Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Living with a Glider

Our friends, Rick and Carrie, are both speech pathologists. I learned a lot about speech difficulties from knowing them. One style of dysfunction is called "gliding". It's when you replace the "r" sound with a "w", as in Elmer Fudd and the "wascaly wabbit." I think the Musielaks would agree with that illustration. Izak does both good and bad "r" and "w" sounds from time to time.

Another thing about Izak (if you've known him longer than five minutes) is that he loves, loves music and singing. One of his favorite CDs is Lady Blacksmith Mambazo, a Zulu group who worked with Paul Simon on the Graceland tour. One of his favorite songs is called "Beautiful Rain." The songs begins, "Rain, rain, rain, rain... beautiful rain. Rain, rain, rain, rain... beautiful rain." We sing it a lot together, it's so melodic and easy.

As I mentioned, the trains run all day a short distance form our house. Izak and I talk a lot about the trains, how big and strong they are, how they come and go, "Bye-bye, train!" Yesterday we also talked about how we have train engineers in our family, Great-great Grandpa Bennett and Great-great Uncle Wayne...

After a few quiet seconds Izak looked up at me with a huge smile and began singing at the top of his lungs, "Wayne, wayne, wayne, wayne... beautiful Wayne!"

No comments: