FFF: The Geography of Grandparents

Earlier this week Hugh had to travel to a conference for work in Minnesota, and Little Man missed him terribly (as did Sweet Girl and I).  This happened to be the first time that Hugh has traveled since Enoch has really been talking and putting things together (He should've been gone in May for another conference, but Karis just happened to be born right in the middle of it, so I'm glad he stayed home!!).  So, this time when Daddy left, we talked about how he was gone to Minnesota for a few days and about how Enoch was in Mississippi.

Now, I'm not real sure that Enoch totally grasps the idea of 'place' yet, but we started working on this quite a few months ago, when Otis last visited.  He had quite the hard time understanding where Otis was after he left.  So we had to have a lesson about Granddad and Otis going back home to Oklahoma. Anytime Little Man would ask about Otis, we would explain that he was in Oklahoma.  Eventually, Enoch learned how to say 'Oklahoma' (in the type of gibberish that only mamas can understand), and he seemed to understand that Otis wasn't going to magically appear at the back door anytime soon.. because he had gone to Oklahoma.

Then, when we recently visited AR & OK, Enoch learned the word 'Arkansas' (though I'm sure he'd heard it before in our conversations).   On that trip, he learned that Arkansas is the place where Papa Steve and Granny Susie live.  So, since we have family who live in Minnesota, it just worked well to teach him that word this time when Hugh was there for a short trip.  While we were at it (Enoch loves learning new words these days!), we went ahead and learned North Dakota and Mississippi as well.  Now I only have a few remaining states to teach (places where other family members live): Washington D.C. and Missouri and Florida.  I have a feeling those first two will be challenging though.

A few nights ago, before Hugh returned, I got this footage during dinner.  As you can tell, we're still working on North Dakota, since it's by far the hardest to shorten into gibberish at this point.  ;)