Decisions, Decisions

So which do you prefer? The b&w or the colour version? Personally I'm leaning towards the colour because it has a certain quality to it (kind of like that old Flake ad of the woman under the tree - 70s alert!).

Anyway it was taken as Harriet was immersed in a book - a Linux manual. Make of that what you will! Lately she has enjoyed singing the alphabet song constantly. And you know that when we talk about Harriet such terms as 'constantly' really are meant to be taken as literally as you can. She also is obssessed with "Going on a Bear Hunt" the song on the PlaySchool cd (not the Oxenbury book). We are constantly being asked "BEAR HUNT!". Asked? Hmmm...strong exhortation is probably the better way to phrase it.

She also loves to sing along, and does so in time and with about half of the lyrics of the longer songs now, like Bear Hunt and Teddy Bears' Picnic. It's very cute to hear her saying seriously in the back seat (in her 'special little girl seat') "Can't go over it - have to go through it".

When we go out to the park or down the street with the heater (you know, the usual in this house), Harry has taken to showing a strong fascination with the collection of rocks. She likes to examine them and tell me which ones are going to make a big splash (said with a very cute slight lisp of "thplath" - the Hayes clan would be proud) and which are smaller. Then, if possible, it's back to any nearby body of water (be that bowl in the backyard or river) where we can throw them in. And boy does she have a pitcher's arm on her! Do not - let me repeat, do NOT - be within a five metre radius (in any direction) of this girl when she's pitching a rock! Power is her forte, direction is still lagging in focus.

There is SO much to write about at the moment and I'm just drawing a blank which is really frustrating. All three of us have been at home this past fortnight because James is changing jobs (yay!) and Harriet loves it! The calls for Papa are equal to the calls for Mama now which is lovely to see/hear and she has certain things she loves Papa to do specifically.

OH! Just remembered that one of her latest 'things' is to get something, like one of her dolls perhaps, and put them say on a chair and then yell at them "NO! NO Doll! Off chair!" and then she turns to me and says "Mama, tell Doll NO, get off chair". Hmmm... she really does love to discipline which is quite funny given that we don't say no to her (part of our 'working with' approach to raising her). Of course occasionally we have the odd no pop out when she's in potential danger but by and large we're a no-free zone around here.

She is also in love with the dinosaur tshirt that you can see her wearing in the 'heater walk' post. In fact that night she wore it to bed and then the next day she wouldn't take it off either, so it was a good 36hr wear we got from that one. It was a pretty easy decision to go and spend a whopping $7.50 to buy another one. Hearing her say (well, attempt to say) 'tyrannosaurus' is very cute too.

At the moment every day is heaps of fun (have I ever really said otherwise?), but gee it helps when she has a day sleep! I can hear Papa and Harriet returning from the park now so I'll adieu and try to think of more things to write about soon.

View From Our Backyard Right Now!

Taken with a shoddy lens and with shoddy skills, but this is the view from our backyard as of about ten minutes ago! The lunar eclipse is beautiful and we haven't been happier about the awesome view of the moon we get than we are tonight!

ps - Click on the photo to see it bigger and better

In Lieu of a Dog

I have blogged previously about how Harriet enjoys liberating balloons. That hasn't changed, but now she's switching her attentions to other items in the household. Today she informed me that she was taking the heater for a walk. Sure, I could handle that, I'm a hip and with it kinda mama surely (yeah yeah, stop laughing!).

What I didn't realise was that the walk would go to the back door...




...back into the lounge room... (note the intense concentration)



















...turn around in the lounge room to do a lap of the coffee table...

...and then out on to the street!

Yes, that is Harriet out on the footpath of our street pushing our little heater along. And this girl had a purpose too. Not too sure what it was myself but we had to go in a specific direction and she had to push and I had to pull the cord (hence the rather boring POV in the photos since I was pulling a power cord at the time).


Here Harry is inspecting the status of the castors and the direction that the walk is taking us all in. She was busy making some important decisions about the future of the heater.

But before that could occur we needed a little song break. SO we stopped to sing two rounds of Twinkle, Twinkle (which she now actually sings rather than just says).






Then we both got distracted by the awesome rocks to be found at the base of the tree we had stopped at to sing. Harry's latest favourite activity is to collect rocks. Here we managed to collect rocks for Jedda (because she's sick Harriet keeps getting things "for Jedda"), Poppy, Papa, and then Harriet started talking about "the lady". Not knowing who this strange lady was, I went with the flow...

