Saturday, November 10, 2007

Tiny Hippos

* Harriet didn't know what noise hippos make. Neither did James. So he suggested that Harriet think of a noise that they might make. Harry came up with her own 'hippo noise'. It sort of sounds like someone with a stutter trying to say "bell", or even someone very drunk trying to French kiss the air. But anyway, that's what noise hippos make.

* And don't go around telling Harriet that hippo is actually an abbreviation of hippopotamus. Because you are WRONG, yes, flatly, outrightly, wrong. There is a hippopotamus in one of her books, but the stuffed animal on her bed is a hippo and never the twain shall meet.

* Plus if you ever want to catch a hippo, just ask Harry to do it for you. Apparently they are everywhere. She can find them just by plucking thin air. In fact, on request she can even find four or five hippos no matter where she sits or stands. The girl is like the HippoMaster. Today she was even throwing hippo after hippo off the edge of a ferry.

* "You don't know why" - is said reasonably often each day (read: at least once an hour). For example tonight she was in the bath with her doll Boomer (not Doll, because Doll can't get wet. So Doll sits on teh side adn waves hello). She had Boomer on her back and Harry said "Boomer doing different backstroke" {pause} "You don't know why". {insert parental laughter here}. Although the "not knowing why" can become a little tedious when it is repeated after the same story time and time again, it is still pretty cute. I just had a thought - I wonder how many times I have used the word cute in this blog?

* "You don't know that [man/girl/lady/boy]'s name" - said randomly as we walk along the street, waiting in line, sitting in a cafe, playing in the park, you get the picture.

* Her logic is pretty flawless. This afternoon she talked us through the complete reasoning behind not eating her noodle off the floor (by the way I have no problem with her eating food off the floor, so this is all from her). "You can't eat that from the floor. Noodle on the floor, the floor is yucky, no pick it up and eat it because noodle is now yucky" - this was said quite intently to Doll so that she was kept up to speed with the etiquette of eating out. But generally Harriet knows the reasons why and why not for everything.

* "You very excited, you don't know why" - This has been a recent addition to the repertoire. Today she was on the seat on the ferry jumping up adn down and yelling with happiness and then saying this. Hmmmm...can anyone say 'happy flash'?

* And continuing on the 'like mother like daughter' theme, we were at playgroup on Thursday adn at the end they have singing. Harry sat through all the songs and the last one is always 'Twinkle Twinkle' with Colleen. Colleen sang it and said "Thank you" but Harriet was already yelling out "Der Glumph! Der Glumph!". Colleen laughed and said "I've never had a request before". Now anyone who has been with me to a Bernie gig can only begin to understand just how proud this made me feel (and I wanted to just drag her along right then and there to the Rose but of course it's only filled with drunks and pokies on a Thursday morning...and a Wednesday night as well but that's another story).

Not too sure what last weekend's no-sleep issue was about, but it may have to do with her big jump in development this week. She also has her last molar coming through on the lower left - yippee! We were out with friends at the museum on Wednesday and she was a bit upset about what the other girl was doing to her and she said to me "You angry about what [girl is] doing". I was impressed that she had the ability to not only recognise her emotions but to verbalise them in a moment of calm to me as well.
She also has started wanting to 'write' when at the whiteboard. Yesterday she drew a "road" with "ends" (ie: a horizontal line with two squiggly bits at each end of it). Then she drew letters "sitting on road", as if she was writing them on lined paper! Of course her 'letters' were just little squiggles but she said when drawing a 'B' - "Buh...circle....straight line...THERE!". Errr...maybe not quite, but I was still surprised that she knew the components of drawing the letters when we haven't talked about that at all.
Speaking of 'maybe' she also loves to put maybe at the end of sentences. "You put this on Doll maybe"..."You eat this out in playroom maybe"...usually said with an earnest nodding of the head at the completion of the statement as if she expects us to prevent her from doing said activity or something. Quite odd.
Still, just like Bryn it turns out, Harriet's favourite activity is still to dip her finger into the margarine tub. She can manage a pretty hefty swipe too. Apparently it's "much nicer with whole thing Mama". Riiiighhhhttt.
And we have had a pronoun breakthrough! Yay! Just today she has started to use "me" and "I" correctly; in an intermittent fashion for sure, but correctly nonetheless.
I'm writing this because even though I should be PPing, my computer has decided to have a little attack and I am having to reinstall CS3 and Bridge. *sigh* And even then I'm not assured of my problem being solved. So I'm not even procrastinating, I'm really truly unable to do any work. You trust me don't you? And tomorrow is Newtown Festival plus Walk Against Warming so it's going to be a big one and I'm already sleepy. I should really go to bed, which is how I end a lot of these blog posts. One day I'll sit down to write a well composed, thought-out, insightful entry. And everyone will be amazed. Not least of all me.
Edited to say that I have now tried four times to fix the spacing in this post but it keeps reverting back to this odd thing, with no paragraph breaks where appropriate, so apologies for the difficult reading nature of this entry towards the end.

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