A Sometimes 'Grammar Snob'

I'm not declaring myself an expert on grammar. I'm sure I make plenty of mistakes. However, I have a few pet peeves that I feel like I'm seeing a lot more often. For example:

• "To" and "too" are two different words (oh, I'm funny!!).
  -to: toward a point, person, place, or thing, implied or understood
  -too: in addition; also; furthermore; to an excessive extent or degree
• "There," "Their," and "They're" are also different words.
  -there: in or at that place - opposed to 'here': She is there now.
  -their: a form of the possessive case of 'they' used as an attributive adjective, before a noun: their home
  -they're: a contraction of "they are"
• There's a whole list of others that I see mixed up almost as frequently.
  -It's and its
  -Are, hour and our
  -Fare and fair
  -accept and except
  -all right and alright
  -desert and dessert (when these were on a spelling list, my mom told me that you always want 2 desserts and there are 2 S's in dessert)
  -Your and you're
  -Then and than
• An absolute lack of punctuation and paragraph use.

The thing is, I see most of these in emails and on forum boards. So I assume that some of the errors occur, because people are in a hurry. Sadly, I think the vasy majority of them occur, because people really don't know the difference, when to use commas or start a new paragraph anymore. Hopefully we'll soon adjust to the use of new technologies and figure out how to use the little conveniences in life, such as spell check, but still learn the basics of the English language.

I'm Scrooge.

Aaron L-O-V-E-S Christmas. He loves the music and the decorations and he starts thinking of ideas for gifts in September. A few years ago, we wrapped all the presents in plain brown paper, and then used markers, glitter glue, googly eyes and more to personally decorate each package. My designs were fairly simple, while Aarons spend many, many, many hours on his packages. This year, Aaron was listening to streaming Christmas music on his computer as soon as it became available. A local radio station started playing Christmas music on November 14 at 4 pm and on our way home from work at 5, we were listening to it and have been ever since. He asked if we could start decorating a couple weeks ago. The first time we heard Chrismas music playing in a store, he made me stop and just listen.

So, in contrast to Aaron's gung-ho approach, I end up being a little bit of a Scrooge. I just think that we should wait until after Halloween at least to start listening to Christmas music. Since we have decorations for Halloween, and they don't really go with our Christmas decorations, I think we should wait until November to decorate as well. And even though Aaron comes up with fantastic gift ideas, sometimes they're just beyond our means.

This is our fifth Christmas together. I think we're finding out happy medium when it comes to this holiday (although I'm not sure how the dynamic will change when BabyMort's here next year). I've accepted that I'll spend 2+ months listening to Christmas music, but we won't spend hours wrapping presents this year. We put our decorations out on the 17th, but Aaron did most of the work and was okay with my less enthusiastic attitude.

For Christmas 2008, I think we've figured out our balance.

It's been a while...

I've been neglecting my postings on this blog, because I've been busy over on www.mamamort.wordpress.com. In addition, I've been busy sleeping, eating a dozen small meals a day to try to avoid nausea, and thanking my husband for being amazing and supportive. I'm thrilled to report that we're expecting BabyMort in early June, 2009!!

We told our families and close friends shortly after we found out, but there was still the superstitious side of me that wasn't quite ready to put it out on the World Wide Web. After we heard a strong heartbeat today, though, I felt confident in sharing our news with the world!!

To keep up with all things baby-related, head on over to www.mamamort.wordpress.com. I'll still plan on keeping this blog going for anything non-baby, although those topics might be few and far between for a while :-D