...and realised she meant the ephemeral "shop lady". Harriet proceeded to 'pay the lady' by laying out very carefully all of the rocks she had collected in her bag, along with a random 10c coin she found in there as well.






This is what the lady received for her troubles.






Then it was back to work. I think it was about this time that we received a joyful 'toot' from some council workers driving a truck down our street. Harry gave them a dutiful wave and then was back at it.








You can see just how far we ended up from our house (if you know where we areoff course!). Our house is just over the rise you can see in the background of this shot.

Then we made it home quick smart because Harry decided that walking the heater wasn't fun anymore and the sun was too much and the rocks were banging against her legs and she didn't want to walk and Mama carry and and and andandand...

So Mama ended up carrying Harry under one arm and the heater under another back up the footpath to our house. When we got inside Harriet had a little lie down on her bed and then walked into the playroom, opened up the folding doors and closed them back around herself as you can see here. Don't ask me man, I'm just a visitor in her reality. It's a pretty fun ride though.

So next time your toddler suggests taking the heater for a walk don't say an automatic "No", just see where the flow takes you.

(Note: sorry about the formatting if you're not using IE; there's some form of cross-browser issue. We will try to fix it for future posts.)

Favourite Books

It's safe to say we don't really need to visit the library anymore. It's official - after her birthday, Harriet has no more need for new books (of course having said that I went out and bought her a couple more today...BUT they were about going to the doctor and even had a photo of someone using an otoscope inside, which totally fascinated her). Anyway, back to the topic. Well she loves, loves, loves her books. These are the current faves which we read through not once, or twice, or even three times in a sitting.


Well this had the hallmarks of a favourite before we opened it this birthday. Straight from Great Grandma to Harriet, all the best bits of life are contained herein - wombats, carrots and digging holes. The illustrations are divine and Harry loves to look at all the drawings of the wombat sleeping and saying "AWAKE!" to them. Obviously the main pastime of a wombat is not to her liking.

Oh God. OH GOD!!!! This goddamn book is the bane of our lives. It's seems friendly enough doesn't it? Boy leaves his favourite teddy on a train and goes on a magical journey to find him. Well, whimsy doesn't wash too well with this Mama and Papa team. Plus the illustrations show a rather sullen and - how to put this - downright ugly boy. Harriet is obssessed with this book though and demands reading after reading - we have to tell the story in the car, when out on the street, lying in bed, out in the backyard...the list goes on. She says "Daniel's Train!" and then a plaintive "Special TEEEDDDDDDD!" which is what we say Daniel is yelling out from the train as he goes on his voyage. I really hate this book. *sigh*


Now this book, on the other hand, also has a Daniel protagonist. But this book is incredibly beautiful, all about a boy who goes to a cottage by the beach one summer and gets up in the middle of the night to see the hundreds and hundreds of horseshoe crabs come up to shore in the middle of the night to lay their eggs. The illustrations are such gentle watercolours, and Harriet loves to say softly "look like rocks but really crabs" as we turn the page to where a double spread shows the beach crowded with the unsightly 'crabs' (they are really arthropods and there is a well written point form information page at the back). I love reading her this book. It seems such an odd choice for a two year old to love because nothing much really happends but she is enchanted by it.


"Read boy star, read boy star" has become the refrain after her party on the weekend. The lovely Jay, Scott and Poe bought Harriet this beautiful book, all about a boy who wants a star for a friend. She can now say it word for word. No word of a lie, when James first read it to her she asked for it again and again without pausing to so much as scratch herself for the next EIGHT readings. My favourite part is where the boy realises he can't use his rocket to get to the star because he used up all of its petrol last Tuesday when he went to the moon. It's only a small, square book, perfect for popping into a bag to keep her entertained. Only problem is that she loves to sit there with us reading...hang on, that isn't a problem at all!


