Happy news about children
To calm myself down so I have a realistic prospect of sleep (which I could do with - I know, surprising isn't it?), here's an update about the kids.
**FIXME is having a hugely fun time playing with language at the moment. His diction has taken a slight turn for the worse - his consonants are slightly fuzzier. But at the same time, he's rhyming away the whole time. I mean just about every utterance either contains a deliberately-wrong word, or is followed by a sequence of excited rhymes of the key word. So, for instance, he'll sing "E-I-addio, the farmer's in his ... men!", to the amusement of all around. He also loves spoken games where you say things that aren't correct - so, for instance, exchanges like this:
- You eat bricks.
- No! You don't eat bricks. You eat gravel.
- No! You don't eat gravel. You eat clouds.
- No! You don't eat clouds. You eat trees.
... and so on, for as long as both of you can be bothered to keep it up (which can be a very long time if it's me and him). You also get wrong-rhyme versions:
- Shall we go to the shops?
- No! Let's go to the pops!
- No! Let's go to the clops!
- No! Let's go to the hops!
- ... etc.
He also does a version of twenty questions, where he pretends to be something, you have to guess, and when you get it wrong (which you do), he tells you something that your guess has that the thing he is doesn't. So, for example:
- Are you a train?
- No! I haven't got wheels.
- Are you a sofa?
- No! You can't sit on me.
- Are you a cow?
- No! I don't say moo.
- Are you a car?
- No! I said I haven't got wheels!
He usually does have something actually fixed in his mind, and you do usually get to it (with a bit of persistence and nous about what he's likely to have picked - also crucially important to make sure your first guess is wildly wrong).
He's really going for the "Why?" questions - he doesn't just ask why, he asks a full version. So, for instance:
"Right, we need to go and get the laundry in."
"Why do we need to go and get the laundry in?"
"Because it's raining!"
"Why is it raining?"
"Well, clouds are actually made of little teeny-tiny drops of water, and when the drops of water bump in to each other, they stick together, and get bigger and bigger, until they're so heavy they fall out of the sky."
"Why do they stick together?"
"Oh ghod, it's to do with surface tension ... erm, well, basically, water likes to stick to itself a lot more than it likes to stick to the air."
"Why does water like to stick to itself a lot more than it likes to stick to the air?"
"Hydrogen bonds."
Luckily if you can give a definite answer like that you can often trigger a stop. (I could see where that conversation was going, and I need to revise my molecular orbital quantum mechanics before I can explain it to toddlers.)
Last night was our first night back at home after a week away at his grandparents', which was a week's enforced absence from Winnie-the-Pooh at bedtime. When I asked him what he wanted to read before bed, he picked out one book, and then caught sight of the hopelessly battered old copy of Winnie-the-Pooh, and picked it up. I said, "Do you want to read Winnie-the-Pooh?" and for about thirty whole seconds he was so pleased at the prospect that he couldn't actually speak, but wordlessly hold the book out to me and smile, open-mouthed.
His little brother has hugely come on in the space of that same week. I mentioned before that he'd started to crawl, and in that time he developed from "has been observed to crawl forward on one occasion" to "can mostly crawl where he wants to go". Which is astonishing. It is limited, alas, to carpet - on our slippery wooden floors he struggles and mostly goes backwards. Thus generally ends up trapped in corners with his body jammed under furniture. And they're always the places he least wants to be, because he's turned away from them. Poor lad.
This morning I put the upstairs stairgate back, with minutes to spare. He fell over in the hall this evening, unobserved, and our best guess was that he'd tried to climb the stairs and failed. I rather fear that the bottom stairgate may be required pronto.
This, plus his increasing ability to communicate, really changes how I feel I relate to him - he's not a tiny helpless baby, he's this mobile, active, engaging small child. Which is lovely - though tinged with a little sadness to think I (probably!) won't be caring for any more helpless babies.
He's also developing clear favourite toys - previously he'd just have been happy with something new, but now there's a set of faves that are almost always welcome: some maracas, a doll (hooray! - sadly rejected by his older brother), a balloon whisk, and a clamshell phone.
He absolutely adores his bath at the moment. He's not so keen on the undressing bit, and screams the house down at the getting out bit, but the in between bit is unalloyed bliss. For him, at least - the bathing parent and everything in a 5-yard radius gets totally soaked. He was in a slightly different bath at his grandparents, which somehow increased his effectiveness, such that we had to run a second bath for his big brother because he succeeded in splashing almost all of the bathwater out.
They seem to be interacting very positively - it's mainly that **FIXME is getting better at actually being nice to **TODO in a way that **TODO also perceives as pleasant. (So, for instance, he'll give him toys, or give him a little hug or stroke his head 'to cheer him up', or call out 'it's alright **TODO, we're coming' when we hear a cry.) It's also, I think, that **TODO is starting to be able to communicate back, and be more rewarding. **TODO is fascinated by whatever **FIXME is doing ... which is lovely in some ways, but also a direct source of conflict now he can actually make his way over to his big brother and attempt to wrest control of whatever **FIXME is playing with. **FIXME is, of course, a very nice lad but even he isn't nice enough to always (or in fact, more than very occasionally) give his little brother what he's playing with himself.
