It's Official

Elijah is officially a "big boy." He is potty trained day and night, #1 and #2. I really didn't even get the game going until a week before school started. We bought the Elmo pants and a bag of Skittles and we were good to go. As you can see, he's very comfortable in his Elmo's--he ran outside with a piece of sidewalk chalk and laid down to trace himself on the front driveway. I just had to let him enjoy his freedom!

Redd up the Dishes

My mother's family always used an odd phrase when it was time to clean up after a meal: let's redd up the dishes.

This is not a phrase I've tried to pass along. All right, I'll admit I assumed it was some hillbilly cluster of words which unexplainedly ended up in our family line. Tonight I decided to research the origins and found this:

redd (v.)
c.1425, "to clear" (a space, etc.), from O.E. hreddan "to save, to deliver, recover, rescue," from P.Gmc. *hradjan. Sense evolution tended to merge with unrelated rid. Also possibly infl. by O.E. rædan "to arrange," related to O.E. geræde, source of ready. A dialect word in Scotland and northern England, where it has had senses of "to fix" (boundaries), "to comb" (hair), "to separate" (combatants), "to settle" (a quarrel). The exception to the limited use is the meaning "to put in order, to make neat or trim" (1718), especially in redd up, which is in general use in England and the U.S. Use of the same phrase, in the same sense, in Pennsylvania Dutch may be from cognate Low Ger. and Du. redden, obviously connected historically to the Eng. word, "but the origin and relationship of the forms is no clear" [OED].

Now that I know "redd up" is actually from Old English and must have been brought over from a Scottish great-grandmother, I find the phrase acceptable. Quaint, even.

It's time for me to redd up my face and go to bed.