Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Disclaimer: the above video will make no sense unless you read on and also click on the links (well, the second link anyway).

Disclaimer II: the above video will probably still make little sense after you've watched both links and read the story. Welcome to our world.

When Harriet grabs hold of an interest, well this child really holds on with all fours and some darn sharp teeth. Case in point: today. For the past couple of months I've been singing her 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' as a lullaby when it's my turn to put her to sleep. She's been increasing her requests for it over the past few weeks and this morning I thought I'd show her the clip from the movie of Judy Garland singing it. This is what she watched here.

Then while we were watching that for the second time I remembered that I had watched a clip of a little girl singing it on a show in Britain. I found that too, here. I thought Harry would enjoy seeing a little girl performing and I was right; Harriet was entranced with both of them and we watched them over and over again. In the second clip I'm not sure if it was the pregnancy hormones or not but I was sitting behind her surreptitiously wiping away the tears. Something about that little girl's voice made me just lose it!

So anyway, for the rest of the afternoon, Harry would alternate between being the 'big girl' (Dorothy/Judy Garland) who "lives on a farm and loves her animals, especially Toto" and had her little plush dog in her arms (funnily enough, today he acquired the name Toto as well, in an amazing turn of serendipity) and being the 'little girl' Connie. Now Connie sings quietly and Dorothy sings loudly. And Harriet was more than eager to explain this difference by example all afternoon.

We were walking up to the vet's and Harriet started telling me all about how if you went in one direction it made the new country (the land of Oz, I told her a very abridged version of the story) come up and if you went in the other direction it made the farm come back. And Dorothy was very gentle with Connie and she went to school but Connie didn't, so when Harriet was being Dorothy she knew all sorts of things that Connie didn't (like how you can peel the bark off the paper tree we were walking past "You see that Mama? Connie doesn't know about things like that cos she is only a little girl. I think maybe that she even doesn't know about things like how horses eat hay and stuff" was one of the rambling sentence groups that kind of made up her very animated conversation this afternoon).

When we got home at about 4pm it was like she was completely drunk (and for all I know, probably she'd been swigging some of my Maison, the scamp) . This video was taken after she'd been awake for about 12hrs straight and if you remember that episode of The Simpsons...well, if she knew what a hummingbird was she would have been doing the same thing.

Essentially she gets the bare bones of whatever she is interested in lately and then "I make up my own version of the story now". So in the video she is talking about how Dorothy is watching Connie from the audience (but up the back which is why you don't see her in the video clip) and claps her and gets her down from the stage. Harry is often quite interested/concerned about how people get in and out of places, especially those shopfronts in food courts where they have a little counter that lifts up to get out.

Anyway, this video offers you a very long six minute window into our world of late. Harry gets very overtired by bedtime when she wakes up early in the morning and we often get these slightly hysterical rantings in a show-like form. Personally I love how she is quite expressive with her hands. Dunno where she gets that little trait from.

What She's Up To

Since it's been a while between posts (to say the least, I know) I thought I'd give you all an update on what Harriet likes doing and playing. I also just wanted to point out that this first photo looks much better if you double click on it and see it BIG. That is a whole lot of pasta sauce on her face there (and on her brand new top she was wearing as well!).

The Sound of Music is a huge hit here. When the full-on lethargy hit at about 7wks I could barely keep my eyes open by about 3pm. So we rolled out our tv (it lives in a little cupboard and doesn't actually have an aerial, so it's more a glorified computer screen for DVDs) and Harry got to live large by watching some of her very first screen time. I got out TSOM and just chose the chapters that had the child-friendly songs (Favourite Things, 16 going on 17, Doh Re Mi) as well as the introductory thingy where the children are all introduced to Maria. Well it seemed like a good idea at the time but she was so besotted with the experience that we have had to re-enact the secnes over and over and over again! She likes to be Liesl or Gretel, depending on whether she's scared of the thunder storm and wants to sing Favourite Things or whether she wants to dance and pretend that I'm Rolf (the boyfriend for the uninitiated).

She is obssessed (or in Harriet-speak, 'besest') with what things are 'good for the earth'. Today she was spraying water out in a fine mist with her spray bottle and said to me "This is a cloud that has been out to sea. It has picked up some water from the ocean and is now spraying it out over the plants to make them grow and be happy. All of this makes the earth happy". She also quizzes me about why we are using the car when there is the chance of using public transport or walking instead. Of course the answer to that is actually because of Harry! She's not able to walk far enough or we've been talking about how to look after her babies for so long at home that we're now running late for where we're going - these are the two major reasons and when I tell her one of those she gets quite upset and says "But I can walk very very far Mama" or "But I had to put my baby to sleep (for twenty minutes?!)". But she's always very ready and capable to discuss anything you might want to disagree about. Goodness knows where she gets that argumentative side from.