Shaun Tan lived about three streets away from us when we were living over in Perth! We loved his books so much that we bought them in anticipation of Harriet liking them when she was much older. Only thing is Harry had other ideas. She found this book and fell in love with the ilustrations (as does every single person who looks at it) and loves to shake her head sombrely and say "Nobody understands". She also loves the double page where the girl is on a large snail and the text says "Sometimes you wait and wait and wait and wait and wait but nothing ever happens" (not an exact quote mind you). Anyway, Harriet reads along with me and then does a big sigh and says "nothing ever happens". Oh it's very difficult to be a toddler. As I commiserated with her one day "I'm sure it must feel like all you do is wait some days Harry" to which I received a big nod. According to Harriet, this book is all about not having your Mama and the red tree represents Mama. Seriously, this is what she told us on more than one occasion. It is an incredible book and we can't recommend Shaun Tan's work highly enough.


*blergh* This pink vomit came from Michelle and Peter - thanks guys! (note: not too sure what percentage of the thanks is genuine though). But you can be assured that Harriet loves your present. Harriet just read through this yesterday for the first time and has asked for it to be read and re-read at least once every half an hour since. She is fixated on one of the characters, Henry, who is sitting on a swing. Harry keeps calling him Henrietta though, because this is Papa Jimbo's pet name for her. Anyway, she now 'does' ballet - this entails touching her fingertips with extended arms above her head and pirouetting. At least this is cute!

But unfortunately we can't find a photo of her absolute favourite, all-time book. It is at the cafe we go to regularly and unfortunately has morphed into being about absolutely everything. It is a short story about Mama Bunny and Boy Bunny. Harry will just start asking for "Mama Bunny Boy Bunny", which is shorthand for "Tell me the story about what we're about to do or have just done through the medium of bunny". In the original story, Mama Bunny asks Boy Bunny to go to the shops to buy some candles for a birthday cake, but there aren't any at the shop. Then on his way home he crashes his trike and gets a scrape on his knee. So while he's sitting there he has a visit from some fairies who fix his trike, kiss his knee better and bring some of their own candles to his house for the cake.

It's fairly inane to say the least, but it was this chance encounter that made us aware that she was ready for books with a longer narrative than we had previously been offering her. Perhaps this explains some of the fascination, but it has now grown into a bloated extension of our lives - Mama Bunny asks Boy Bunny to go to Marrickville Metro for some candles and he gets to go on the cars and let go of a balloon...and you can see where this is heading.

Anyway, just a short post on the favourite books for this week. No doubt there will be a complete changeover within the next fortnight, but for now you can imagine we're sitting there reading these books over and over. OH! And last night she asked for Lisa's Russell the Sheep book a few times in a row...so we're figuring that one is moving up the list. Wonder which book will be bumped off to make way?

Quick Congratulations!

Well I am just about to head out the door when I realised that I hadn't made public my HUGE congratulations to all of my friends who have recently announced their pregnancies! I found out over five days that five of my friends are pregnant! As one or two of them are still keeping it a bit quiet I won't announce everyone by name here just yet, but suffice to say I am very excited for them - everything from first to third children are expected. We may get to offload some more baby stuff amongst them all and, even more exciting, I get to take some photos of glorious newborns (and then get to go home for sleep too!). YAY!

SO big belly hugs to all the beautiful, happy, expecting women out there.

Also a big welcome to the world for Mr Archie! Born feet first at home, his Mama is a true labouring champion!

As Harry would say - "Babies come out Mama's gi-nah". They sure do, Harriet.

The Party

Well the day after her actual birthday, Harriet had her much awaited birthday party at the local park. We were up until 1am the night before baking for it (*eep*) , and had mountains of scones (pumpkin, raisin and plain), biscuits (chocolate for the adults and plain), dips with vegies and of course, everyone favourite - fruit kebabs! Being modelled here by the scarred Miss Harry.

Well the face plant story is as follows. The local park is one of the favourite haunts of the mosque at the end of our street. There are some Saturday mornings where it is so busy before 10am that you just don't bother going down there until afterwards. So in order to make sure we secured the little gazebo we wanted, I sent James and Harriet down to the park early on to start putting up the decorations. Well they had been out of the house for about ten minutes when the home phone rang, just as I was about to get into the shower. All I could hear was an almoghty wailing and James' panicked voice saying "Harry's just had a really bad fall off the swing, I think we better come back home". I sigh and say "Ok"...and then they walk in! Oh my god! I swooped up my poor little baby in my arms and she just sat there giving off deep, hitching sobs until she was finally able to take a deep breath and have some boobia. So as all of the early guests arrived they were regaled by my unwashed self sitting plonk down right in the centre of the playroom with a bashed up toddler in my lap and unable to say hello or give them a view of the birthday girl. It was truly tragic.

