Unny is love
Jan. 6th, 2007 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radegundIt's time for an Oyster Report. This one is outrageously long, I'm afraid, so please don't feel obliged to read all of it - as I've said before, I write these mostly as a record.
1. Sleep
I am overjoyed to tell you that in 2006, starting on 16-17 July, Oisín slept through the night on no fewer than 100 occasions - by which I mean that he didn't wake up at all between his bedtime and about 6:30. On a further 22 occasions he slept from before our bedtime (i.e. if he woke, he didn't wake us up) to 5:30 or later. Quite often he sleeps until 7:30 or even 8:00 in the morning. There are no words to express the difference that this has made.
2. Geography
The geographical acumen of the Oyster is worthy of note. Perhaps two months ago, we were in town and somebody asked me the way to Christ Church Cathedral. I said, "Go down to the end of this street and turn right, then at the T junction turn left and go up the hill; Christ Church is at the top on the right." On the way home, Oisín was repeating these directions in various configurations. Then at one point he paused and said, "Mama and Niall and Unny live in P— Square."
In fact, we live on P— Road. So, (a) he connected one geographical observation with another, (b) he knows where he lives (actually, we knew this: he's been telling us who lives where for several months - and once I reminded him that it was "Road", he got it at once), and (c) he'd picked up that "P— Square" is also a location (note for those unfamiliar with Dublin: they're nowhere near each other). Neat, no?
He has good recognition of places he's been: we approached a junction on the N4 one day and he told me he'd been there with K (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
niallm's mother). He points out biascut and glitzfrau's house whenever we go by - and indeed frequently builds it out of bricks at home (for your information, "Miwy an' 'Elen wib in a big-yoooooge wellow dower").
3. Pretending
Some time in the autumn, things began to stand for other things - such as when the Oyster was serving tea to one of his bears, using a piece of Duplo as the cup, and casting around for a milk-jug, grabbed a small toy cat and upended it over the cup. I regularly get handed invisible objects, and pretty much anything can be pressed into service as a prop in the current scenario.
4. Dining café
In October Oisín opened a "dining gafé" (he doesn't do an initial hard "c") in the corner of his bedroom. Customers are seated and served sausages-and-chips-and-mummens (mushrooms). It appears, incidentally, that the distinction between a dining café and a restaurant is that the latter serves only sausages-and-chips. We gather that these principles have been established on Oisín's outings with K.
5. Passive voice!
Full sentences are the order of the day - long ones, with grammar and everything. About a month ago I was putting the Oyster's trousers back on after a change, and he said, "That nappy was changed by Mama." I agreed, and he looked gravely at me and said it again - for practice, I think.
6. That's deixis, gorilla
He's now using "I" in the nominative quite a lot of the time ("I like a glass of milk"), but still uses "you" in other cases ("Mama want to give the milk to you", "That's your milk").
7. Verbing weirds language
The noun "noiser" (food processor, hand-held hoover, etc.) has given rise to the verb "to noise", as in "Mama is noising up those crumbs".
8. Double negative
Mama: "No, Oisín, you may not open that door."
Oyster: "You may!"
Mama: "No, you may not."
Oyster: "You may!"
Mama: "No, you may not."
Oyster: "You may! ... You may not not."
9. More conversations
He's tellingbiascut about the cycle paths on the canal.
Mama: "What colour are they?"
Oyster: "Kind of brown, kind of red."
La Bias: "So a sort of browny red?"
Oyster: "Browny red ... no. Brown."
[I love this for two reasons: (a) the use of "kind of", and (b) the fact that he rejected the adult's colour suggestion.]
We've just made pastry in the noiser (he's been pressing the button).
Mama: "Now we're going to put the pastry in the fridge to rest."
Oyster: "Asleep."
Mama: "Oh, is it going to sleep?"
Oyster: "Like this: *snores*"
He's standing in the middle of his bedroom looking concerned.
Oyster: "Where Unny's hammer?"
Mama: "Is it in the dining café?"
Oyster: "No."
