Emer's vocabulary

My Irish ears hear "Me go a gah din."

Rob's English ears hear a perfectly distinct "Me go out garden."

It's an accent thing.

"At least the kitchen floor is clean,"

as radegund said when she smashed glass everywhere in her house. We've just been clearing the kitchen and dining room floor of tiny shards of broken vinegar-bottle, sprayed far and wide by a little domestic accident.

It looks lovely. Perhaps I should smash some glass every week or so just to make sure.

I really must remember to ask the Council for a smaller wheelie bin. Our recycling fills a lot faster than our landfill bin, and even that only needs to be emptied once every four weeks. It's lunacy to use our precious, limited front-of-house space for bins we don't need or want.

Perhaps too sentimental

I was looking at photos of Linnea and Oisín today and thinking that some day he will grow out of his distinctive running gait and the more I thought about how lovely his gait is and the fact that one day he won't have it any more, the sadder I got.

It doesn't help that Emer still talks about wearing his shoes, because he and she had exactly the same sandals in appropriate sizes. The cute is killin' me.

Heat and Light

More often than not we are using electric light in some rooms during the day. But we still haven't turned on the heating. I was hoping to wait until the 1st of October. But.

Perhaps we could turn it on just for a bit at bedtime, so that the rooms which have been empty all day aren't so chilly when we're all doing that taking-clothes-off-exposing-skin-to-air-putting-pyjamas-on thing?

Or perhaps that would be silly.

Book recommendations

I have just worked out how to work my online library catalogue and obtained a functioning login for it and all. Please tell me which books I should be reserving to collect from my local library when they are conveniently available.

Representational Art

Emer asked for a paper and pencil and sat down. "Me daw Nana," she said, and then after a while "Aw done!"

I looked. An oval with two circles inside and some straight lines down.

"Is that Nana?" I asked. "No! Mary!" she said. Mary is a Nana, but not Nana, you see.

She pointed out Mary's head, eyes, arm, and mouth.

If only I had a scanner and a means of drawing arrows on the image, I would show you. But you will have to take my word for it.

Emer is 2 years 6 weeks now, or thereabouts. Linnea was almost two and a half before we noticed anything similar, and she kindly did it on a larger, more photographable scale.

Though it's quite likely that we are more open to adult interpretation of children's drawings, this time around. I know we're better at hearing toddler speech.