Another string of pearls
Feb. 19th, 2007 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radegundMaisy, Maisy, Maisy Maisy Maisy, Maisy, Maisy, Maisy Maisy Mouse
The Oyster has adopted his very first media idol: an anodyne but essentially unobjectionable cartoon mouse called Maisy, who appears in adventures with her friends both in print and on screen. We read our three Maisy books constantly, we watch our two Maisy DVDs a lot, and I make tiny playdough models of the characters, which take part in the Oyster's elaborate agricultural tableaux (these feature his set of construction vehicles and a very disparate collection of miniature animals, some more suited to farm life than others). He has, furthermore, been called UnnyMaisy for most of the last few days. (I say, "There's Unny!", and he says, "He's still Maisy, though.")
I find I don't feel in the least bit bad about rotting the boy's brain with over-exposure to TV, partly because the programme inspires such interesting games, and partly because he's quite into watching the DVD that comes with multilingual voiceover in different languages (so far, Swedish and French).
Location, location, location
It's all about geography. When![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cangetmad and Gnome left us in January, there was much talk about their having gone back to Ebindaba, and he'd also picked up from general conversation that Gnome's daddies "wib in Wibbingdon" (he reminded me of this, in fact, as I'd forgotten the name).
He knows left and right, and uses them correctly quite a lot of the time.
A favourite request these days is "Want to SEE it!" - as in, "Where're we going?" - "Sandymount" - "Where's Sandymount? Want to SEE it!" or "We'll be seeing K on Monday" - "Where's Monday? Want to SEE it!" Time words are particularly under scrutiny, in fact. Where's the evening, where's the future, where's spring, where's earlier? Want to SEE it!
(He hasn't learnt "why?" yet - "where?" seems to be filling that slot for the moment.)
Language
I wish I had the organisational wherewithal to record him, because his language is just brilliant. He talks all the time. "Unny is climbing up on the chair to sit on the box, which is a very small box, and reading this book, which is Mama's book," he said the other evening. And about a fortnight ago, "Mama want1 to open the stairgate downstairs so Unny can go upstairs and ask Niall, 'Wonder where the playdough2 went?'"
Recent grammatical experiments include "this is be", meaning "we can pretend this is" - e.g. "this is be the down of the microwave, and this is be the up of the microwave" (as he held two books in the appropriate positions for a microwave floor and ceiling). This pluralised regularly to "these are be". Then there are syntactical confusions like "Unny is difficult to do that" (sometimes stated more conventionally as "Unny can't do the difficult thing") and "Who is that biscuit going to eat?" (hooray for inflection).
His speech is getting clearer all the time (although I usually need to interpret for him to strangers). He has trouble with devoicing initial stops (so he eats gake, sleeps on a billow, sticks out his dongue, etc.), with initial s, and with certain consonantal clusters - actually, they're initial too, come to think of it. So, for instance, "thing" and "sling" are both pronounced "ding". He made a breakthrough last week on "b[e]lue" and "s[e]low", by adding a schwa, but he doesn't yet do this consistently. And he practises: the other day we were wondering where the ducks on the canal were, and he said, "Maybe they're away building their nests ... nests, sts, sts." Or he'll say, "that's a bit of milk ... k, k, k". (I love this.)
Pronunciations I'd like to remember: wess (yes), amelals (animals), ella-ump (elephant), oggiupt (octopus), gwowbar (barcode/crowbar), mummens (mushrooms, currently muff-fens), bigots (biscuits, now pronounced normally), moogat (music), bellabader (conveyor belt - took me WEEKS to crack this one: it was clearly very important but he couldn't tell me anything distinctive about it), byskedil (bicycle), wing a wenss wong (sing a French song), dicadult (difficult), and last but not least, UNNY! He still says Unny a lot, but the full "Oisín" is also very much on the scene.
