Life Over Here

Once I start leaving this blog for a little while, things spiral out of control and I don't gt a chance to pop on here to keep things up to date. And I know I need to get back on when find myself telling stories of what happened during the day and thinking "That's the fifth cute story I haven't written about" and knowing that if I don't write them down they'll never get written and we'll all forget about them and Harriet will have no record of what a crazy loon she was when she was three and a half going on four.

Example in point is seen in that first photo. Jay and Poe were over for a play and just as they were leaving Jay found a dead bird in our backyard. It was intact, no lacerations or pulled out feathers or anything. Just a dead bird lying on the concrete next to the table. Unfortunately Jay found it first and with all good intentions, called Harriet over to have a look. And of course Harriet being Harriet doesn't just LOOK at a dead bird. No, Harriet has to be completely consumed by the idea of the bird, concepts of life, death and the eternal nature of the soul.

So instead of curiously observing the bird and going back inside to play, Harriet insisted on holding the bird for the next FIVE HOURS. She insisted on holding it, talking about it, talking to it, playing with it, and generally making me quite trepidatious about how to approach the topic of removing the bird. We discussed how our choices were to bury the bird in the ground, cremate him or put him in the bin. Of course all of those were met with howls of anguish and sorrow, but I did manage to convince her that one of those options was a necessity. She chose cremation.

James came home to her in the bath and lots of stories about the bird. We went out into the backyard and placed the bird in a shoe box on the bbq. I said a few words about how the bird was our friend and how sad we were to have to say goodbye to the bird (with Harriet's anguished sobbing in the background). Then we burnt it, not without a couple of hiccups and a generous amount of turps in the end. Harry also wanted to see it afterwards and seemed to be quite happy with the closure that provided which was a relief.

In other Harriet news she is loving reading right now. She reads words everywhere and knows by sight quite a few longer, non-phonetically-viable words (eg: school) . She counts up to 110 and can read the numbers too, rather than just rattle off the list of numbers. Each night at dinner we play I Spy, wich is such a great game for her at the moment. Asking questions about the item as well (eg: is it in this room? can we see it?) are developing her (already well established) problem solving skills. It's also developing her sense of humour - she loves to be silly with the words and say things like 'charrot?' with a giggle when I said it starts with 'ch'. It also shows us that she knows more than she lets on at times, with her asking if the item was 'shirt' when we said it starts with 's'. I knew she was aware of the digraph /sh/ but didn't realise she had committed it to memory.


If there's one thing we do know about her though, it's that she LOVES her little brother. In fact when I asked her to stay still for a photo recently (actually with the bird I think), I asked her to think about how she felt when Ted was born. She stopped squirming, I snapped the photo and asked her what she had felt when he was born. "A lot of happiness and a little bit of sadness" was her reply. What was the happiness for, I asked her. "Because I love Teddy and he's so cute". And what was the little bit of sadness for? "Because now I can't play everything with just you, Mum". Now is it just me or does that seem quite emotionally astute for a 3.5yr old?

He is growing at a fierce rate. I can barely believe he is now 10wks old! Just this morning he gave me his first huge, gummy-mouthed smile directed straight at me. I could have melted away with love right there and then. He is starting to be spend more time awake and alert, looking around calmly and peacefully from the comfort of his sling. He currently loves to have his milk sitting upright in the Maya sling - will post a photo when I get a chance.

Teddy is just so sweet, and so easy to fit into our days right now. Except that he hates the car. And when I say hates, I mean prepare to hear the most heart wrenching, blood curdling, toe curling screams and sobs of horror from him. That's why we're going to pick up Harry from preschool in the bus today! He is a huge grunter and grunts away whilst asleep, but especially if he's doing a poo or getting ready to fart - actually that's what keeps him awake at night. He'll be squealing and grunting like a piglet, until he lets it all out and then it's straight back to sleep. How great is that?!