But Harriet eventually got into the swing of party mode - by the time we made it down to the park she was pretty much right as rain again. She was routinely running down to the river and throwing her sticks and rocks into the river, which is her current favourite activity. James keeps pointing out that her solid side throw is akin to a softball pitcher's (or something, I really don't understand this weird sport-speak he goes on with). But Harriet wasn't particularly interested in paying down at the park or with any of the other children there (except Miss Ruby of course). She kept running away to play on her own.

And as soon as Jo and Isabelle turned up with their present (a doll that was immediately dubbed 'Sleepy Doll'), Harry was then totally focused on spending some quality one-on-one time with her new addition to the family. Here she was taking her over to the water for some quiet boobia. But apparently she was going to keep her top on because it was "too cold for boobia Mama, just pretend".

This ended up being Harry's birthday cake - for her, anyway. When I made the test run of her cake (a low sugar ricotta cheesecake that just happened to be in the SMH a week before her party, thank you Bill Granger) I was so excited because it turned out pretty much spot on, despite our recalcitrant oven. I offered her a small sliver of it and she held it in her mouth for aagggeess. Until finally she spat it out and said emphatically "no birthday cake, corn cake Mama". Ah, she really doesn't have much taste for the sweet stuff. And so she had her much beloved organic corn cakes for her birthday 'cake' instead, while the rest of us ate up big on the cheesecake. I am proud to report that there were only two thin slices left after all was said and done, so I'm imagining that most people liked it (not too many half eaten slices around or in the bin that I spied).

The birthday girl was incredibly spoilt by everyone who came. She was lavished with the most thoughtful and awesome gifts, which were completely unexpected. Her gifts included the aforementioned Sleepy Doll (who has to accompany Doll to bed with us now), an incredible gift bag from Lisa that had a garden set, ladybird bag (that I'm sure Harriet doesn't want and requires a more...uhmm..'mature' home - nudge nudge wink wink), book set, book, large fish puppet from Sam, a gorgeous cardigan, books galore, two homemade dresses (!!!), Little People plane, dress up doll with outfits, puzzle, Spanish memory cards...oh look, I really shouldn't have started listing them because there were seriously wayyyy too many to list and they are all incredibly thoughtful and each was just so perfectly considered for the little person that Harriet is.

I guess that was what really struck me during the party - just how much people seemed to genuinely love and care for Harriet. We even had people who don't have children out, in public, socialising in a park before 12pm on a weekend! *shock* But she really is just her own little person, and regardless of who we know and how we know them, Harry is starting to develop her own relationships with others independently from us. It's beautiful to see - at one stage I looked up from talking to Lisa and saw that behind her was James, over to my left was Harry's Nana and Grandpa and...no Harry to be seen! I then looked over at the playground where Miss Harriet was playing with Georgia over on the bouncy toy, happy as - well, as happy as Harry. When James asked her who her best friend is she answered "Georgia". Awwww..... In this photo she had taken me across to the adjacent gazebo so that she could have a look inside Sleepy Doll's ear with her 'otoscope' (aka a stick). Her recent interest lies in the doctor's profession, and she loves having all of her dolls and teddies look with 'otoscopes', 'thalmascopes' and 'tethascopes' as she looks in their ears, eyes and listens to their hearts. It is very cute and I must admit to being quite bemused at people being surprised at her walking around proudly proclaiming "Otoscope look Doll's ear - red and sore".

At the end of the morning it was time to do some serious pigeon chasing with Grandpa as the sky rats descended on our clean up operations. She was so excited to run around and spend time with Nana and Grandpa, but I don't know how happy the pigeons were about it. She ended up having a sleep for a couple of hours after her huge morning, and then the festivities didn't end there.

Our gorgeous friend Jodie and her son Xavier had flown up that morning from Wodonga. Poor Xavier (and of course Jodes too)had been up since 5am, but he still managed to soldier on in a thoroughly good mood for a dinner out on King St. Harriet is in LOVE, she and Xavier were truly complementary in their play and loved running up and down the road together, then running inside together playing the work/home game and just generally playing beautifully together. He is so adorable, the most gentle little soul and an incredible runner! We think he was giving Harry some tips because her running style has improved since his visit. And although I keep writing about it and thought that there would be more than enough warning on this blog, Jodes was still amazed at how much Harry talks! I tell you people, the girl is a conversationalist, she just doesn't shut up.

