Weewix is Dead, Long Live Felix

Felix just said "Felix" as opposed to Weewit, Weewix or Weelix. Choked to tears I was. My little boy is growing up!

Felix undergoes his language miracle

So Felix is learning new words at a rate of knots, but the last sylabble/consonant still eludes him. So this weekend I learned he could say:

no(se)
mou(th)
bubby(=buggy)
ma-mmy(=jas-mine)
schoo(l)
cha(lk)
noi(se)
dow(n)
trou(sers)
da-do(n)-dy (=dragonfly)
da(s)-da (=pasta)
mee-mee (beep beep)
and lots more

how.
utterly.
skill.

kid stuff

About 2 weeks ago, Felix started to say 'mum-mee' and 'dad-dee' over and over and over and over, much to our delight.

He now says quite a few words, but only the beginning bit. So door is 'dogh' book sounds more like 'bouh' and so on. His favourite word is doggy, but when Felix means to say doggy he actually says 'dih-dogh.'

He has a new found love for both books and doggies, and his absolute favourite thing at the moment is 'In the Night Garden.'

Jasmine's news is that she is now, definitely toilet trained. The 'can't be arsed' technique seemed to have served us well. In fact, I think it's a technique that can totally be repackaged as 'this is how perfect parents should do it'. Basically, we never pushed her. We went through all the stages - buying the potty, playing with the potty, sitting on the potty ourselves, reading on the potty, buying pants, going nappy free for small bouts, offering rewards, commending efforts - but we never really worked at it as lots of people we know seemed to have done. Let's face it - I am far too lazy to religiously stick Jasmine on the potty every hour anyway.

In the end, once Jasmine made the decision she wanted to use the toilet she did all the hard work herself. Bar a couple of accidents it's all been bloody easy (so far...). She loves being nappy free and the TTOS has halved in weight :)

Little Miss Chatterbox

Everyone's been remarking recently how Jasmine has transformed from a taciturn, reserved, shy little girl into someone who is remarkably confident, sociable and, ahem, talkative. And hitherto I have been proud of her achievements. Particularly the made up words like 'gilbeys' 'scolbies' and 'hankerchoots' which pepper her running commentary on the world and its contents.

But today, I joined the ranks of people who wonder whether they ever shut the eff up.

In which babymomma and poppa take a break

Gloriously sunny Bank Holiday Monday and it feels like the first time in 3 years we've just stopped. No outings, no shopping, no housework, no working from home, no plans, no nothing. Delicious.

Instead we're chilling in the garden and the kids are being fantastic. Jasmine's big thing right now is inventing words. Right now she's playing "roly goly boly poly" some bonkers game where you sit on a ball, fall off in a heap and giggle like a mad thing. Felix the Unstoppable Baby is climbing in and out of the paddling pool, then onto the garden chairs, and onto the table, then onto the trike, then across to the sandpit where he shovels vast handfuls of the stuff into his mouth, then back down the garden steps where he stage dives back into the paddling pool. He knows no fear. He is either a prodigy, or just plain stupid.

Some language firsts

This morning Jasmine burst into the dining room and panted "We're going to soft play... lay-ter." Then squealed "I'll wear my new red coat..." and concluded "be-cause it's cold."
We've never heard her substantiate before - it's amazing.

Later on, in the car, at exactly 9.31 on 10th January 2009 she asked for the first time:
"Are we nearly there?"

Inching forward

The weekend. At last. We're both exhausted and need a lie in. Someone forgot to tell Felix it was the weekend. He woke at a quarter to six, which is totally rude. But then he rewarded mummy by crawling forward a whole 2 inches (as in proper crawling) before faceplanting into the plastic rings. I was moved to tears.

As if that wasn't enough, he started doing some serious babbling - babababababababa - then paused, then opened his mouth again...

And then my baby boy said ma-ma.

What a total result.

