No, Mamia

Michelle, I'm sorry about the lateness of my post! Last week we were all, one at a time, struck down with varying degrees of gastro. Poor Harriet woke up at 3am vomiting which was less than fun. She watched her first ever television that day, 30 minutes of Play School, because all she could do was sit there listlessly but didn't want to actually engage with anything poor babe.

But this week has been much brighter! Harriet is really using much more sophisticated language lately, saying things such as :

"Look outside Mama, beautiful day"
" You worried about Doll falling out"

" You not sad Mama, you upset"

"You don't like Ruby playing with your dollhouse"

Of course the pronoun issue is still with us, although she still does have the odd lapse into using the correct term every now and then.

Everything about her this week has really matured. Her play is much more autonomous now. In the first photo she has all of her dolls lined up on their cushions to keep them "comfortable" and then went along giving them all cuddles, checking their ears with her otoscope, giving them a kiss goodnight and "lie on top of me" which, in real life is when she lies on top of me to go to sleep, but in the case of her dolls was her lying on top of them. She can get very cosy with those dolls I tell you.

Just to show that I'm not lying or making it up, this is a little artistic installation she constructed while I was making Doll a dress the other day. She loves playing with the pins and I have stopped worrying about her because she is so careful with them, picking them up tentatively by the correct end, placing them in the little rosette and here putting them in some buttons, funny bunny.

Last weekend we washed Gromit. Gromit has had a rather hard life so far, and the colour of the water after we washed him was testament to that. He now looks so clean I worry that it's a different plush toy swapped secretly in the backyard where he lay drying overnight.

Harriet's issues of ownership seemed to have skipped the manic grabbing and screaming of "MINE!" that toddlers seem to have and moved on to a quiet authoritative, propriety. Admittedly she does occasionally say "Yours!" (her equivalent of mine of course) but she will more often push your hand away gently and say "No Mamia, Harriet's. You need your own [cashews, doll, book, etc.]". She also has no problem telling you exactly what she wants - one of the most oft heard phrases around these parts is "No, Mamia, no touch Harriet's hair ok?" as I trot after her trying to tame the birds nest exploding from the back of her head after yet another night's restless sleep.

For those of you interested in how her interest in reading is progressing, well it is quite firmly established. After only a couple of looks at Starfall, she now confidently knows all of the letters we've had a chance to look at (so I'd say about 80% of the alphabet) although she does still get 'o' and 'e' mixed up but that's more to do with their similarity of shape I think. I have been so worried about not pushing her that I think I've gone the other way! She was so excited to play with the starfall site that she kept asking for "more letters at the puter Mamia". I didn't even think it was doing much more than acting as light entertainment for her to tell you the truth, but then in one of the sequences I asked her which shape to put in place to make a word (they have shapes with letters inside that you put into a 'jigsaw' that spell out 'jump' in one section) and instead of saying "triangle" like I thought she would, she said "em, mmm, em", pointing at the 'm'. And she then proceeded to do similar things when I asked her, so it's definitely something she's enjoying.

We also met up with my lovely friend Melinda up at the hospital the other day, and Harry was in fine form, chatting away, posing for photos with the ease of a supermodel and generally being lots of fun. Melinda's daughter Luca is apparently very chatty too, so we're planning a get together with the two of them which will no doubt involve us not being able to get a word in. The other big event of this week was having Miss Ruby over for a play. Harriet had an absolute ball! Except of course for when Harry told me at the time and afterwards that she wasn't happy about Ruby touching her dollhouse. But I think she was more than just a little bit happy when she was covered from head to toe with in paint, mud and water from playing outside with Ruby. I think Ruby may have even had more fun than Harriet, but they are definitely great mates an d can play together pretty much effortlessly which is mighty handy considering Nadia is due any day now!