journal features

"ten", "nine", clip-clop, clip-clop

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2009.07.21

Tonight The Boy pointed at a bottle of maple syrop (Mari and I are having pancakes for dinner while he eats fish and vegetables), and made a sound like horses' hooves beating. Clip-clop, clip-clop. He reproduced the stunt for us a few times.

He also repeated the repeat pronunciation trick with one of his toys. The thing requires that you press a button (a letter, number, of even some animal shapes) and it will either say the name of the letter/number, pronounce the sound that the letter makes, or say a word that starts with the letter. He listened to and repeated "ten" and "nine" a few times. Which is interesting because I've been focusing on "one" through "five" exclusively. I guess he picked it up from the toy!

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.