1 Imperative "want" is a central element in his vocabulary.
2 I keep wishing there were a children's modelling material called arisdoddle. Yes, I'm ridiculous.
Making stuff up
He's got really into having stories told to him ("story" so far has the broad meaning of information delivered in a set order). I gave him a toddler's guide to avian reproduction a while ago, and he instantly responded, "Mama want to do the story about the baby birds again". Now, any time I tell him something in detail (e.g. what's going to happen with our garden remodelling project, what may happen if he puts a full cup of juice on his head), he casts it as a story.
My father is a wonderful purveyor of instant stories to the young, and they had a mammoth session two Sundays ago while I was Singing With My Friends (read: participating in Bach cantata series with chamber choir). The other day, the Oyster announced that he was telling me stories, and proceeded to do so: "Once upon a time there was ... *looks around kitchen* ... a clock and a cupboard, and they went to the kitchen. And that's the end of the story." Then, looking at the laundry rack, "Once upon a time there was a wall and some socks."
And then! I was changing his nappy that same evening, and he suddenly said, "Every time when Niall changes Unny's nappy when it's pooey then he puts the same one back on again!" I guffawed, so he said it again. And again - for as long as he got a satisfactory reaction. And he was watching my reaction: repeating his experiment. I think this is totally brilliant - it's an appropriation of language, of narrative, a separation of word and world. He looked gleeful at the effect he was having.
There was a lovely bit a few weeks ago when he came and said, "Unny sit down and talk to Mama." He informed me that we now had a green cat called Mog and a purple dog called Innte. The dog's name changed to Oto later on, but they both retained their substance -kulfuldi had to move her feet to avoid stepping on them several hours later.
He makes up words. We were giving each other "food" (wooden blocks, actually) the other day, and I gave him carrot and potato and I forget what else, and he gave me burklegenguy and bergeya and iggy. I can't help framing this as an assertion of his entitlement to a piece of the language-is-power action.
Yes, we're middle-class
Peering into the (fabulous) gingerbread house thatbiascut brought us, Oisín asks, "Where's the study?"
Playing with an older boy in the park, who has cast a pair of playground structures as Block 1 and Block 2 (which latter has a new lift shaft with glass walls), Oisín gestures at the larger climbing frame: "This is Trinity College!"
Names
He now pronounces his own full name pretty competently. The other day, he asked for "the names of people's cars", which turned out to mean the make and model of the cars he travels in, and then of every car we could see from where we were parked. I'm not good at cars. I suspect I may become so if this goes on.
Animals
Current obsession. We're animals all day, every day. Mama's a big monkey and Unny's a little monkey, or dog, or sheep, or elephant, or whatever (at the moment, it's wall-to-wall Maisy Mouse, as I mentioned). Every so often he'll announce, for example, "We've turned into horses!" - and then we'll find a stable and some hay.
Elimination
On Tuesday 23 January, according to my notes, Oisín was running around in the nip to get dry after a bath, and he started to pee. I grabbed the potty (which had gained some cachet duringcangetmad and Gnome's visit the previous week), and he peed into it for the first time. He was most intrigued. So I hunted out his toddler pants and we tried them out. He wet two pairs, but was clearly very enthused by the whole deal.
The next day, we stayed home, and I left him bare-bottomed for a lot of the morning. (He asked for no-nappy-just-pants later on.) He didn't manage to use the potty that day, but there was a definite improvement in comprehension of what was going on. When my mother arrived to mind him while I went to choir (Niall was away), I told her excitedly what we'd been doing, and he said, "Oisín doesn't use nappies at all now." My mother and I hastily emphasised that this applied to the daytime, and that at night, or when he went in a car, he still used nappies.
On Thursday, when we were going to the toddler group, I gave him a choice between nappy or pants. He chose nappy. When we got there, he made straight for the sit-in car.