Mama: "Is it under the bed?"
Oyster: "No ... *sigh* ... Niall took it to work, I'd say."
10. Intensifiers
He's recently learnt a few ways of emphasising what he wants to say. Chief among these are "a-dink" (I think) and "now again" - as in "Mama want to read you this book now again, a-dink". It makes it very hard to resist. (And why would I resist, you ask? Well, mostly I don't, but in this case a-dink I was on my way to the loo.) The other day I said, "It's time to put the [toy] away," or thereabouts, and he said, "It's not time to put it away, anyway, though". I love the not-quite-appropriate usage.
11. Names
Oisín learned his surname a while ago (maybe two months or so). "Unny O Illanoyn," he says. He also knows the surnames of his parents, grandparents, aunt and uncle, although he does get a bit mixed up with the male and female forms of my family name.
12. Semiotics
We were crossing the bridge over the canal one day in November when Unny said, "There's an Irish van!" I looked, and there was a large white van covered in promotional writing and illustration - advertising, perhaps, a plumber or a flooring contractor, I don't remember. For a moment I was puzzled as to his categorisation of it as Irish, but then I saw on the back door, by way of a logo, a large green map of Ireland. Trust the toddler, for he knows whereof he speaks.
13. Elimination
A flurry of interest in the late autumn prompted us to buy a potty. It remains intermittently interesting, but has never been used for its intended purpose. We're in no rush.
14. Moogat
Oisín has discovered moogat (music) in a big way. It started with "play the song about the yellow submarine again" - and again, and again, and again. Then he got into The Internationale by Billy Bragg (pronounced "Willy Bag", to our enduring amusement) - memorably demanding the title track eleven times in a row one afternoon ("I hope you're not growing up doctrinaire," said K). Then K gave him a triple CD of classic children's songs and another CD featuring "Nellie the Ella-ump" (among others), and my parents gave him a triple CD of French children's songs, and someone else gave him the Gruffalo CD, and now we have music on most of the time. He has a rough idea of how to work the CD player; he recognises fragments when he hears them played or hummed; he much prefers music with lyrics. We have a game whereby some handy object becomes a CD player, Oisín mimes putting on a CD and pressing a button, he tells me what he's put on, and I sing it for him. It's brilliant.
15. Topic extraction, I
Driving along, listening to a radio discussion about a new book on political power in the UK - who really controls things, the relationship between Parliament and the financial élite, differences between Britain and Ireland in this arena, and so on. After about five minutes, Unny said, "They're talking about something." I said, "Yes, they are talking about something." He said, "Britain."
16. Topic extraction, II
Oisín was given Margaret Atwood's Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes for Christmas. It is a somewhat astonishing book, being written with obsessive focus on the letter R. I thought it'd be ages before the Oyster appreciated it, but in fact, he loves it.
From Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes:
The Oyster's comment on this passage, made with no prompting on approximately the fourth reading of the book (no glossing by readers, as far as I know): "They were throwing things at him because he didn't like his dinner." It's an illustrated book, of course, which helps, but I think this is a more sophisticated summary than the illustrations would provide on their own.
17. Loud motor noises
Oisín finds these worrying. Hoover, hairdryer, noiser, power tools, etc. - he's clearly anxious when they're in evidence, and they constantly come up in his games, which my play therapist aunt-in-law tells me is a classic strategy by which children deal with upsetting stuff. He's been sanding floors since early October, and he added a jigsaw and a power drill to his repertoire while I was making the bookshelves. He does a pretty accurate sound effect, too: a kind of angry, nasal "wirrr".
So, one day during the Great Chaos, I absolutely had to escape for an hour to make some progress on my paid work, so after lunch I said, "Now, love, I'm going to go upstairs and do some editing for a while, and you're going to help K in the living room." I was heading out of the room when he exclaimed, "Editing! WIRRR!"
18. Bymawondawockt
He said this constantly for weeks and weeks before I got it. Started around the time we got the floors done, and clearly knew exactly what he meant by it, but I couldn't figure out the context. It led to some frustrating conversations. Eventually, I think when his "r" became clearer, I worked it out. "Primer and the wax" - what went on the floors.
