String of pearls

[radegund]

High time for another Oyster Report, I think.

1. External validation - hurrah!
niallm, Oisín and I were in a café this afternoon meeting kulfuldi and glitzfrau, doing our usual Oyster-wrangling thing. When we got up to leave, a middle-aged gentleman sitting at a table on his own beckoned us over and began to speak, earnestly but perhaps somewhat blurrily. "Can I stop you?" he may have begun. (La Glitz and La Kulf carried straight on out the door at this point and waited for us on the pavement.) "I just wanted to say," our accoster went on, "The clinic is closed now [*Radzer thinks OK, nutter; what's our exit strategy?*], but I used to work in child psychology [*Radzer thinks hmmm, did you, indeed?*], and your" - gesturing at Niall and me - "interaction with him" - Oisín - "is just beautiful [*Radzer thinks gosh, it's so lovely to meet someone of such obvious intelligence and discernment; truly, there are no strangers in this world, just friends we haven't met yet*] - absolutely spot on. Tell me," he leant closer, "are you computer literate?" Niall confessed that he might be. "Because he has, you know, a hard disk inside of him, and what you're putting in now - you can smash the disk with a hammer and it'll do no damage..." I don't remember the rest. The gist I gathered was that he thinks we're good parents. So, um, thanks for that, strange man.

2. Words, words, words
I love Oisín's vocabulary innovations. Recently, we've had dhal bowl (soup ladle - we eat quite a lot of dhal), noiser (food processor) and soap milk (steamed milk, which he gets fed with a spoon from a parent's cup in cafés). I now use "knitting noodles", because that's just too cute not to reinforce. This morning, he watched me taking off my nightdress and said, "Mama taking off her blue nightmare", which I may also have to adopt. Favourite phrase of the week is not awockiating! (not co-operating), exclaimed when physical objects thwart his will. (Also, occasionally, expressed as "neh-neh-neh-neh-neh-NOT WORKING!") [ETA: Forgot to mention two other memorable pronunciations - bigots (biscuits) and mummens (mushrooms) - that have passed into our household vocabulary.]

3. Focla, focla, focla
I realise I profess delight and amazement at pretty much every action the Oyster performs - and obviously, I'm only partly joking when I say, every five minutes, "Genius! The boy is a genius!" (you do know that, right?) - but yesterday he genuinely impressed me: he went and got his big book of Irish words and brought it over to my brother, who was visiting. "Irish book! Irish book!" he said. (I hadn't known that he knew it was an Irish book, for starters - I've never made any big deal of it when I read to him in different languages - but I assume Niall's mentioned it at some point.) Then, as my brother read, Oisín was making remarks like "chair is called cathaoir", "jumper is called geansaí". See? Genius.

4. Poem!
He composed his first poem last month! I swear to you - no lie. We were driving to Dundrum, and it was the first time he'd been aware of going there, and he loved the name. "Dumdum!" he said, over and over again. Then a pause, and very deliberately, "Go wum-wum a-Dumdum." (On the offchance that it needs spelling out, "wum-wum" = "vroom-vroom".)

5. Where babies come from, and where they go next
Yesterday, we happened to be driving past the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street, and I came over all nostalgic. "You know what?" I said (and I may have been guilty of a honey-sweet, rose-tinted tone of voice), "This building here is where Unny was born. Because Unny used to live in Mama's tummy, when he was teeny-tiny-teeny-weeny, and then one day, Mama and Niall went to the hospital, and Mama got up on a bed, and Unny came out of her tummy." Oisín thought for a few moments, then said, "Now he in the car seat." Which, fair enough, accurate. He seemed taken with the information, though - he suggested about a minute later that he had been living in Mama's navel. No, we agreed after a bit of discussion, he'd been living near her navel, in her womb. "Womb" is a very amusing word.

6. Eat your heart out, Lacan
He did the Mirror Stage! About two weeks ago, he started getting agitated by mirrors. There was something about them that wasn't working the way he wanted it to. He wasn't able to explain what, but it had to do with what happens when you touch the glass. Then one day we were looking at Unny-and-Mama-in-the-mirror, and I noticed he had a small red mark on his cheek. Because I am a heartless parent intent on subjecting my child to ruthless experimentation, I said, "Look at the red spot on Unny's cheek," and waited for his response. Like the angel he is, he raised his finger to his own cheek, proving that he has achieved self-consciousness! (Roll on, the post-infantile angst...)

7. Lateral thinking
He's very into tools at the moment. He learnt about levers when we were digging up the back garden (mmmmmmm, five-foot crowbars): he experimented with the broom handle and some kitchen chairs. He loves measuring things with rulers and the measuring-tape (everything is apparently "twenty-two metres"), timing things (books, Mama's trousers, etc. - which are also all "twenty-two metres"), and checking things on the calculator (e.g. when dinner will be ready). He's been sanding floors with whatever is to hand since we had our living room floors done earlier this month. He also suggests innovative approaches to problems: of a pain in his tummy, "maybe a hammer take it away", of a broken bucket handle, "maybe Calpol fix it".

8. Greatness
He continues to be entirely, unspeakably great. I love him.

Comments

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

This morning she actually phoned the two of you, though I suspect she didn't dial correctly. "Phone Nenan," she announced, then picked up the phone, and said "Hanno Nenan, Oisín doing? Hanno Oisín. Bye Oisín." So there you go. Perhaps she'll actually book the aeroplane herself if I give her enough rope. (Yes, we totally should. Let's make a plan.)

And, well, she's right, of course.