On Friday, we went into town to have lunch with my sister. He was very, very insistent about wearing pants, so I thought, why not? (I did put a plastic bag between him and his car seat, though.) And he stayed dry. All the way into town, all through lunch, all through a minor shopping round, and all the way home. The shopping was for a toddler toilet seat and a step. Alas, there was a bit of kerfuffle when we got home. A package had to be collected from the Post Office, and so I handed the Oyster off to Niall (who was a little apprehensive) and left them to initiate use of the new bathroom accessories. I returned with the package to find a frustrated Niall and a very solemn little boy. "What happened?" I asked, and Oisín sighed and said, in a very small voice, "Peed on the floor." Niall filled me in: there had been some sitting on the seat but no action (and then a subsequent miss). So I exclaimed, "But he sat on the seat! That's great!" And he smiled at me as if his world had been put right, and I nearly cried. (I should, of course, have stayed with Unny while Niall went to the Post Office: I had a well developed dialogue going with Unny about the whole business, whereas Niall was flung at it with no preparation. It didn't occur to me. Regret that.)
All through Friday evening, and first thing on Saturday morning, he asked, over and over again, for the story about the loo (once upon a time there was a little boy called Oisín, and one morning he woke up and decided he wanted to learn how to use the grown-up loo, etc. etc.). After his dawn feed I brought him to the toilet, where he happily sat on his new seat while we looked at the map of Europe on the wall and waited for stuff to happen. ("Open your mouth, penis," he said at one point, whichglitzfrau says is the most Freudian thing she's ever heard.) Eventually, stuff happened; he looked worried and then delighted. Then he asked for a new nappy, and consistently refused offers of pants until we stopped making them a day or two later.
He hasn't expressed any interest in going without a nappy since then. (I'm wondering whether his successful loo use has satisfied him for the moment.) There's no earthly point in trying to turn his thoughts back in that direction while we're still settling into our new paid work / childcare routine, so there it stands.
Conversations
niallm's in California at the moment; we use video iChat to talk
Niall (to Radz): I've sent my black Mac Book in for repair.
Niall and Radz: *chat for a minute or so*
Oyster: Want to SEE it! Want to see Niall's black Mac bag!
Oyster: *is satisfied with sight of Niall's black backpack*
Oyster: Where's the pear? Want to see the pear!
pleidhce has delivered his (wildly popular) Christmas present of playdough and is playing with the Oyster
Pleidhce: I'm making a [carrot | person | cake].
Oyster (squeezing a small piece purposefully): Unny making memory.
[I explained that he meant computer memory. We weren't sure which meaning we found more disconcerting.]
kulfuldi's over for dinner, playing with the Oyster
Kulfuldi (to Radz): Oh! I fell down the stairs today. I wasn't badly hurt or anything, but it was not nice.
Oyster (in tone of one giving solemn counsel): Maybe walk down the stairs.
Sitting on the sofa
Oyster: Unny would like just one episode of Maisy.
Mama: OK, let's watch one episode.
Oyster: One episode. *pauses* Or two. Two, really.
I am picking him up after his very first morning at the childminder's
Childminder: He did miss his Mammy a little bit, all right.
Mama (hugging Oyster): Oh, poor Unny. Did you miss me a little bit?
Oyster: No. Just a big bit.
He has done something I find particularly cute
Mama: Oh, you're lovely.
Oyster: Unny is not wubbly. Mama is wubbly, and Niall is wubbly. Unny is billant.
[The following day, for what it's worth, Unny was wubbly and Mama was billant.]
K and I are watching him put tiny playdough "bales of hay" into a (relatively) huge "oven"
Radz (to K): I love the way scale is irrelevant.
K: It's great, isn't it?
Oyster: Elephant goes wuuuuh!
Letters and numbers
He can reliably identify lots of letters in upper and lower case, and knows that they can show up in different contexts (e.g. M isn't always for Mama). He frequently points at a word and announces that it says something. K says he pointed at "apple" on a carton of juice and told her it said "apple", but he hasn't repeated this or similar in my presence. He also writes quite often (as opposed to drawing), and asks me to write words for him.