Will be back in soon to let you know about our other adventures in Harryland. We haven't even touched on the dollhouse yet!

Belated Happy Second Birthday!

To my gorgeous, sweet, entertaining, talkative, gentle, hilarious, intuitive, empathetic, wonderful daughter:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Oh and ps - sorry about the massive face plant you did off the swing less than an hour before your birthday party. And the major lump that grew from your forehead as a result. And the scrapes on your forehead/chin/lip/cheek.


As you can see, it has been a big week! I have heaps to write about, much more than just her big accident, but we are both exhausted from staying up late all week, baking for the party, holding the party, cleaning up after the party, looking after our beautiful daughter after her big week and looking after ourselves as well. James is starting a new job soon but is having some time off beforehand, so I might get a chance to come on here and get some updates done.

I will be back - no, seriously, I promise. And yes, her bruises and scrapes are BAD!

Great Day!

Ok after the big post yesterday thought I'd do a mini-post today. The weather was incredible - 23 degrees, sunny, warm, gorgeous. We got so much done today, multiple loads of washing, I cooked (yes, yes, I know, amazing) spannikopita and carrot soup (Harry loves it). Harriet grated parmesan and then wanted to progress to grate apple as well. She then helped me cut up spring onions (as well as eating one full one as well as three pickled onions in a row) and here I took a photo of her cutting up a pear. She also cracked an egg (with some help), stirred the spannikopita mix, was scared by the ants on the back step, announced it was "nearly too dark for painting" when she got up from her nap and that was after she told me she wanted to "go bed now mama". *shock*

We had sing-a-long galore with the nursery rhyme cd (damn you Jack and Jill! I haven't stopped singing it on request for about 36hrs now), Harriet painted two big paintings (we use SMH pages now because I decided I didn't want to use new paper for her masterpieces) and we hung them out to dry. This was very interesting to Harry, who commented on them being pegged up quite a lot. I also mowed the lawn and all the dishes were cleaned too!


The funny thing was that we'd been planning on going to Big Park today becaue we bought a new spade on the weekend (well it was secondhand but new for Harry). But the little monkey was resisting getting all the stuff together for getting out of the house and then we couldn't find the spade, so we just decided to stay in. I am so glad we did! Eventually we found the spade and this is what Harriet did with it - stuck it in the sliding door of the toilet.


And although these look like they're photos of the sink in our toilet, they are actually of Harriet wearing the many acitivites of her day quite literally. There's soup on there, pink and green paint, milk that got spilt (no, no-one cried), and some other miscellaneous life forms.

When Papa came home we were told that it was time to go out for babycino. At first she suggested "Newtown" but then changed to "Marrickville", which sounded much more like "mack-na-veel". So we went to Marrickville, had a babycino. Then she went up and asked for another one from the lady at the counter. And finally it was time for Harriet's favourite - sushi train! She was chanting the mantra of "sushi train, edamame, sushi train, edamame". Luckily we nabbed the big table at the front and Harry indulged in her favourite food fo the moment.

And that was the wonderful day that was today.

Triangle Girl

Harry is a real little character, you may have worked out. She delights in putting together two words that make no sense at all (eg: "shoe/papa") but it is even funnier if the words rhyme (eg: "rumble/tumble"). I'm quite surprised at how pronounced her sense of humour is, she finds real pleasure in using new words and then almost immediately deliberately mis-using them. The latest great activity is to sing the last word at the end of the line from a wide variety of nursery rhymes. She can actually sing the whole song if you prompt her but she can't sing them in the correct melody, so she instead has Mama on constant rotation. But now when I pause at the end of the line of a song instead of hearing Harriet's chirpy little voice pitch in with, say, "frog" as the correct word, she'll say "Papa" or "car" or something equally absurd and go off in a peal of giggles! She's a crack up.