19. Brand recognition
We're not big on brands in this house. When Oisín went for his two-year check-up, there was an irritating moment when the health nurse showed him her pen, which was decorated with Thomas the Tank Engine. "Look what I have here!" she announced. He looked. "Train," he observed, neutrally. "Oh, does he not like Thomas?" she asked me. Because clearly, antipathy is the only possible reason why a two-year-old would not display the standard emotions on encountering this cultural icon.
Brands he recognises: Petits Filous. B&Q. Mothercare (possibly). And Homer Simpson. "'Omer! 'Omer!" he says. (With the result that we now possess a Simpsons game for the Playstation. Niall's currently playing it.)
20. Dwill-dwen
It's not a brand, as such, but he has a very clearly delineated category for things designed for children: bright colours seem to be the main signal, but the categorisation also applies to moogat.
21. Love
Did I mention I love him?
1. Sleep
I am overjoyed to tell you that in 2006, starting on 16-17 July, Oisín slept through the night on no fewer than 100 occasions - by which I mean that he didn't wake up at all between his bedtime and about 6:30. On a further 22 occasions he slept from before our bedtime (i.e. if he woke, he didn't wake us up) to 5:30 or later. Quite often he sleeps until 7:30 or even 8:00 in the morning. There are no words to express the difference that this has made.
2. Geography
The geographical acumen of the Oyster is worthy of note. Perhaps two months ago, we were in town and somebody asked me the way to Christ Church Cathedral. I said, "Go down to the end of this street and turn right, then at the T junction turn left and go up the hill; Christ Church is at the top on the right." On the way home, Oisín was repeating these directions in various configurations. Then at one point he paused and said, "Mama and Niall and Unny live in P— Square."
In fact, we live on P— Road. So, (a) he connected one geographical observation with another, (b) he knows where he lives (actually, we knew this: he's been telling us who lives where for several months - and once I reminded him that it was "Road", he got it at once), and (c) he'd picked up that "P— Square" is also a location (note for those unfamiliar with Dublin: they're nowhere near each other). Neat, no?
He has good recognition of places he's been: we approached a junction on the N4 one day and he told me he'd been there with K (
niallm's mother). He points out biascut and glitzfrau's house whenever we go by - and indeed frequently builds it out of bricks at home (for your information, "Miwy an' 'Elen wib in a big-yoooooge wellow dower").3. Pretending
Some time in the autumn, things began to stand for other things - such as when the Oyster was serving tea to one of his bears, using a piece of Duplo as the cup, and casting around for a milk-jug, grabbed a small toy cat and upended it over the cup. I regularly get handed invisible objects, and pretty much anything can be pressed into service as a prop in the current scenario.
4. Dining café
In October Oisín opened a "dining gafé" (he doesn't do an initial hard "c") in the corner of his bedroom. Customers are seated and served sausages-and-chips-and-mummens (mushrooms). It appears, incidentally, that the distinction between a dining café and a restaurant is that the latter serves only sausages-and-chips. We gather that these principles have been established on Oisín's outings with K.
5. Passive voice!
Full sentences are the order of the day - long ones, with grammar and everything. About a month ago I was putting the Oyster's trousers back on after a change, and he said, "That nappy was changed by Mama." I agreed, and he looked gravely at me and said it again - for practice, I think.
6. That's deixis, gorilla
He's now using "I" in the nominative quite a lot of the time ("I like a glass of milk"), but still uses "you" in other cases ("Mama want to give the milk to you", "That's your milk").
7. Verbing weirds language
The noun "noiser" (food processor, hand-held hoover, etc.) has given rise to the verb "to noise", as in "Mama is noising up those crumbs".
8. Double negative
Mama: "No, Oisín, you may not open that door."
Oyster: "You may!"
Mama: "No, you may not."
Oyster: "You may!"
Mama: "No, you may not."
Oyster: "You may! ... You may not not."