The other evening he asked for toast - not cut into squares as I usually do it, but cut into a B. So I cut him a B out of toast, and we talked about words that began with B. And then he ate the bottom bit and turned it into an O. Later, I heard him remarking to himself, or possibly a bear, that "b is for dog". Which is along the right lines, at least.
He's got the hang of counting: very reliable for numbers up to about seven, and unreliable up to the late teens. When he feels like it.
My parents spent a lot of time with him two weekends ago. When I came to pick him up they'd got him spelling his own name and counting (as in reciting the numbers) up to 20. I don't believe these skills are deeply understood, but there's an argument, I suppose, for occasionally preceding substance with form. I mean that when he discovers what spelling actually is, he'll find that he's been doing it for ages.
Tech
"Unny want to type in a window," he says, so I log him in to his account on my machine, and he types away happily in bold 24-point, asking me to change the colour every so often. He knows about caps lock ("Unny do it BIG"), and he knows that he can get rows of whatever letter he chooses by holding the key down. He's typed iChat messages to Niall, and when we have a video chat he says, "Unny want to see Niall's enormous finger!" So Niall wobbles his finger right up close to the camera. Unny chuckles. "Now you do it," I suggest, and show him where to point his finger. "No, Unny just has little ones," he explains.
Love
He loves his father. "Where's Oisín's Nialler?" he asks. I greeted him one day with "There's my little boy!" - and in tones of extreme satisfaction he replied, "Niall's little boy too!" One evening last week we were in the kitchen and we heardolethros's key in the door (did I mention that olethros is living with us these days?). Oisín charged out to the hall exclaiming "Niall! It's Niall!" - and it wasn't, and he was horribly disappointed. (Didn't cry, but you could tell.) It won't be Niall until next Monday, either. Sigh.
He loves me too. He gives the best hugs ever (only equal in quality to those of his father, in fact). The other night I was changing him for bed, and he grinned at me and said, "This is Unny's mother that is called Unny's friend." With which I am delighted to concur.
The Oyster has adopted his very first media idol: an anodyne but essentially unobjectionable cartoon mouse called Maisy, who appears in adventures with her friends both in print and on screen. We read our three Maisy books constantly, we watch our two Maisy DVDs a lot, and I make tiny playdough models of the characters, which take part in the Oyster's elaborate agricultural tableaux (these feature his set of construction vehicles and a very disparate collection of miniature animals, some more suited to farm life than others). He has, furthermore, been called UnnyMaisy for most of the last few days. (I say, "There's Unny!", and he says, "He's still Maisy, though.")
I find I don't feel in the least bit bad about rotting the boy's brain with over-exposure to TV, partly because the programme inspires such interesting games, and partly because he's quite into watching the DVD that comes with multilingual voiceover in different languages (so far, Swedish and French).
Location, location, location
It's all about geography. When
cangetmad and Gnome left us in January, there was much talk about their having gone back to Ebindaba, and he'd also picked up from general conversation that Gnome's daddies "wib in Wibbingdon" (he reminded me of this, in fact, as I'd forgotten the name).He knows left and right, and uses them correctly quite a lot of the time.
A favourite request these days is "Want to SEE it!" - as in, "Where're we going?" - "Sandymount" - "Where's Sandymount? Want to SEE it!" or "We'll be seeing K on Monday" - "Where's Monday? Want to SEE it!" Time words are particularly under scrutiny, in fact. Where's the evening, where's the future, where's spring, where's earlier? Want to SEE it!
(He hasn't learnt "why?" yet - "where?" seems to be filling that slot for the moment.)
Language
I wish I had the organisational wherewithal to record him, because his language is just brilliant. He talks all the time. "Unny is climbing up on the chair to sit on the box, which is a very small box, and reading this book, which is Mama's book," he said the other evening. And about a fortnight ago, "Mama want1 to open the stairgate downstairs so Unny can go upstairs and ask Niall, 'Wonder where the playdough2 went?'"