Sleep ... would be nice. Nuff said.
**FIXME is having a hugely fun time playing with language at the moment. His diction has taken a slight turn for the worse - his consonants are slightly fuzzier. But at the same time, he's rhyming away the whole time. I mean just about every utterance either contains a deliberately-wrong word, or is followed by a sequence of excited rhymes of the key word. So, for instance, he'll sing "E-I-addio, the farmer's in his ... men!", to the amusement of all around. He also loves spoken games where you say things that aren't correct - so, for instance, exchanges like this:
- You eat bricks.
- No! You don't eat bricks. You eat gravel.
- No! You don't eat gravel. You eat clouds.
- No! You don't eat clouds. You eat trees.
... and so on, for as long as both of you can be bothered to keep it up (which can be a very long time if it's me and him). You also get wrong-rhyme versions:
- Shall we go to the shops?
- No! Let's go to the pops!
- No! Let's go to the clops!
- No! Let's go to the hops!
- ... etc.
He also does a version of twenty questions, where he pretends to be something, you have to guess, and when you get it wrong (which you do), he tells you something that your guess has that the thing he is doesn't. So, for example:
- Are you a train?
- No! I haven't got wheels.
- Are you a sofa?
- No! You can't sit on me.
- Are you a cow?
- No! I don't say moo.
- Are you a car?
- No! I said I haven't got wheels!
He usually does have something actually fixed in his mind, and you do usually get to it (with a bit of persistence and nous about what he's likely to have picked - also crucially important to make sure your first guess is wildly wrong).
He's really going for the "Why?" questions - he doesn't just ask why, he asks a full version. So, for instance:
"Right, we need to go and get the laundry in."
"Why do we need to go and get the laundry in?"
"Because it's raining!"
"Why is it raining?"
"Well, clouds are actually made of little teeny-tiny drops of water, and when the drops of water bump in to each other, they stick together, and get bigger and bigger, until they're so heavy they fall out of the sky."
"Why do they stick together?"
"Oh ghod, it's to do with surface tension ... erm, well, basically, water likes to stick to itself a lot more than it likes to stick to the air."
"Why does water like to stick to itself a lot more than it likes to stick to the air?"
"Hydrogen bonds."
Luckily if you can give a definite answer like that you can often trigger a stop. (I could see where that conversation was going, and I need to revise my molecular orbital quantum mechanics before I can explain it to toddlers.)
Last night was our first night back at home after a week away at his grandparents', which was a week's enforced absence from Winnie-the-Pooh at bedtime. When I asked him what he wanted to read before bed, he picked out one book, and then caught sight of the hopelessly battered old copy of Winnie-the-Pooh, and picked it up. I said, "Do you want to read Winnie-the-Pooh?" and for about thirty whole seconds he was so pleased at the prospect that he couldn't actually speak, but wordlessly hold the book out to me and smile, open-mouthed.
His little brother has hugely come on in the space of that same week. I mentioned before that he'd started to crawl, and in that time he developed from "has been observed to crawl forward on one occasion" to "can mostly crawl where he wants to go". Which is astonishing. It is limited, alas, to carpet - on our slippery wooden floors he struggles and mostly goes backwards. Thus generally ends up trapped in corners with his body jammed under furniture. And they're always the places he least wants to be, because he's turned away from them. Poor lad.
This morning I put the upstairs stairgate back, with minutes to spare. He fell over in the hall this evening, unobserved, and our best guess was that he'd tried to climb the stairs and failed. I rather fear that the bottom stairgate may be required pronto.
This, plus his increasing ability to communicate, really changes how I feel I relate to him - he's not a tiny helpless baby, he's this mobile, active, engaging small child. Which is lovely - though tinged with a little sadness to think I (probably!) won't be caring for any more helpless babies.
He's also developing clear favourite toys - previously he'd just have been happy with something new, but now there's a set of faves that are almost always welcome: some maracas, a doll (hooray! - sadly rejected by his older brother), a balloon whisk, and a clamshell phone.
He absolutely adores his bath at the moment. He's not so keen on the undressing bit, and screams the house down at the getting out bit, but the in between bit is unalloyed bliss. For him, at least - the bathing parent and everything in a 5-yard radius gets totally soaked. He was in a slightly different bath at his grandparents, which somehow increased his effectiveness, such that we had to run a second bath for his big brother because he succeeded in splashing almost all of the bathwater out.
They seem to be interacting very positively - it's mainly that **FIXME is getting better at actually being nice to **TODO in a way that **TODO also perceives as pleasant. (So, for instance, he'll give him toys, or give him a little hug or stroke his head 'to cheer him up', or call out 'it's alright **TODO, we're coming' when we hear a cry.) It's also, I think, that **TODO is starting to be able to communicate back, and be more rewarding. **TODO is fascinated by whatever **FIXME is doing ... which is lovely in some ways, but also a direct source of conflict now he can actually make his way over to his big brother and attempt to wrest control of whatever **FIXME is playing with. **FIXME is, of course, a very nice lad but even he isn't nice enough to always (or in fact, more than very occasionally) give his little brother what he's playing with himself.
Sleep ... would be nice. Nuff said.