Saturday, September 08, 2007

News and Updates

Huge apologies to those of you who have been trying to get in contact with me (Hi Jennie!). I have been pretty buggered lately, since Harry has decided that she doesn't want to sleep at normal toddler times but instead will enjoy burning the midnight oil with her parents. Have we mentioned before that this child is amazing EXCEPT for her inability to sleep?

To be fair to Harriet there has been a major change with James going back to work this week. But it has meant that I haven't had more than a few minutes spare to do 'adult' stuff (y'know, like updating this blog, holding phone calls of more than five minutes duration, thinking straight, etc.). Anyway it has been great for James to spend time with Miss Harry after work when he might otherwise only get an hour or so.

One of her current loves, collecting rocks, is just hilarious to watch. She will search out rocks in the most unlikely of places, including shopping centre planters, carparks (although these are usually just small bits of concrete gone astray), inside other people's houses (just today she walked right up to the front verandah of someone's house and picked up two rocks, turned around and came back out again) and along any city street. The joy she gets from them is indescribably cute - check out the grin in this photo. And this was just a small rock! We were at the park during high tide and after some rain; this meant the water was right up to the riverbank edge and Harriet was able to throw in her rocks to get a very satisfying splash.

She understands lots of relative terms such as "a couple", "a few"; "too" and "two" being different words; can count up to ten and now has started to add eleven and twelve to that as well; sings along to nearly every nursery rhyme we know.

But one of the most exciting developments in the world of Harriet involves two purchases we made today. Her soft squishy toilet seat (her 'special little girl toilet') because the other hard plastic one we had was hurting her, and a pack of underwear! Yep, this girl has pretty much toilet trained herself over the past week or so with absolutely no 'work' or intervention from us. Around the house she goes nappy free and when she hasn't got a nappy on she is 100% toilet trained, telling us early that she needs to do a wee or poo and then can hold it for anything up to a minute (actually probably longer too, we haven't really tested the limits) while we get all sorted. She even woke up the other morning with a completely dry nappy, walked out, sat on her potty and did a huge wee. So we bought the undies with the intention of hopefully moving her into those at home over the next few weeks to see how she goes with some material on her butt. But even when she has a nappy on and we're out she tells me that she needs to go "TOY-yet! Poo coming!" or "TOY-yet! Wee coming!".

Which is all quite convenient because we cannot find reusable swimming nappies ANYWHERE in her size. *sigh* So luckily it looks like we can trust she'll tell us when she's in the pool anyway. We went to the new Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre on APEC Friday and it is full of the most glorious natural light. There are two great pools for toddlers , one with lots of bubbles too. Apparently (I went out for coffee, gasp) Harriet actually swam two laps of the hydrotherapy pool on her noodle and then wanted her floaties on (which are too small for her now, another upgrade that's required). Here she is soldiering into the pool on her own, there is no stopping this child when a swim is imminent.

After the swim we went with Mal (one of my pregnant friends, congrats guys!) to Wagamama's and had some edamame. Mmmmm...oh and some salad...and gyoza...and moyashi soba...and fried rice...ummm...we may have over-ordered just a little. This shot was taken about three seconds before Harry fell face first down the steep gradient in front of her. She's getting a little better with the running skill but still has a way to go.

Just tonight when we were putting her to bed, she started telling us a story about going in a rocket to the moon. She put on her spacesuit and put one on Unit (one of her dolls) as well. Then they got in a rocket and counted down (can you believe she could even count down?!!) from five to one and then went ZWOOSHING...all over the room (which was actually space of course). and then they got in a "moon car" and went for "a drive".

- How are you getting down to the moon from the rocket?
- Moon car. Driving now.
- Where are you driving to Harriet?
- Home
- From the moon?
- Yeah. Unit has spacesuit off now (makes movements with hands over Unit to simulate taking off her spacesuit)
- Where's your spacesuit?
- Here. (holds out pinched fingers in the air)
- Want to do some space walking on the bed?
- Yeah. (starts to walk on her mattress) Oh, snuggle up in quilt!
- (parents desperate to embrace love of sleeping) Want to get in and go to sleep?
- Yeah! (cue disbelief from parents and a sleeping Harriet within TEN MINUTES)

I mean I probably have no idea about toddlers and all, but I really didn't expect this kind of extreme imagination play until she was a little bit older to tell you the truth. It's a hell of a lot of fun to be involved with! This photo is Harry telling us all about the buses that take us home. She's saying the three numbers out loud over and over so that she knows which bus it is when it comes down the street (here she is midway through saying TWO). Of course she still tried to jump in the 370 when it turned up but then again she does have an uncanny love of the omnibus method of transportation.

But gee she does some cute stuff every day, far too many things to remember which is a real shame. Plus she has a seriously cute lisp and voice generally but she is obssessed with watching herself on video, to the point where she will throw a huge crying fit over not being able to watch herself straight away and over and over again. Which means that we have precious little video of her in this gorgeous stage. Now that Blogger lets me upload video I'm hoping to snap some on the sly so that you can listen in on just how cute she sounds.

One last thing to leave on is that when we were out today we saw a packet of marbles in a netting style bag. Harry got SO excited, ran over and picked up the bag telling me over and over again that they were "marbleth! marbleth!". I was wondering where she had found out about marbles and figured James must have told her, so I said to her that when we got home Papa will teach her how to play marbles. The first thing she did was run up and give Papa his pair of socks. Then she started yeling out 'Marbleth Mama!", came over and retrieved them from me and held them out to Papa not just excitedly but ecstatically. It wasn't until James looked surprised at her interest that we realised she must have got the idea from a book we bought ages ago called "My Daddy is a Giant" where the boy can beat his very tall dad at marbles. Her memory for detail is truly amazing. We now take her memory for truth in all things and have given up questioning her because she is always correct.

4 comments:

Juniper said...

She is such a cutie! How exciting re: the big girl toilet and pants - clever girl!

Unknown said...

It's nice to hear of another rock loving child. My little man has a collection that is growing at an astounding rate. Even when we have been out and about to places where I am sure I didn't see a single rock anywhere in sight, he will later empty his pockets or the seat of his pram to reveal some much treasured loot.

casso said...

Ingrid - I hear you! I sometimes wonder how she developed her rock sensor because it is so sensitive! She can find a rock ANYWHERE too. Perhaps we have geologists amongst our midst.

Jen - Yeah to say we're excited is an understatement! We can't believe our luck with it to tell you the truth. Btw, Archie is gorgeous!

No one said...

So funny about the intereswt in spaceships, "Spaceship" is one of Bryn's new phrases, but his stems from having watched a carefully selected old Star Trek episode with Dave, and then Dave showed him our model Enterprise with lights and sound effects in the blacked out bedroom... So now what he sees anything "space like" (the boys have Sun-Earth day posters in their bedroom, for example), he gets very excited and calls out "spaceship, spaceship!"