Recent grammatical experiments include "this is be", meaning "we can pretend this is" - e.g. "this is be the down of the microwave, and this is be the up of the microwave" (as he held two books in the appropriate positions for a microwave floor and ceiling). This pluralised regularly to "these are be". Then there are syntactical confusions like "Unny is difficult to do that" (sometimes stated more conventionally as "Unny can't do the difficult thing") and "Who is that biscuit going to eat?" (hooray for inflection).
His speech is getting clearer all the time (although I usually need to interpret for him to strangers). He has trouble with devoicing initial stops (so he eats gake, sleeps on a billow, sticks out his dongue, etc.), with initial s, and with certain consonantal clusters - actually, they're initial too, come to think of it. So, for instance, "thing" and "sling" are both pronounced "ding". He made a breakthrough last week on "b[e]lue" and "s[e]low", by adding a schwa, but he doesn't yet do this consistently. And he practises: the other day we were wondering where the ducks on the canal were, and he said, "Maybe they're away building their nests ... nests, sts, sts." Or he'll say, "that's a bit of milk ... k, k, k". (I love this.)
Pronunciations I'd like to remember: wess (yes), amelals (animals), ella-ump (elephant), oggiupt (octopus), gwowbar (barcode/crowbar), mummens (mushrooms, currently muff-fens), bigots (biscuits, now pronounced normally), moogat (music), bellabader (conveyor belt - took me WEEKS to crack this one: it was clearly very important but he couldn't tell me anything distinctive about it), byskedil (bicycle), wing a wenss wong (sing a French song), dicadult (difficult), and last but not least, UNNY! He still says Unny a lot, but the full "Oisín" is also very much on the scene.
1 Imperative "want" is a central element in his vocabulary.
2 I keep wishing there were a children's modelling material called arisdoddle. Yes, I'm ridiculous.
Making stuff up
He's got really into having stories told to him ("story" so far has the broad meaning of information delivered in a set order). I gave him a toddler's guide to avian reproduction a while ago, and he instantly responded, "Mama want to do the story about the baby birds again". Now, any time I tell him something in detail (e.g. what's going to happen with our garden remodelling project, what may happen if he puts a full cup of juice on his head), he casts it as a story.
My father is a wonderful purveyor of instant stories to the young, and they had a mammoth session two Sundays ago while I was Singing With My Friends (read: participating in Bach cantata series with chamber choir). The other day, the Oyster announced that he was telling me stories, and proceeded to do so: "Once upon a time there was ... *looks around kitchen* ... a clock and a cupboard, and they went to the kitchen. And that's the end of the story." Then, looking at the laundry rack, "Once upon a time there was a wall and some socks."
And then! I was changing his nappy that same evening, and he suddenly said, "Every time when Niall changes Unny's nappy when it's pooey then he puts the same one back on again!" I guffawed, so he said it again. And again - for as long as he got a satisfactory reaction. And he was watching my reaction: repeating his experiment. I think this is totally brilliant - it's an appropriation of language, of narrative, a separation of word and world. He looked gleeful at the effect he was having.
There was a lovely bit a few weeks ago when he came and said, "Unny sit down and talk to Mama." He informed me that we now had a green cat called Mog and a purple dog called Innte. The dog's name changed to Oto later on, but they both retained their substance -
kulfuldi had to move her feet to avoid stepping on them several hours later.He makes up words. We were giving each other "food" (wooden blocks, actually) the other day, and I gave him carrot and potato and I forget what else, and he gave me burklegenguy and bergeya and iggy. I can't help framing this as an assertion of his entitlement to a piece of the language-is-power action.
Yes, we're middle-class
Peering into the (fabulous) gingerbread house that
biascut brought us, Oisín asks, "Where's the study?"Playing with an older boy in the park, who has cast a pair of playground structures as Block 1 and Block 2 (which latter has a new lift shaft with glass walls), Oisín gestures at the larger climbing frame: "This is Trinity College!"