Our holiday, in brief

So, our 3-week holiday, aargghh. Where to start? So much to cover. So many memories to capture. The short version is that we all had a great time. Spent a night at Nani's, then to Granma's for a week, then to Granpa's for a couple of days, then bf went back to work for a week (boo hoo) and I stayed at Granma's with the kiddisplinks and Nani came down to visit for a couple of days, then bf came back for a week (hurrah) during which we disappeared to Fowey Hall for 3 nights sans grandparents of any description (double hurrah) then we went back to Granma's for a night, back to Nani's for a night and then, breathe, home. Oh, and in between we also managed to do much catching up with Uncle Angus, Auntie Tina and Cousin Abagael as well as Auntie Leon, Uncle Mary and oooh their gorgeous new baby Kate.

I feel that Jasmine stopped being a toddler this holiday, and has really turned into a little girl. Her speech is coming along at a rate - it's now moving into full sentences, with plurals, personal pronouns, possessives and tenses - and she sounds so grown up when she says things like 'I'm feeling ok;' 'Look Daddy, I'm driving!' or, yesterday's new one, 'I don't like it' (gulp). On holiday she also rode a bike for the first time, did the washing up, went to the circus, danced at a birthday party, practically lived in her Wendy House and graduated to a proper bed. She is embracing this new stage of maturity and independence with a lot of giggly excitement and bossy charm.

Felix, quite simply, hit the handsome button this holiday. He is just getting more and more gorgeous each day. Oh yes, he also hit the loud button. One day he realised he could squeal much louder that all the pigs in Pigdom. And so he did, throwing me totally off track as now there are a whole load of new noises to mean, hungry, bored, tired, need a new nappy etc. etc. He has also started mooncrawling (trying to crawl only going backwards), sitting quite beautifully, grabbing for toys and shoving anything in his mouth with a vigour I had quite forgotten about.

New generation, new words

Jambeans wanted a song yesterday. I was getting ready to sing her Peter Rabbit (peee-ter-rab-bit's-got-a-fly-up-on-his-nose etc.. to the tune of 'John Brown's Body') but she got all angry and started pointing at the dock furiously going "Daddy. Bag. Daddy. Bag..." then, pronounced beautifully, "Eye. Pod"

Cuggles

Okaaay, I confess I have omitted to write about a HUGE milestone in Jambeans development... namely, she can talk.

So this time around I'm just gonna skip the usual guff about how guilty I feel for not mentioning it earlier and will fast forward through describing all the various stages of babble, jargoning and vocal development she's undergone and will just say that Jasmine's latest favourite word is "cuggles" (ie 'cuddles') and as she says it she holds up her arms and looks at me imploringly with those big doe eyes and it just meeeeelts my heart.

Copying and cognition

We've had a lovely weekend. Took Jasmine swimming for the first time in ages. She passed the water on face, jumping in, going under and getting hair wet challenges with great gusto but as suspected is very reluctant and nervous on her back. In general though she absolutely loved it and squealed with delight for half an hour, putting huge grins on Mummy and Daddy's faces too.

Jambeans has started copying in earnest. It's so adorable. So far we've been focusing on 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' but the copying is noticeable in just about everything that we do.

She's also making good progress in self-feeding and is fairly competent at shovelling food onto a spoon and getting it to her mouth. But she does get very stroppy about it - once she's got a hold of her spoon, and your spoon and the spare spoon that's it - she ain't releasing her grasp for love nor money. she's got about 15 plastic spoons but we still run out of them every day.

The best thing though is that we have lots more indicators that she understands words and language. Bf has started asking her 'Jasmine, are you hungry?' and she either nods or shakes her head quite vigorously. Ditto when she yelps or reaches for something and we ask her if she wants the cup, or the muslin or whatever, we get a nod or shake, 20-questions style-y. She can also point to her own nose and hair when we say 'where's your nose?' etc. and will pick up the right toy when we ask 'where's the pig?' so we're steadily working our way through parts of the body, farmyard animals and all the other things central to toddler world.