She counted to forty the other week without me knowing that she even knew about forty! The next day or so she also pointed to a big 40 on the road in a school zone and asked me why there was a big forty there (didn't know she knew what the numbers looked like either) . She is pretty clued in with numebrs actually and I feel a little guilty about that because being a big words person myself I don't tend to focus on numbers as much as I should. But she can count backwards from ten to one, count up to 40 that I know of, add and subtract easily with things under five and with help over five and recognises all of her numbers (although double digits in the teens confuse her a little).

We're also reading Charlotte's Web to her and we're now into the third chapter but that's after re-reading the second chapter a LOT. I would like to point out that the second chapter is about how Fern likes to look after Wilbur as if he is a baby. *sigh*

She got her first joke! Her first proper joke! It's pretty funny, because it was right at the end of a book that we bought on the weekend from a book fair. All of the animals love reading these books (that the hen got by saying "Book! Book!" - get it?!) but the bullfrog is unhappy about it. Why? Because he's already "read it...read it...read it". I was reading it to her and as I am I'm simultaneously thinking about explaining it to her..and then she starts cracking up hysterically. I mean she really, really, really lost it! And in typical three year old fashion we had to re-read it again and again and again. Then she had to tell Papa all about it again and again. Obviously she finds situational stuff funny but this is the first actual joke she's understood completely. I should have known that she'd love puns, I think she's at just the right age for it.

I noticed today that she talks a lot like her books (unsurprisingly of course!). In fact I have a bit of a problem with buying her books. Luckily I buy second hand ones but not always. *blush* But she says her sentences a bit like this for example only: "The bee flew over to the flower, stopping halfway there to listen to the little girl". She doesn't use conjunctions as much as she used to at all. Her sentence structure sound a lot like a children's book. The fact that we have honestly run out of space for all of these books and that she can recite any book that has been read to her ever in total detail (and get quite cross with you for not knowing it word for word as well) leaves me quite exhausted at times.

James made the comment when we were totally freaking out about #2 (that we are calling Snippy by the way. If I have to have a Snippy then James gets a 'snippy' too) that by the time Harry is 7, she's going to be one of those girls that sits in a corner reading all weekend and having Snippy might give us something to do on teh weekends too. Well here I was thinking that having a big reader woudl be great for those lazy beer garden Sunday afternoons I had planned, but hopefully Snippy can slot in there somewhere too.

Well that's about all I can be bothered writing up for tonight. Now that Harry has started sleeping for TWELVE HOURS STRAIGHT EVERY NIGHT (yes you read that correctly) it just seems like the perfect time to crankit all up again with another child, hey? *sigh* Off to enjoy my scream-free evening while I can people. Hope this satisfies the Harry appetite for a few days, will be back to do an event update rather than a development update too.

Finally!

Well I guess you thought this blog had gone to the dogs, yeah? Well you were kind of right. I have been more than a little uninspired by life lately and the main reason would probably be that I have a little parasite...a little growth...yep, I am knocked up. Again. And to say it is a surprise is understatement in the extreme. We had, in fact, decided on making our decision a permanent one. But this little sucker was sneaking in and we're going to go along for the ride. I'm only about 9wks along at the moment and am due mid-April 2009, so anything can happen of course but it's a pretty valid reason for not being on here to chat.

In fact I have been so fatigued that I took about three photos at Harriet's third birthday party. I have been totally uninspired to take any photos and have found it difficult to keep up momentum through the afternoon requirements of entertaining a three year old too. The evenings lately have been surprisingly relaxed as a result - I haven't been proofing photos but have been catching up on a pile of older movies that we haven't had a chance to watch yet.

Anyway, just to let you know that we're all still alive and well. Harry is awesome, a complete person unto herself. She just chats along like an adult and can engage in discussion about most things. Her latest maddening obsession is to describe everything that is going on around her - even when it's happening to someone else. Today for example we were in the food court and a couple sat next to us with a chicken kebab. Harry asked loudly "What's that thing they're eating?". I shared a smile with the people and said "That looks like chicken Harry", to which she (of course, I really should have thought about it before I said it) "But that's not good for the earth and not good for the animals! Why do those people eat animals Mama?" with a really pained and screwed up look on her face. It's safe to say that those people weren't sharing too many smiles with me afterwards!

But now I've broken the drought and have started to take some photos again, I'll come in during the week and start to pick up on a few things that we've done lately. For example we had a chicken pox scare today, a hugely successful visit to CityFarm yesterday, a last minute birthday party on Saturday and have generally been little socialites. But let me just say that right now I am ready for bed. Will be back soon I promise! Is anyone even reading this any more?