9. More conversations
He's telling
biascut about the cycle paths on the canal.Mama: "What colour are they?"
Oyster: "Kind of brown, kind of red."
La Bias: "So a sort of browny red?"
Oyster: "Browny red ... no. Brown."
[I love this for two reasons: (a) the use of "kind of", and (b) the fact that he rejected the adult's colour suggestion.]
We've just made pastry in the noiser (he's been pressing the button).
Mama: "Now we're going to put the pastry in the fridge to rest."
Oyster: "Asleep."
Mama: "Oh, is it going to sleep?"
Oyster: "Like this: *snores*"
He's standing in the middle of his bedroom looking concerned.
Oyster: "Where Unny's hammer?"
Mama: "Is it in the dining café?"
Oyster: "No."
Mama: "Is it under the bed?"
Oyster: "No ... *sigh* ... Niall took it to work, I'd say."
10. Intensifiers
He's recently learnt a few ways of emphasising what he wants to say. Chief among these are "a-dink" (I think) and "now again" - as in "Mama want to read you this book now again, a-dink". It makes it very hard to resist. (And why would I resist, you ask? Well, mostly I don't, but in this case a-dink I was on my way to the loo.) The other day I said, "It's time to put the [toy] away," or thereabouts, and he said, "It's not time to put it away, anyway, though". I love the not-quite-appropriate usage.
11. Names
Oisín learned his surname a while ago (maybe two months or so). "Unny O Illanoyn," he says. He also knows the surnames of his parents, grandparents, aunt and uncle, although he does get a bit mixed up with the male and female forms of my family name.
12. Semiotics
We were crossing the bridge over the canal one day in November when Unny said, "There's an Irish van!" I looked, and there was a large white van covered in promotional writing and illustration - advertising, perhaps, a plumber or a flooring contractor, I don't remember. For a moment I was puzzled as to his categorisation of it as Irish, but then I saw on the back door, by way of a logo, a large green map of Ireland. Trust the toddler, for he knows whereof he speaks.
13. Elimination
A flurry of interest in the late autumn prompted us to buy a potty. It remains intermittently interesting, but has never been used for its intended purpose. We're in no rush.
14. Moogat
Oisín has discovered moogat (music) in a big way. It started with "play the song about the yellow submarine again" - and again, and again, and again. Then he got into The Internationale by Billy Bragg (pronounced "Willy Bag", to our enduring amusement) - memorably demanding the title track eleven times in a row one afternoon ("I hope you're not growing up doctrinaire," said K). Then K gave him a triple CD of classic children's songs and another CD featuring "Nellie the Ella-ump" (among others), and my parents gave him a triple CD of French children's songs, and someone else gave him the Gruffalo CD, and now we have music on most of the time. He has a rough idea of how to work the CD player; he recognises fragments when he hears them played or hummed; he much prefers music with lyrics. We have a game whereby some handy object becomes a CD player, Oisín mimes putting on a CD and pressing a button, he tells me what he's put on, and I sing it for him. It's brilliant.
15. Topic extraction, I
Driving along, listening to a radio discussion about a new book on political power in the UK - who really controls things, the relationship between Parliament and the financial élite, differences between Britain and Ireland in this arena, and so on. After about five minutes, Unny said, "They're talking about something." I said, "Yes, they are talking about something." He said, "Britain."
16. Topic extraction, II
Oisín was given Margaret Atwood's Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes for Christmas. It is a somewhat astonishing book, being written with obsessive focus on the letter R. I thought it'd be ages before the Oyster appreciated it, but in fact, he loves it.
From Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes:
While Ron read the racing results, Ruby and Rollo regularly rustled up the repasts. They roasted rice, raisins, rutabagas and rhinoceros. They rolled out reptiles with a rolling pin. They refrigerated rhubarb and broiled ribs, ravioli and reindeer rinds on the rotisserie. The rice was rock-hard, the ribs rubbery, the ravioli wrinkled, the rhinoceros raw. The reptiles were still writhing, the rhubarb was runny, and the reindeer rinds were rotten.
