Potties, stickers, crawling and blue fingers

Lois has started crawling. It’s not dignified but it gets her from A to B. She sort of uses one leg to proper herself forward and the other one, tucked underneath just sort of gets dragged along. She has been standing up for a few weeks now, bopping and holding onto carers’ fingers for balance (holding on so tight the other day whilst I was chatting to Lisa I suddenly realised the end of the finger she was clutching had gone cold and quite blue to the eye).

So, the stair-gates have been resurrected about the house in light of this new-found mobility. Ah well, it gives Louis some hurdling exercise.

Maisie said about her sister the other night “Lois doesn’t like to stop eating does she?”. There is more than a little truth in that statement. The nursery have also recorded in their notes about her something along the lines of “Lois is most content when her nutritional needs are begin met”.

Other development include our second attempt to potty-train Maisie which is going better than the first one. It seems we may even crack it this time as last night she did her first wee on a potty. She looked so pleased with herself. Mum came up with a great idea to try and encourage potty use – she bought lots of little toys from charity shops and wrapped them up in exciting gift wrap and then showed Maisie a box of presents on the understanding that every time she uses the potty she can pick one. Last night’s reward was a new dinosaur (we were running dangerously low on those I can tell you, nart!)

My Mum was been looking after Maisie and Lois on Wednesdays which had been a good arrangement. She gets some quality granddaughter time, Lisa gets some quality “me” (housework?) time.

We have also bought Maisie a bike. Actually we bought two. We spent last Saturday cruising the bike shops in Chesterfield. We ended up buying a thomas the tank engine one from Tesco on the basis that it said 2yrs+ and all other ones seemed to be 3yrs+ and just a little too big.

We got it home and built it only to find that it was too big and Maisie’s legs were some distance from the pedals. Poor Maisie was obviously disappointed by this and did not go to bed happy. Whilst I was putting her to bed she said “Mummy could get a bike!”. We took it back the next day and bought a better one from Halfords instead which she could just reach the pedals on but after a trip to the park meant that both parents would need to be present whenever the bike came out to avoid disasters.

People who do things

I heard someone at this University talking about children's language acquisition and he said something about how there is a bit of a leap conceptually in being able to go from describing what someone is doing to then describing them as someone who DOES that. An example used was showing a child a picture of some people playing football and asking what was happening. The child replied something like "Some people playing football". The child was then asked something like "So, what are these people called?".Instead of saying "footballers" the child looked glum and thoughtless. Game Over.

So, I thought I'd try this theory out with Maisie last night. I said "Maisie, what do you call people who play football?". She looked a bit confused and said "I don't know".

"Footballers!" I said. She didn't look very interested.

"Ok" I said "What do you call people who go shopping?". She shrugged again. "Shoppers!" I said.

Suddenly, she looked interested and interjected "What about people who go to Grandma's?".

"Erm, Grandma-ers?" I replied.

I think we cracked it.

Some people!

We sold our fridge freezer on ebay. We have an integrated one in the kitchen so since we’ve moved back there is no need for our old freestanding one (even though it is rather nice with its graphite finish, spacious interior and samsung emblem!)

I listed it on ebay and someone bought it. They came round to collect it yesterday as arranged. However, not only was the dude an hour late (which meant it interfered with the tea and bed time routine) and hadn’t been reading his emails nor a clue where to collect from but he also turned up on his own. WHO DOES THAT? Comes to pick up a 7ft fridge freezer on their own??

I ended up becoming quite frustrated with it all and once we had laboured to get it out of the house, I left him to faff with it (and boy did this man know how to procrastinate!) in the back of his van which was parked on our drive. I just apologised (vaguely) and then closed the front door and got on with tea, by which time Maisie had already fallen asleep on the sofa in all her clothes and an old nappy. Let the bottom-rash begin!

David Beckham today publically blamed the England players for the team’s non-tournament this summer. He’s probably right, however at the same event, he also announced his intention to continue playing for the national side. A brave statement considering he’s just dissed his dressing room companions. Gotta love that chap.

Lois has been doing more walking. She’s using the same walker that Maisie used when learning to be autonomously upright. It’s a very useful toy if you don’t take into account the range of chirpy annoying songs it produces.

Maisie brings her first tune to the song table

Maisie seems to have learned a new song, presumably at nursery since the words and hand movements are a mystery to me and Lisa. It’s incredibly cute. She just moves her hands over each other as if handling a hamster on the move and I’m not sure about the tune but the words seem to go…

“Roly poly down down down…
Roly poly, up and and up”

She also moves her rotating hands downwards or upwards at the relevant time during the song.

And then something about “everso large” and “everso small”. She won’t just do it on demand. You have to catch her in the right mood and ask nicely.

Lois has a few favourite phrases (noises?) at the moment. One if the inevitable “Da-da-da-da” (despite Mum’s desperate interventions) and then there’s the “Goyayoyoy” and a strange noise she makes at the back of her throat as if clearing her throat. Not sure what that one’s all about, but hey!

Maisie has started dreaming and currently seems to be having a bit of an issue with unwanted bears and owls featuring in them. This don’t impress her much. Sometimes when I am summoned to her room she says “There are no bears are there?”. My answer is always the same.