The Helpful Baby is being poetical again. He was helping me by carrying a shopping bag. So now that shopping bag is officially named the Helpful Bag. I know there's a term of rhetoric for this construction, but I can't remember it. When he switches the light on, it's the Helpful Light too, and he opens the Helpful Door using the Helpful Key, often ( Read more... )

The Helpful Baby is doing interesting things with grammar. We had 'bird-way' the other day, meaning 'the bird has flown away' and 'car-way' with emphatic pointing meaning 'the car went that way'. He gets a huge amount of mileage out of 'too' and tends to refer to himself in the third person. So Philomythulus takes a cracker out of the packet. Cub ( Read more... )

- Here is a list of all the words I heard Cub use yesterday: uppa, down, door (this was used multiple times in different contexts including clothing, pan lids, and his mouth when he sneezed), steps, juicie, spill, towel, horsie, duckie, doggie, dat one, o dear, o dam, dat way, nonono, water, jam, beebies (as in CBeebies), gadaker, tree, tea, shoes ( Read more... )

- Philomythulus has managed to make his iPad say 'I'd like a slice of cake please'. I'm all in favour of him learning communication skills. But he's requested a slice of cake approximately 5000 times in the past hour, and I don't have any cake and he can't have cake right now anyway because it's bedtime. But he really wants that cake. Occasionally ( Read more... )

Picture the scene: I am cooking supper, Philomythulus is playing in the sink, pouring water from one cup to another and making little waterfalls. Philomythulus is seized by some idea or other and wanders away from the sink, leaving the tap running ( Read more... )

1. I have a Yuletide assignment! And it's a prompt I can write, and I have multiple ideas already. I think my only concern is going to be biting off more than I can chew, because my current plot bunnies are running long. Some people may be able to write 60,000 word fics for Yuletide, but I don't think I'm one of them ( Read more... )

- I now believe that in that phrase 'barefoot and pregnant', the woman is barefoot because it's a complete pain trying to get your socks and shoes on when you're heavily pregnant. Especially if the range of contortions possible to touch your feet is strictly limited by the fact that your pelvis tries to fall apart when you move in asymmetric ways. ( Read more... )

Here's an excellent article about having a child with a serious learning disability. The author's son is naturally different from Philomythulus, but there's a lot of commonality all the same (it's been my experience that at this end of the spectrum, Philomythulus has a lot more in common with children with other different types of learning ( Read more... )

My son has watched me make cheesecake several times, and he really likes it. So when I gave him a few cheese crackers and a small raspberry yoghurt for a snack after a busy afternoon, he decided that instead of just eating them both, he would make his own version of cheesecake. He smashed the cheesy crackers into a fine powder, pressed it into the ( Read more... )

It's half term and Philomythulus is bored. I can tell this because, whilst I was getting breakfast, he somehow managed to unscrew a floorboard. I have absolutely not a clue how he did this, not least because the screws were stiff and countersunk and he didn't have a screwdriver. He must have improvised a screwdriver out of his toys somehow, then ( Read more... )