Harriet's Eight Things

Arun asked me to do a meme about eight interesting things about me, but this is a blog about Harriet so I'll write them about her.

1.) Well an interesting thing about her from today is her fascination with the word 'nocturnal'. Ask her about wombats or possums or bats and she'll jump back with "Nocturnal, Mama". In fact she went to sleep tonight and she must have been a microsecond away from deep sleep when she piped up with a very loud "NOCTURNAL!" and then fell dead asleep in direct contrast to her chosen word.

2.) She loves dogs and loves to pat them but is also quite trepidatious about it. She always approaches them with the back of her hand and seems quite proud of herself when she does.

3.) She loves to watch video of herself so much that if I am taking video of her she will stop what she's doing and run over to watch it. Of course this means all video we have of her lasts for about 8 seconds before she comes barrelling towards the lens.

4.) The hair issues! Despite all of my best attempts to clear it up, Harry still has a horrid cradle cap (scabby scalp). I have tried not washing it, washing it, picking off the scabs, rubbing the scalp but nothing works. She also hates her hair being brushed. And hates her hair being washed. In fact the only time I could touch her hair without screaming is when I put her hair in pigtails, but she kept trying to turn around to see what I was doing making it a little difficult to put in evenly.

5.) Just this week she has started to really get into singing and dancing. As you can tell from these photos, having the odd prop (poles and leaves are her current faves) doesn't hurt either. Singing is coming along with the odd word being contributed when we're singing some of her favourites.

6.) All sentences start with 'Mama' whether I am there or not. I was in the shower this morning and I could hear her out in the loungeroom just saying "Mama" and then a few other words which were quieter and I couldn't quite catch. I was yelling out "Harry, I'm in the shower" but it wasn't until I turned off the water and stuck my head out that I realised she was sitting on the lounge reading her 'That's Disgusting' book (her current love) just saying "Mama" at the start of each new page and then "bin" when reading the page about sticking your head in the rubbish bin or "poo pipe" when reading about swimming next to a sewage pipe. Very cute!

7.) She has also started to dramatically change her play and speech. Instead of just saying things that are going on around her, she is expressing herself in terms of future events and emotions. For example today she told me that she wanted to take her juice to the museum "Mama, jew-is take newsim" (which phonetically looks like someone in Israel is about to start a game of The Sims, but anyway). She is also creating new phrases that she hasn't heard anyone else say - today she said "stinky monkey" which cracked her up no end becaue we call her cheeky monkey but she loves to say stinky as well. So the combination really tickled her fancy obviously and we ran around the museum cafe with her giggling and yelling out "stinky monkey". And her play is much more creative and physical. Like in this photo, she loved pretending she had a big nose with the cone and also using it as a telescope. She also did things at the museum today like holding up the magnifying glass and saying. "Mama, look, closer" and when I explained it was a magnifying glass she would say "magnifying glass see closer" which is really exciting to hear her making those kinds of constructions.

8.) She will talk and talk and talk about people she loves (Papa, Nana, Grandpa, Poppy, Jedda) constantly. Like, ALL DAY! But when she finally meets up with them she will be struck with shyness and be unable to talk to them for about a minute or two.

And I'm sure that's enough.