
    * "Barking at a knot"  meaning that your efforts were as useless as a dog barking at a knot.

Let's hear it...what are you favorites that your grandparents or parents used to say?

Please comment.

The Straw...

Things are changing so fast.  I can see it even more because my sister and nephew have been visiting from out of town.  They have been here for just a few short weeks and already I see changes in the little 16 month old.  Jake.  Oh Jake.  He inspires me to look at things in a new way.

In fact, just the other day Jake was doing the funniest thing.  We were sharing a drink with him, a smoothie.  And we figured that it would probably be easier for him and cleaner for us to use a straw, which he has had plenty of success with in the past.  Well, he began to drink and then stopped, looked at both of us and started to scream.  Then he made a sour face, turned back to the smoothie and repeated the odd behavior. 

It went something like this: 

Suck.
Scream.
Sour face.
Suck.
Scream.
Sour Face.

We couldn’t figure it out, but we started laughing…I decided that he was just thirsty and brought him some water which seemed to satisfy him.  And then it occurred to us (a good 20 minutes later) that Jake was having trouble actually sucking the smoothie through the straw.  As soon as he was given the smoothie like “grown ups” drink it, he was happy and smiling.

So what does this teach us?  Or rather, what did it teach me?

You can whine and fuss when you don’t get what you want…but never give up.  Eventually, however, doing things like a grown up will get you exactly like you want.

So I guess I don’t have any more excuses…I have to act like a grown up!  At least I get to have smoothies...