Familar

We recently filled another Julia Donaldson shaped hole in our bookcase. We've long borrowed The Smartest Giant in Town from the library but didn't have our own copy until last week. T is, unsurprisingly, loving it. We're reading it nightly along with Zog and, on nights when C isn't getting too tired and cranky to wait any longer for milk, another story of his choosing.

Tonight, as George the giant redressed himself in his shabby but comfortable gown and sandals, three quarters of the way through, T piped up.

Mummy, what's milly-ear

Not milly-ear, it's familiar

What's familiar

Familiar is when something is old and nice and you like it very much, George's gown and sandals are familiar

Mummy, Grandma is old and nice. Is she familiar?

I suppose, if pushed, I could get away with pretending he'd said family.

Anatomy

T is bending his arm, holding it in a funny manner.

'What's the matter darling, have you hurt yourself?'

'No Mummy, this is my ELBOW'

'It is darling, well done!'

He holds his hand up, folding over his fingers.

'Mummy, these are our KNUCKLES'

'Well done darling, that's a difficult word!'

He fiddles with his socks and thinks hard.

'Mummy, this is my UNCLE. I have three uncles. This is my left uncle, this is my right uncle and then there's Uncle Nick. And Uncle Esteban. Three uncles!'

We really need to work on his counting.

A weighty Update

(For the first post on this subject click here)

I have never been happier to be overweight*! Two weeks before I am due back at work (wibble) I am two pounds off my 12 stone goal and two pounds lighter than my pre-pregnancy weight with T. I'm not going to win any awards for speedy weight-loss, but I am a whole stone and a half lighter than my starting weight and giving you a twirl right now in my size 14 jeans. What do you think?

C now weighs almost as much as I've lost. Carrying her in the sling I huff slightly climbing the steps from the beach to the prom. The downside of losing weight is that when the lard is on your front rather than your hips it doesn't keep your jeans up. I reach the top step and my 16s slip down to my knees, revealing my purple pants to the sunbathers behind and, worse, my Father in Law, carrying our picnic remnants back to the car.

Shopping anyone?

*Rather than obese. Obviously a healthy weight is my ultimate end goal!

A little less conversation

The children are chatting to each other in the bath. Well, T is chatting. C, although starting to speak, is still a way behind in the conversational stakes. Her current repertoire is a whole load of babble and four or five proper words, including a broad Manc 'hiya' and 'Dada', but nothing of course for the parent who currently gets up four times a night to soothe her teething brow. Not that I'm bitter of course. Hmph.

Anyway, the conversation goes like this:

Mummy, C can't walk yet can she?
No darling
Can she talk yet either?
She can say some words but she can't talk properly, no
(holding up a toy) C, can you say duck?
DUHHHK
Mummy she said duck!
Yes darling, duck is one of the words she can say
Can you say train?
DUHHHK
Can you say boat?
DUHHHK
Can you say ... hot tap? (he was clutching at straws here)
DUHHHK
(he looks around the bathroom) Mummy can C say toilet?
No I don't think so darling
Mummy can I say toilet?
Yes darling, you just said it then!
I'm going to teach C to say a new word. C ... can you say toyyyy lettt
DUHHHK
No, Toilet!
DUHHK
NO! TOILET!
DUHHK

Maybe I should try and get them into advertising?

Noses

I will preface this post by saying it has been a very, very wet summer. Well summer would be pushing it. It has been very wet in the last couple of months. Full stop.

This morning we found a slug in our kitchen. Well, T found a slug in our kitchen when I sent him to put on his shoes. It was just a baby one, heading for the teeny gap between the door and frame it must have squeezed through last night in order to leave a silvery trail across my kitchen floor and knocking me a little bit sick.

'I'm not standing on it Mummy!'

Words only spoken by a boy who really wants to, not out of some cruelty to other living things, but probably with his unshod foot, just to see what it feels like.

I pause my diatribe about being nice to innocent creatures to grab the baby, my second child now approaching the animal with a gleam in her eye and a bead of drool sliding down her chin. A slug is bad enough, half a slug infinitely worse.

I grab a sheet of kitchen roll, my plan is to gingerly pick up the slug and deposit it on the correct side of the back door to slime, and whatever else slugs do, to it's hearts content, accompanied by a strict lecture on not sneaking into houses uninvited.

Roll in hand I approach from behind.

'Mummy ... stop!'

He eyes my familiar stance with some reproach.

'Don't blow it's nose. It hasn't got a nose!'

Liberator of invertebrates, wiper of bottoms, blower of noses. Same old, same old.

Hotels

Look Mummy, over there ... a moon shop! A moon shop Mummy!

Oh to be nearly three.

I love my boy.

Perseverence

Pre-schoolers are trying. If you have one you'll know this. They're wonderful of course, bright and funny and entertaining but oh lord the whining. And the questions. And the questions in a whiny voice.

Watching the last vestiges of my sanity trickle down the plughole with the bathwater, I have started to praise T wildly for the other sort of trying. Perseverence.

Can you put your socks on please?
(whining and looking the other way) I can't do it
Can you try please?
(sits down on the floor with a huff, unballs socks, places one on top of foot and wriggles until it falls off again) I caaaaaan't dooooo it
You haven't even tried, open the sock and put your foot in it!
(picks up sock, stretches it between hand, balls it up, thwacks it up and down on the floor a few times)

This could go on ad infinitum, however by changing my language the exchange is truncated.

Can you put your socks on please?
(whining and looking the other way) I can't do it
Can you try please?
(sits down on the floor with a huff, unballs socks, places one on top of foot and wriggles until it falls off again) I caaaaaan't dooooo it
Well done darling, you've pulled them apart! Can you do them on a train, can you do them in the rain? Do you remember the Green Eggs and Ham book? Mr Knox tried didn't he. Can you put your socks on in a box, can you put them on a fox?
(laughing now)
Can you put them here or there? Can you put them anywhere?
(the socks go on)

Of course this isn't ideal. In a perfect world, being capable of putting his socks on without recourse to silly rhyme, T would spring into action the moment I asked him to do something. However there's a perfect world and then there's being nearly-three. Two very different things. For now I'm happy to cajole, encourage and sometimes downright bribe him to just have a go. If you have a little try of the risotto you have been pushing around your plate for half an hour you can have a chocolate treat. On a very good day he'll discover the risotto is delicious and eat the whole lot, leaving him too full for chocolate. No, honestly!

There is a downside though. A couple of weeks ago I slung a grumpy T around the zoo on a muggy Saturday afternoon, my husband carrying his sister. From the raised wooden walkway we regarded a field of okapi and, in the distance, a fierce looking rhinocerous.

Mummy, can you throw C to the rhino?
No darling.
Oh go on Mummy. Just have a little try.