On saturday Evan was sitting on the floor playing with a toy when I heard a weird sound. I thought maybe he had a cold and his nose was whistling. When I saw his face, he had his mouth puckered and was quietly whistling. He only knows one or two notes, but still… I didn’t know little kids could do that. We didn’t try to teach him that, but sometimes I whistle at him because it makes him laugh. He’ll even whistle back if you whistle at him.
I sometimes joke to people that at first babies can’t do much that a pet couldn’t do, and that they slowly make the transition from pet-like housemate to a tiny little human! 
Try teaching a dog to whistle!
Some of you may know that we’re trying to teach Evan a little bit of sign language. The idea is that he can communicate with us prior to his learning how to actually speak those words. We were starting with the basic ones to help communicate his needs, such as “all done”, “more”, “drink”, etc. Many of those are fairly abstract concepts and he really hasn’t caught on yet.
Evan has always been obsessed with ceiling fans, so we’d point out the ceiling fan, tell him what is was and make the sign (which is moving your arm in a circle in the air pointing with your index finger). A few days ago we had a breakthrough. He just started waving his arm in the air while looking at the fan and giggling. At first he wasn’t doing the sign quite right (not using his index finger) and would sometimes do the sign at the TV or the light over the kitchen table (or even just to get a laugh from us).
Now he’s pretty much got it figured out. He makes the sign properly and when we ask him “Where’s the ceiling fan?” he’ll make the sign and walk back to our bedroom where the fan is located. We’re getting fewer “false positives” as well, since we’re showing him signs for “light” and “tv”. As a side effect, he’s also starting to point at whatever he wants. It’s a lot of fun to see how proud of himself he is when he catches on! Now trips to home improvement stores have gotten way more exciting! He’s got a couple of other signs that he’s starting to learn as well.
On the speaking front, he’s been saying “Mama”, “Dada”, “Kitty”, “I got it”, “Hi” and “Icky” for a while. “Kitty” refers to any animal, baby or radio controlled car. “Icky” he’ll say when we tell him to get away from the garbage can or something similar. “I got it” he says when he grabs something. “Hi” is good for taking strangers at Walmart by surprise. He also converses with our little cat Ginger in her native tongue, but he won’t tell us what they’re saying.
He’s also mastered walking now, can climb the steps (attended of course) and is just about to run. We’d better hit the gym, I guess, to keep up!
Although I’ll admit most years I don’t follow the team, I’m proud to announce my alma mater is in the Sweet Sixteen! Congratulations to my “nourishing mother!” They haven’t made the tournament since I was a freshman, and the last time they made the third round was 1955. They’ve defeated the number 4 seed and number 5 seed, so we’ll soon see how they handle the number 1 seed.
And now, for a reference almost no one will get: “C-14! C-14″
I’m currently sitting in the airport in Orlando, Florida. For the past week I’ve been traveling around Florida on a business trip. We’ve logged a lot of miles and a worked a lot of hours, but who can complain. Here’s it’s 80+ degrees and sunny. At home it’s been below freezing and there have been tornados.
We had a few longs days, but we’ve also had a little bit of down time. We had a chance to visit the beach at Ft. Lauderdale and in Palm Beach (no, I didn’t see any Girls Going Wild, not at the time anyway). We also followed A1A along the coast and visited the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, a fort completed in 1695 by the Spanish in St. Augustine, the oldest city in the U.S.
All in all it was a fun but tiring trip, and now I’m looking forward to being home. I wish I could remember what section I parked my car in…
Alright, I finally got this site to the number 1 spot on Google- well, when you search for “Korey Atterberry”, that is. I had some old sites out there that were getting the top results, so I had to get rid of them. I also had to put in the meta-tag keywords on this site so that the search engines knew what this site was for. This site really should be #1, as I’m the only Korey Atterberry in the world that I’m aware of, and this is my definitive site. Yahoo, on the other hand, still puts this site on about the 4th page…
For what it’s worth, this site is the #2 hit for “atterberry” and the #30 hit for “Korey” (after all the pages about Korey Stringer). I was kind of surprised those were so near the top… It’s also interesting searching for my old jazz combo’s name: “four wild and jazzy guys” (with the quotes) and seeing how many matches there are.
By the way, welcome to my new email subscribers. Sorry for the mistaken notification the other day, and I hope I don’t bore you too much!
We uploaded some more photos of Evan tonight. In the “By Age” section, months 11 and 12 are new from last time. Included are the obligatory birthday cake photos!
In case you haven’t seen it, there’s a live-action version of the Simpsons opening credits floating around, and as a big Simpsons fan I had to share!
Simpsons Opening Credits
They made it pretty true to the original – the only things I noticed different at first glance (without having the cartoon version handy) were driving on the left side of the road (it was shot in Britain) and Lisa not playing a baritone sax. Oh yeah, they’re not yellow and have five fingers too…
Well, I’m quickly running out of backlogged real content to post, so I guess when that’s all gone I have to come up some witty sayings or enlightening insight to keep my three readers content. Nonetheless, I’ve posted my collection of trick photos to the Fun Stuff page.
Ok, I don’t want to mark this blog a Fark-clone, but this animation/song amused me and since I’ve been telling people about it I figured I’d post the link. Warning, this video contains some animated violence and some mild explicit language, but then again, what on the internet doesn’t?
Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny
The music is by a funny and reasonably-talented kid who has released a couple of CD’s under the the band name of Lemon Demon. I’m sure his music isn’t for everyone, but if you like They Might Be Giants, he might be right up your alley.
While I’m plugging quirky musicians, I should put in a plug for a buddy of mine who creates similar music, Robbie. Both of these guys make me laugh!
Ok, it’s not really “new” music, since it was recorded 5-10 years ago, and it’s not really “added”, since it’s been out there for while, but this is the official announcement. I’ve added some Music to the Fun Stuff page. It’s a bunch of recordings made by groups I’ve been in. None of them are going to win a Grammy, but they were all a good time to record.
He can whistle?
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