Do other two year olds do that as well? I haven't seen any do it but then again other toddlers don't seem to be quite as verbose as Miss Harry. When we went to the hospital the paediatric nurse made comment on how much she talked, so we thought that it's probably a pretty good indication that she really might be a big talker rather than just being our skewed view. In this photo Harry was at her favourite cafe (and ours too, the breakfast menu is incredible and the whole upper floor is dedicated to children, we love it!). They have quite a selection of dolls there and you can see in the background that Harry insisted on them all being systematically being stripped of their clothing, then stacked high on the table to 'watch' as she had her babycino.

Whilst we're still on the doll thing (and with Harry there really is no time when the doll 'thing' isn't on), here she is stopping on one of our river walks to give Doll some boobia. It's a hard job being a Mama but when Doll asks, Doll gets (she's obviously a demand feeder). These walks by the river at the end of our street have been so gorgeous lately, the weather has been crisp but fine and quite warm once the sun is out. Harry gets to have a ride in the Ergo, Papa's shoulders and lots of runs, yelling behind her "Mama no catch up!". Doll also gets some time in her own sling (really just a sarong I bought at Glebe markets a couple of weeks ago), but then once she tires of that she is shaken off her back quite viciously and Harry then continues running.

We went to explore down at the coffee festival at The Rocks a few weekends ago and Harry was a little out of sorts but seemed to enjoy hearing all the different little jazz-y type bands that were set up on various small stages. Her interest is definitely in percussion at this stage, when we see bands it's always the drums she comments on. She also loves to play her floor tom at home and on a recent trip to NanaGrandp's house (yes they are one entity according to Harriet) she even managed to walk away with some swizzle sticks that she is still using as drumsticks back here at home.

Talking about our Maitland journey, here is Harry and Grandpa seeing eye to eye on the issue of reading books. They were in there for quite a while chatting about books and Harry was educating Grandpa all about what the best books are to read and which ones she already knows by heart (and heaven forbid if you miss a word or two or try to replace a word here or there - you WILL be corrected!). It was while we were up there that I had Harry upside down and noticed the huge chunk of white searing across her upper left gum. Considering the nightmare screamer she became as an infant when teething I honestly can't believe that she's dealing with this tooth (and now the upper right one is making an appearance too) with such relative calm.

I just can't impress upon people just how BAD Harry is at travelling. On our trip up I was forced into singing for the full two hour drive. Sure, not normally that stressful (nor fun though). However I was losing my voice and could barely crack out the first verse of Teddy Bears' Picnic above the sound of the car. Harry ended up screaming until she was red in the face, refused to sleep and was generally pretty fractious by the time we got to our destination.

Next day we had a big day out with Nana, making trips to a really cool park that had a train and the all-important swing set. Then at the beach we all had lots of fun running around, Harry was very focused on rubbing sand over her feet and Nana ended up shoes off, rolling up her jeans and getting wet with Harry at the beach while Mama was the wet blanket staying fully clothed (and keeping the camera safe and dry). By the time we wandered up to have lunch at the cafe we realised it was 1pm and after the horror day drive yesterday, Harriet was totally circular and hysterical.

Well, she only broke one plate when we were there, and I only cracked it once on the drive home with Nana. But gee she looked pretty cute when we were there - she was sitting on the bench screaming out "BABYCINO! BABYCINO!" in a way I'd never heard before. When we got home I realised it was because she was so exhausted - she slept for about three hours when Grandpa had come specicically early to play with her. Talk about bad timing.

By the time we drove home Harry seemed to be on more of an even keel however, which was a bummer for Grandpa who didn't really get to see Harriet in full form (and, can you believe it, she slept for over an hour in the car on the way home!). We had a 'pizza picnic' with Georgia that night on the floor of our house and Harriet was in raptures watching her doll doing the cancan.

What stuff is she doing at the moment? Well she hasn't ever really been a big counter, but I think we've underestimated her knowledge of numbers quite dramatically. She told us that you ahve to be "five" to be a "big girl" and when Lily (who is nearly five and bright as a button) was doing some counting Harry then piped up with "eighteen" being "higher" than "five". She then counted to five today and continued on with "six, seven, two, ten". Actually I guess I could have written there that she counted to seven... *sigh*...who has the issue with numbers? But it's more that I'm surprised that she seems to understand the numbers themselves.

She's also right into the alphabet at the moment and now when she asks me to draw something she also asks me to write it. No big surprise there because she's been asking me to write words for at least six months now. But now she wants me to go through each word and sound out the letters. I can ask her which letters are which (phonetically, not by their 'name') and she can do most of the usual suspects (like 's' and 'm' and 'r' and 'b' and 'o' which seem to be a bit easier to pick out for her).