Names
He now pronounces his own full name pretty competently. The other day, he asked for "the names of people's cars", which turned out to mean the make and model of the cars he travels in, and then of every car we could see from where we were parked. I'm not good at cars. I suspect I may become so if this goes on.
Animals
Current obsession. We're animals all day, every day. Mama's a big monkey and Unny's a little monkey, or dog, or sheep, or elephant, or whatever (at the moment, it's wall-to-wall Maisy Mouse, as I mentioned). Every so often he'll announce, for example, "We've turned into horses!" - and then we'll find a stable and some hay.
Elimination
On Tuesday 23 January, according to my notes, Oisín was running around in the nip to get dry after a bath, and he started to pee. I grabbed the potty (which had gained some cachet during
cangetmad and Gnome's visit the previous week), and he peed into it for the first time. He was most intrigued. So I hunted out his toddler pants and we tried them out. He wet two pairs, but was clearly very enthused by the whole deal.The next day, we stayed home, and I left him bare-bottomed for a lot of the morning. (He asked for no-nappy-just-pants later on.) He didn't manage to use the potty that day, but there was a definite improvement in comprehension of what was going on. When my mother arrived to mind him while I went to choir (Niall was away), I told her excitedly what we'd been doing, and he said, "Oisín doesn't use nappies at all now." My mother and I hastily emphasised that this applied to the daytime, and that at night, or when he went in a car, he still used nappies.
On Thursday, when we were going to the toddler group, I gave him a choice between nappy or pants. He chose nappy. When we got there, he made straight for the sit-in car.
On Friday, we went into town to have lunch with my sister. He was very, very insistent about wearing pants, so I thought, why not? (I did put a plastic bag between him and his car seat, though.) And he stayed dry. All the way into town, all through lunch, all through a minor shopping round, and all the way home. The shopping was for a toddler toilet seat and a step. Alas, there was a bit of kerfuffle when we got home. A package had to be collected from the Post Office, and so I handed the Oyster off to Niall (who was a little apprehensive) and left them to initiate use of the new bathroom accessories. I returned with the package to find a frustrated Niall and a very solemn little boy. "What happened?" I asked, and Oisín sighed and said, in a very small voice, "Peed on the floor." Niall filled me in: there had been some sitting on the seat but no action (and then a subsequent miss). So I exclaimed, "But he sat on the seat! That's great!" And he smiled at me as if his world had been put right, and I nearly cried. (I should, of course, have stayed with Unny while Niall went to the Post Office: I had a well developed dialogue going with Unny about the whole business, whereas Niall was flung at it with no preparation. It didn't occur to me. Regret that.)
All through Friday evening, and first thing on Saturday morning, he asked, over and over again, for the story about the loo (once upon a time there was a little boy called Oisín, and one morning he woke up and decided he wanted to learn how to use the grown-up loo, etc. etc.). After his dawn feed I brought him to the toilet, where he happily sat on his new seat while we looked at the map of Europe on the wall and waited for stuff to happen. ("Open your mouth, penis," he said at one point, which
glitzfrau says is the most Freudian thing she's ever heard.) Eventually, stuff happened; he looked worried and then delighted. Then he asked for a new nappy, and consistently refused offers of pants until we stopped making them a day or two later.He hasn't expressed any interest in going without a nappy since then. (I'm wondering whether his successful loo use has satisfied him for the moment.) There's no earthly point in trying to turn his thoughts back in that direction while we're still settling into our new paid work / childcare routine, so there it stands.
Conversations
niallm's in California at the moment; we use video iChat to talkNiall (to Radz): I've sent my black Mac Book in for repair.
Niall and Radz: *chat for a minute or so*
Oyster: Want to SEE it! Want to see Niall's black Mac bag!