Every Friday, Rude Ramsay rebelled. "This repast is repulsive," he'd report. "The rice is riddled with roaches, the raisins are rancid, and the reindeer rinds reek. I feel like regurgitating!"
"Ramsay, you rash, repulsive, red-headed runt! How rude! Rinse your mouth out with rope!" raged Ramsay's revolting relatives, Ron, Rollo, and Ruby. "Repent! Repent!"
"I refuse," retorted Ramsay.
"Thoroughly riled, the three revolting relatives rose from the rejected repast and rushed after Ramsay, hurling ratchets, wrenches, wristwatches, rubber boots, and radios, which rebounded off Ramsay's rear. But Ramsay was a rapid runner, and he raced up to the roof garden and down to the root cellar and round and round the revolving door, until his robust but rotund relatives could no longer respire and required rest.
The Oyster's comment on this passage, made with no prompting on approximately the fourth reading of the book (no glossing by readers, as far as I know): "They were throwing things at him because he didn't like his dinner." It's an illustrated book, of course, which helps, but I think this is a more sophisticated summary than the illustrations would provide on their own.
17. Loud motor noises
Oisín finds these worrying. Hoover, hairdryer, noiser, power tools, etc. - he's clearly anxious when they're in evidence, and they constantly come up in his games, which my play therapist aunt-in-law tells me is a classic strategy by which children deal with upsetting stuff. He's been sanding floors since early October, and he added a jigsaw and a power drill to his repertoire while I was making the bookshelves. He does a pretty accurate sound effect, too: a kind of angry, nasal "wirrr".
So, one day during the Great Chaos, I absolutely had to escape for an hour to make some progress on my paid work, so after lunch I said, "Now, love, I'm going to go upstairs and do some editing for a while, and you're going to help K in the living room." I was heading out of the room when he exclaimed, "Editing! WIRRR!"
18. Bymawondawockt
He said this constantly for weeks and weeks before I got it. Started around the time we got the floors done, and clearly knew exactly what he meant by it, but I couldn't figure out the context. It led to some frustrating conversations. Eventually, I think when his "r" became clearer, I worked it out. "Primer and the wax" - what went on the floors.
19. Brand recognition
We're not big on brands in this house. When Oisín went for his two-year check-up, there was an irritating moment when the health nurse showed him her pen, which was decorated with Thomas the Tank Engine. "Look what I have here!" she announced. He looked. "Train," he observed, neutrally. "Oh, does he not like Thomas?" she asked me. Because clearly, antipathy is the only possible reason why a two-year-old would not display the standard emotions on encountering this cultural icon.
Brands he recognises: Petits Filous. B&Q. Mothercare (possibly). And Homer Simpson. "'Omer! 'Omer!" he says. (With the result that we now possess a Simpsons game for the Playstation. Niall's currently playing it.)
20. Dwill-dwen
It's not a brand, as such, but he has a very clearly delineated category for things designed for children: bright colours seem to be the main signal, but the categorisation also applies to moogat.
21. Love
Did I mention I love him?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-06 11:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-06 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-07 11:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-07 02:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-06 11:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-07 10:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-07 11:37 am (UTC)Am ded of cute.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-07 12:39 pm (UTC)Can I recruit him to Labour Youth? He'd fit right in!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-07 01:15 pm (UTC)Glitz and I also keep repeating, "Mama, where's the study?" to each other and then dying of cuteness. Hurray for the Oyster!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-08 02:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-14 01:43 pm (UTC)On a tangent, I was asked at JFK airport what my name means, by the immigration officer - at least he didn't ask, as has happened in English airports, what the name was in English - and I think he was charmed when I told him it meant 'unmarried daughter of the red-haired man', particularly since we also told him we were two days married. I skipped the part about the Irish language not catering for women who choose not to adopt the surname of their husband, since I was trying to wangle my way into the country notwithstanding a potentially compromising visa situation at the time. Ho-hum.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-16 02:06 pm (UTC)