The strange grammar of "with"

I recently realised that "with" in English takes a regular objective-case pronoun, rather than a reflexive one: we say I'm taking my umbrella with me and Did he take his coat with him when he went?, when what might be expected is *I'm taking my umbrella with myself and *Did he take his coat with himself when he went?.

After all, consider what seem similar situations: we don't say *I stuck a needle in me by mistake or *Did you buy the book for you?. (On the other hand, it just occurred to me that I do say I dragged a sled behind me, not *...behind myself.)

Amy: language and bed

I recently asked UK English speakers what to call the thing I had previously called a "stroller", since I wanted to use a UK English word.

I was a little disappointed that the majority answer was not what I had been expecting :) Apparently, "pushchair" is the most popular word for both types of stroller shown in the poll, though "buggy" (what I was hoping I could validly use) showed up a little as well.

I decided to settle on "buggy" for (1) and (3) and "pushchair" for the simpler version in (2) (aka "umbrella stroller" in US-ese). Let's see how Amy copes with my changing usage.

---

One of Amy's phrases is "Ich auch!".

I'm not sure what to teach her for that in English. The problem is that what seems most natural is "Me, too!", but the prescriptivist side of me isn't sure whether to allow that. (Your father has taught you well.)

On the one hand, English isn't Latin -- nor even German. But I'm still worried that what may be the most natural respone will get her looked down at by some. (Even if "I, too!" sounds horribly stilted and contrived to me.)

You can't win.

(What do you think? "Me too"? "I too"? "So do I"? Something else entirely? "I reject your prescriptivist reality and substitute my own"? FWIW, context varies, but something like "I'm going into the living room to jump on the trampoline! -- Ich auch!" can probably be taken as typical.)

---

Amy has a new, higher loft bed now -- one that she needs to climb up a ladder to get into.

She accepted it immediately, and even asked for her old bed to be taken out of her room so that the new one could be in the same place.

Stella wanted something over it, a kind of net or something, to stop Amy from falling out, especially when playing around on the bed with other children.

We bought a kind of tunnel (some cloth with flexible rods, similar to a tend, which form a half-cylinder over the bed) which belongs on an IKEA bed and attached it to hers. That was last evening.

Amy liked her "cave" (as she's taken to calling it) a lot -- but refused to sleep under it. So we took it down again.

We thought that might be because it was put up not long before bedtime and she hadn't adjusted to it, and perhaps she would like it more later on.

This morning, she woke up and asked where her cave was. Stella put it up again after church, and Amy liked it again. She also said she'd stay there for her nap. (Not sure whether she ended up sleeping; Stella and I did, though.)

Then in the evening, she climbed up the ladder after family prayer and hugs all around, and we thought everything was fine. But no, ten minutes later she was calling for Mummy and asking to sleep on the ground rather than under her cave.

She couldn't express what was wrong or why she didn't like the cave, though. I lay down on her bed next to her and sang to her for a while. When I had had enough, I asked her whether she would sleep by herself now in her cave. She said she would, but didn't seem very happy about it.

When Stella looked half an hour later, Amy was asleep -- but she was lying sideways in her bed, by the ladder, just outside the canopy. So maybe she just really doesn't like it when she sleeps, though I'm not sure why.

I wonder how this story will continue.

New beds

When we bought Amy's new bed, we also bought new slat bases (? -- Lattenrost; the frames you put underneath the mattress, with [often springy] slats to bear your weight) and new mattresses for ourselves. Our frames were slightly broken, and our mattresses were about eight years old, and apparently you're supposed to buy new ones every ten years or so.

(Stella and I sleep in a double bed, but we have separate lower frames, separate mattresses, and separate bedclothes. Some people get along just fine sharing a double-width mattress and sharing a duvet, but I'm not one of them. We also have mattresses that are slightly wider than usual -- 100x200 cm [3'3"x6'6"] instead of the more common 90x100 cm [2'11"x6'6"] --, which helps.)

Stella bought a hard mattress; I wasn't sure what kind was best for me, but given that I sleep on my side/shoulder a fair bit, I thought something a bit softer would be better. The salesman (who seemed very helpful and nice) said that as long as I didn't take the mattress out of its plastic covering, I was welcome to sleep on it at home for a week or so, and I could still return it if I ended up not liking it and needing something harder or softer. So I picked one that was a bit softer than Stella's, but still rather firm.

So, we got home, and I put my mattress on the bed, complete with plastic covering. Stella ripped her covering off, lay down on the mattress, and sighed contentedly. "Ah, this is much better."

However, come next morning, things were different: she said it had been like sleeping on a rock. I wasn't completely happy with mine, either; my shoulder felt a bit unhappy, so mine was probably a bit hard to me.

Now we had a problem. I could easily return or exchange mine, but what about Stella? She was pretty disappointed and frustrated at the prospect of a fair chunk of money down the drain. Since she had already taken off the plastic covering, she probably couldn't return hers. (Though she did put on a special mite-proof covering, plus a fitted sheet, before sleeping on it.) She considered getting rid of them on eBay, but I'm not sure how well such large, bulky items sell.

Anyway, we ended up going down to the shop and explaining our plight. Fortunately, the salesman we had talked to the first time was there, and we told him what had happened. He said there wasn't a problem -- as long as we had the original plastic covering, she should put the mattress back and tape up the slits where she had cut it open, so that it wouldn't get dirty or damaged during the return journey, and they'd pick the mattresses up. A stone fell from Stella's heart, as they say in German.

He also offered to sell us some new mattresses. We had considered simply going back to our old ones (Stella said that with the new frames, she felt that she was already sleeping a bit more firmly than with the old ones), but we ended up buying new ones. Not least because he gave them to us at 25% off "because we are such good customers". (Stella wondered whether the salesman was the branch manager, that he was authorised to give us such a fairly large discount.) So we'll be trading in the mattresses we bought and buying new, softer ones (more expensive, too). The salesman said we shouldn't worry too much if they seem not quite right, either, since it takes a body a while to get used to a new mattress; we should feel free to test-sleep in them for a week or even two before we throw in the towel. (Is that an English idiom, too?) (Though Stella said she didn't think she could have slept with the wrapper on, because it rustles whenever you move, and Stella tosses and turns quite a bit more than I do.)

Those'll arrive on Saturday, probably, so we shall have to see how things go there.

I've still got the new mattress on, but might switch our old one back in tomorrow. (Stella already did so today.) Then we'll sleep on those until the new ones arrive.