Oyster: *is satisfied with sight of Niall's black backpack*
Oyster: Where's the pear? Want to see the pear!
pleidhce has delivered his (wildly popular) Christmas present of playdough and is playing with the OysterPleidhce: I'm making a [carrot | person | cake].
Oyster (squeezing a small piece purposefully): Unny making memory.
[I explained that he meant computer memory. We weren't sure which meaning we found more disconcerting.]
kulfuldi's over for dinner, playing with the OysterKulfuldi (to Radz): Oh! I fell down the stairs today. I wasn't badly hurt or anything, but it was not nice.
Oyster (in tone of one giving solemn counsel): Maybe walk down the stairs.
Sitting on the sofa
Oyster: Unny would like just one episode of Maisy.
Mama: OK, let's watch one episode.
Oyster: One episode. *pauses* Or two. Two, really.
I am picking him up after his very first morning at the childminder's
Childminder: He did miss his Mammy a little bit, all right.
Mama (hugging Oyster): Oh, poor Unny. Did you miss me a little bit?
Oyster: No. Just a big bit.
He has done something I find particularly cute
Mama: Oh, you're lovely.
Oyster: Unny is not wubbly. Mama is wubbly, and Niall is wubbly. Unny is billant.
[The following day, for what it's worth, Unny was wubbly and Mama was billant.]
K and I are watching him put tiny playdough "bales of hay" into a (relatively) huge "oven"
Radz (to K): I love the way scale is irrelevant.
K: It's great, isn't it?
Oyster: Elephant goes wuuuuh!
Letters and numbers
He can reliably identify lots of letters in upper and lower case, and knows that they can show up in different contexts (e.g. M isn't always for Mama). He frequently points at a word and announces that it says something. K says he pointed at "apple" on a carton of juice and told her it said "apple", but he hasn't repeated this or similar in my presence. He also writes quite often (as opposed to drawing), and asks me to write words for him.
The other evening he asked for toast - not cut into squares as I usually do it, but cut into a B. So I cut him a B out of toast, and we talked about words that began with B. And then he ate the bottom bit and turned it into an O. Later, I heard him remarking to himself, or possibly a bear, that "b is for dog". Which is along the right lines, at least.
He's got the hang of counting: very reliable for numbers up to about seven, and unreliable up to the late teens. When he feels like it.
My parents spent a lot of time with him two weekends ago. When I came to pick him up they'd got him spelling his own name and counting (as in reciting the numbers) up to 20. I don't believe these skills are deeply understood, but there's an argument, I suppose, for occasionally preceding substance with form. I mean that when he discovers what spelling actually is, he'll find that he's been doing it for ages.
Tech
"Unny want to type in a window," he says, so I log him in to his account on my machine, and he types away happily in bold 24-point, asking me to change the colour every so often. He knows about caps lock ("Unny do it BIG"), and he knows that he can get rows of whatever letter he chooses by holding the key down. He's typed iChat messages to Niall, and when we have a video chat he says, "Unny want to see Niall's enormous finger!" So Niall wobbles his finger right up close to the camera. Unny chuckles. "Now you do it," I suggest, and show him where to point his finger. "No, Unny just has little ones," he explains.
Love
He loves his father. "Where's Oisín's Nialler?" he asks. I greeted him one day with "There's my little boy!" - and in tones of extreme satisfaction he replied, "Niall's little boy too!" One evening last week we were in the kitchen and we heard
olethros's key in the door (did I mention that olethros is living with us these days?). Oisín charged out to the hall exclaiming "Niall! It's Niall!" - and it wasn't, and he was horribly disappointed. (Didn't cry, but you could tell.) It won't be Niall until next Monday, either. Sigh.He loves me too. He gives the best hugs ever (only equal in quality to those of his father, in fact). The other night I was changing him for bed, and he grinned at me and said, "This is Unny's mother that is called Unny's friend." With which I am delighted to concur.