Hee hee, I know I'm evil but I had to snap this photo before placating her. This is the expression she pulled hen I told her we had left Doll at home (we were only about ten minutes' drive away from NanaGrandpa's house). She got over it pretty quickly actually and was content to follow around the evil gaggle of geese that ran the park we stopped at.

One cute thing Harry is doing at the moment is talking in her sleep. This afternoon when I went in to resettle her from her afternoon nap (she's having one about every second day now, so I do get the occasional read of the newspaper, I know you must all be so relieved), she was saying "soda water" and stuffing her blanket into her mouth. Riiiighhhht. And other somnulent phrases have included "Grandpa top", "sock thing" (this is the name of one of her favourite book characters - Lisa your Kipper book has been a HUGE and I mean HUGE hit!) and "keez-mo" (her name for Squeezmo, one of our cats, the doofus one).

And just in case you were wondering where Harry got her beautiful blue eyes from (I am still not convinced they're going to last but anyway...) here she is with her spunky Papa who is working in Melbourne at the moment. Harry points to aeroplanes in the sky and says quite matter-of-factly "Papa in plane. Go airport to pick up. Saturday.". Apparently everything happens with Papa on a Saturday because that's when he is normally home all day. It's pretty cute. I'm hoping to persuade her to come with me to the airport on Wednesday, otherwise it's a sad old wait for Papa at the airport for the next three days.

I was just about to hit 'post' and realised I hadn't explained the title of this post! Harry found the triangle in the music box a few weeks ago (I told you she loved percussion) and I told her it was called a triangle. She looked right back at me, gave it a good *DING* and yelled out "Triangle Girl!". Oh and she is obssessed with opera - sopranos only, tenors hold no interest for her. Choral arrangements are ok as well, but when we get in the car I usually have the request for "op-rah Mama, op-RAH!" (and no, we're not talking about a talk show host here). I know Great Aunty Judy will be more than a little happy about that! I'm not into opea at all, so I had to go out and buy a box set of popular opera arias to give her the opera fix she obviously craves. Today we worked out a great new game called 'opera drumming'. She plays the drums, I have to sing along in a soprano (*ahem* well I try) voice and I have to make the lyrics all about how we're playing a great game called opera drumming.

OH and she also loves to tell me that what's she's doing is a "game'. She pushes her stroller away from her and runs after it. Harry makes sure she turns around whilst running to say "Stroller game Mama". *phew* lucky she's got me in the loop on that one. Here Harry is sharing the bouncy toy at the park with Tara. I'd just like to point out that Tara is only four months younger than Harriet. This may give you an indication of how tall she is, but probably not much, I need to get more photos of her with friends up here.

OH and again I nearly forgot to post that she is right into imaginative play. I can hand her a 'wipe' (ie: hold out my fingers as though they're pinching a wipe) and she takes it and uses it. She'll hand me "yucky poo" or a "tissue" like this as well which of course I have to reject and be disgusted by, eliciting a peal of giggles. But this is great because if she wants something and I can't get it to hand very quickly she will be quite happy to take it from me in the form of pure air and then play around quite happily with it.

Ok, that should be about all for now, I'll be back on with some more day-to-day stuff from now on I promise! Sorry Michelle!

Sabbatical

Apologies for the lack of posts. Have been having a break from the computer, the internet and the people you can find on here. But thank you for worrying and sending me emails and phone calls, it's still surprising that you all want to read this drivel!

Have been away in Maitland and whilst away James liberated me from my mobile charger by taking it for a trip to Melbourne. This rendered me without phone or email/web access for a few days, a hitherto unknown world. So I'll be back online properly to fill you in on the life, loves and leaps in Harry's world. She's currently getting a huge upper molar in and has been a little flat (ie: not giggling like crazy all the time) for the past week. Nevertheless during my absence from the online world she has started singing her ABC song (with large gaps of course!), counting to four and understanding it, she did a wee on her potty today and she sings along with quite a few songs, as well as progressing to using lots of different sentence structures than before. She's all grown up!

Since most of you need to get back to reading your final Harry Potter book, I'll just leave you with what you come here to see - a photo of the most delightful child around. Will be back soon to write up properly.