Elizabeth is ill

It's my turn to look after her. I might get more work done here without all the distractions of the office.

--
Dave McLaughlin - sent from my mobile phone
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/

Old Dad blog

My Old Dad blog is getting better. The main blog, olddad.mclaughlin.org.uk, is pretty much working (except internal links to the home page). There's a sort of mirror at olddad.Posterous.com. And if everything works as planned, this post will be notified to Twitter, and from there to Facebook.

--
Dave McLaughlin - sent from my mobile phone
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/

Elizabeth has a new bike

Straight from the bike shop to Rouken Glen.

--
Dave McLaughlin - sent from my mobile phone
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/

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Schoolgirl!

Elizabeth started school today!

UPDATE: more pictures available now at elizabeth.mclaughlin.org.uk.

End of an era

Today was Elizabeth's last day at Jennyswell Nursery. She's been going there for as long as she can remember, and the ladies there have been great. She brought home a scrapbook of material from her time in the 3-5 room, and it's moving stuff. Elizabeth seems a little subdued, but not nearly as emotional about the whole thing as the grown-ups. Now she's gone to bed quite quietly; she doesn't seem too excited about what tomorrow has in store.

In her own write

Today at nursery, Elizabeth stencilled this picture:


Nothing too clever about that, is there? After all, she did almost as good a job 17 months ago. But what was more impressive was on the other side of the paper:


Even that could have gone unnoticed; she's often written her name before, copying a grown-up. But this time the ladies didn't help; in fact they didn't even know she'd done it. Apparently she did it from memory.

Art for art's sake (3)

About a month ago, Elizabeth copied a little clay hedgehog. I told her how to do some bits, but it's all her own work.

Ginger whine

Alcohol-free ginger wine is a Christmas tradition in this part of Scotland. Today, Elizabeth tried it for the first time. Her verdict? "It's making me have a sore brain."

Faraway voices

This morning I had occasion to phone home from work. After five rings, I was just waiting for the answering machine to kick in, when ...

[muffled rustlings, which anyone who's ever known a small child to pick up a phone will recognise]

Hello, Elizabeth?

Hello.

Hello Elizabeth, this is Daddy. You're a clever girl. Is Mummy in the shower?

Yes.

What are you doing?

Mummy gived me a snack.

A snack? What kind of snack?

[muffled, ... possibly "pear" ...], white chocolate buttons.

... more of the same ...

Will you tell Mummy I phoned?

Yes.

Thank you. Bye bye.

Bye.

At this point, I hung up. With hindsight, that was rather a silly thing to do - I should have waited to hear if she hung up first.

Apparently she subsequently told Mummy she had been talking to Daddy. Mummy assumed she was talking about earlier today, or yesterday; the idea that it might have been on the phone didn't occur to her. After all, it's difficult to get Elizabeth to talk on the phone; the idea that she could answer it herself simply didn't occur to Mummy. And since she had, in fact, hung up properly, there was no evidence that she'd been on the phone.

Perfect tense

Elizabeth was too sick to go to nursery yesterday. She goes to two different nurseries on different days. When I got home from work, in an effort to start a conversation, I asked "Did you go to [the wrong] Nursery today?". She replied, "We were going to go to [the other] Nursery." And I thought she sometimes had difficulty with a simple past tense!

Teaching Daddy a song

Tonight, at bed-time, Elizabeth asked me to sing Twinkle, Twinkle, so I did. She joined in, with hand movements.Then she asked me to sing Chocolate Bar. I had to confess I didn't know that song. So she taught me it:

Twinkle, twinkle, chocolate bar,
My Daddy bought me a motor car.
Push the button, pull the choke,
Off we go in a puff of smoke.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.

With hand movements.

Art for art's sake (2)

About a month ago, Elizabeth and I were drawing spiders. First I'd draw a thorax, then she'd copy me. Then, in turn, we'd go through head, abdomen and legs, with her copying me each step of the way, except that she really wasn't very good. The precision of her hand movements seemed to be about 2cm. If she drew a circle 10cm in diameter, it looked not too bad, but if she tried to draw a spider's head 2cm in diameter, it just didn't work. That, as I say, was about a month ago. Yesterday she drew these, without prompting - and those heads are less than 2cm across.

In the swim

We've been going swimming every Sunday for a few weeks now, and Elizabeth's been taking lessons on Fridays for almost as long. Last Friday, it seems, she was getting the hang of it and could doggy-paddle quite happily, with armbands. Today we went swimming and she tried it without armbands - the experience dented her confidence a bit.

Art for art's sake

We often get art-works home from the nursery with Elizabeth - paintings, collages, greeting cards, a calendar every year. The ladies at the nursery are obviously quite imaginative, but nobody's fooled that Elizabeth's contribution to these is significant. Yesterday was different; Helen was told that Elizabeth spent an hour on this, with very little assistance. Obviously it's a stencil. Presumably the stencil was taped or otherwise fixed in place. Even so, I'm impressed.

In the picture

When Elizabeth was only a couple of weeks old, I sent a picture of her, just out of the bath, to BBC Scotland's Web site. They didn't publish it. I decided not to send them another one. I did consider this one of the ball-pit, but I thought it didn't really work in the small format they use. Last week I sent them another one and this time they published it.

Big girl's bed

Thursday night saw a milestone in Elizabeth's life - her first night without the bars on the front of her cot-bed. I've been keen that we should get her used to the idea before we go on holiday next week, because she's really too big for our travel cot and we don't know what sort of cot will be provided in the cottage we're renting.

So, for the past week or so, we've been taking the bars off before putting her to bed - in fact, since she found out it's possible, she's insisted they come off in the morning. But once she's been put to bed she's always asked to have them back on. It was difficult to refuse when they were propped up at the foot of the cot, but on Thursday I had hidden them out of the room.

After her bed-time story, she likes to have the book under her pillow. When I went in to get her up this morning, she was sitting up in bed reading Sharing a Shell. How long before she realises she can get out of bed?

Breakfast of champions

She wants to sit in Mummy's chair, not the booster chair. She doesn't want a bib. She doesn't want a cup with a lid on it. I try to explain that, if she really wants a cup without a lid, then she really must have a bib; we agree on a bib of her choice. She doesn't want Shreddies ("Daddy's") or Special K ("Mummy's"), but muesli (which she insists on calling "boogit").

Too clever

At bathtime this evening, I left Elizabeth alone in the bathroom for perhaps seven or eight seconds, while I went to get a towel. She's tried to climb into the bath before, but never really come close, so I didn't think there was much risk. I didn't reckon on her bolting the door! She opened it about a second after I first tried it, but it was a scary second. I've since removed the bolt from the door.

Words of wisdom

Elizabeth's been speaking for some time now, but up until recently it's just been one or two words at a time. Last week, when I asked her (not for the first time) to come upstairs with me, she said, indignantly, "No, Daddy! I told you that!" But even that was mostly just parroting a phrase she'd heard. Today she went one better. I went to collect her from nursery. As we were leaving, she pointed out a couple of things on the shelf above the coat-hooks: "Clara's baby", "Alistair's hat". Then one of the staff said "See you later!" And Elizabeth replied, "Elizabeth* later you!" Now that's not something she's overheard somebody else saying; she constructed that sentence herself. It's the most obvious case I've heard since her cousin Lisa used to refer to "me's Mummy" when she was about the same age.

*Well okay, it's more like "Dabidabeth".