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".

Getting up to mischief

Some time ago, I was warned of an important stage in a child's development. Just as there comes a time when she can stand up (and hence can suddenly reach things that much further off the floor), so there comes a time when she can both move chairs around the kitchen and climb up on them. Well yesterday, it happened, albeit in a small way, with her own miniature chair. I didn't understand what she was asking for, so she just went and got it herself. I haven't seen her quite manage to climb on a full-size kitchen chair yet, but she's come close, and she can certainly move them around. Now the kitchen's her oyster! It's a bit worrying.

Reading matters

Last night, while passing through Bristol Airport, I picked up a copy of The Gruffalo's Child. I'm a big fan of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, and Elizabeth's growing to like them too. She already enjoys The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom, though she gets a bit scared when the dragon puts in an appearance. That's a general dragon thing; she's the same with David Melling's The Kiss that Missed.

Elizabeth was sick in the night, and the new book came in quite handy at half past five this morning. It was a useful distraction while I was changing a particularly unpleasant nappy. We then got half-way through reading it before she ran off to do something else. I had to finish it by myself. Sadly I have a bone to pick. Ms Donaldson and Mr Scheffler could learn a bit about optics: the shadow of a mouse cast in the light of a low moon might be a lot longer than the mouse itself, but it wouldn't be any wider!

Elizabeth's cousin Emily has a couple of other books by Donaldson and Scheffler. Emily's four now, and the books are probably targeted more at her age group than Elizabeth's 22 months, but the regular metre and clever rhyme scheme give the text a musical quality that can hold even a young child's attention. I like The Snail and the Whale (but be prepared to get involved in a serious discussion of environmental issues with older kids). I can't comment on The Smartest Giant in Town, but Helen reckons it's not as good as their others. Well they can't all be masterpieces.

Another favourite author is Mick Inkpen, who does his own illustrations. He has written a long list of titles involving Kipper or Wibbly Pig. The Kipper books are variable in length: on the basis of a very small sample set, I hypothesise that the shorter ones all include "(Little Kippers)" in their titles. Elizabeth's at an age now where those really aren't long enough. I suspect they may be dusted off again once she starts reading herself. On the basis of Beachmoles and Bellvine, it seems that his Blue Nose Island series are aimed at older kids.

One other author/illustrator I'd like to mention is Debi Gliori. She's perhaps best known for her Mr Bear series, though I have to say they're far from being her best work. Where Did That Baby Come From? is a charming (I wondered how far I'd get before using that word) title, particularly for a child who's just acquired a new sibling. We've just had Polar Bolero out of the local library, a wonderful book set in a bizarre world of dreams.

I must mention another of Debi Gliori's books. No Matter What would bring a tear to a glass eye, and could be a great source of comfort to even a young child affected by divorce or bereavement. She cleverly avoids limiting the applicability of the story by making both the (single) parent and the child of indeterminate sex. "Love, like starlight, never dies." Oh, I feel all metaphysical!

Dawn chorus

During the working week, our alarm sounds at 0615, but we're used to Elizabeth waking up at 0600 precisely - and weekends are no different. Usually she starts the day with some gentle burbling, and only starts getting grumpy if she gets bored.

Sometimes, her burbling takes the form of what we've taken to calling "singing". And so it was on Saturday morning:

[descending scale] Da da, da da, da da, da;
[repeat scale] Da da, da da, da
da, kye.

Suddenly I realised, that's "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star"!
She's done it a couple of times since, and at breakfast on Monday I was able to make out the words "little star" as well. We've probably been a little remiss in singing nursery rhymes to her (though we sometimes play CDs in the car), but I guess the nursery have been teaching her.

Colour section

A couple of months ago, while on holiday, I tried to introduce Elizabeth to the concept of colour. For props, I had several tubs of Play-Doh in different colours, with some duplicates. I thought I'd keep it simple and use just two colours - blue and purple. I was particularly careful to avoid orange, since that would just be confusing - she knows what "orange" means, and she eats them all the time.

So, the conversation went something like this:

Daddy [indicating the tub lid] "This is blue,"
Daddy [indicating the tub contents] "and this is blue,"
Daddy [indicating a second tub lid] "and this is blue,"
Daddy [indicating a third tub lid] "and this is purple."
Daddy [indicating the third (purple) tub lid] "What's this?"
Elizabeth "Purple."
Daddy [indicating the first (blue) tub lid] "What's this?"
Elizabeth "Purple."

Repeat with "blue" and "purple" interchanged.

Fast-forward two months, and she still thinks Play-Doh is called "purple". So yesterday I tried again, this time with three colours, and emphasising the idea of colour as a modifier: "This is blue Play-Doh, and this is purple Play-Doh, and this is green Play-Doh." But she was still convinced that they were all called "purple".

Today we were visiting Gran's, and she was playing with a pair of shoes. Not just any pair of shoes, though. These were plastic toy "glass slipper" type shoes, which Elizabeth, without prompting, and correctly, described as "purple". By Jove, I think she's got it!

Just growing

All of my few previous posts have marked specific events in Elizabeth's development - the first word, first steps, that kind of thing. Her progress in the past couple of months has been dramatic, but in a slow, relentless kind of way - there have been few occasions that I could point to as the first of anything.

Her vocabulary has expanded enormously, but you have to know her well to be able to discriminate between some words. "Daddy" is almost indistinguishable from "dirty"; "Mummy" is indistinguishable from "monkey". Last week, her first attempt (that I've heard) at pronouncing her own name came out as "Izabizef".

She's becoming very independent, and determined to do things for herself. Last week, after a nappy change at her Gran's house, she spent half an hour trying to put her trousers on, and screaming bloody murder if anybody tried to help. A couple of days later, she was equally determined to put her own nappy on. And last night, Helen cooked up an excellent stir-fry for us all, and Elizabeth wanted chopsticks. As luck would have it, we recently picked up a big bag of those chopsticks that come in pairs cut from a single piece of wood, to be broken apart before use. We gave her a new pair, still stuck together, and she proved surprisingly adept at using them as a fork, scooping up noodles and spearing chicken pieces.

Over the past couple of months Elizabeth's been playing with a couple of what the Early Learning Centre calls "liftout puzzles". My sister Elaine had given us a few of these things (or do I mean lent, with Poppy getting older and another on the way). Elizabeth's getting good at them, so good that I thought we ought to try her on a new one. So I nipped upstairs and got one that she'd never seen before (unless they have the same one at nursery). She took all of the pieces out and put them back in again, without hesitation. So I went upstairs and got the last one - but took all of the pieces out before she saw it. This one was a lot more difficult because all of the pieces were small, similar and nearly symmetric, but even so, and unseen, she rapidly put about 3/4 of them in place before she lost interest.

We've been to Finlaystone a couple of times recently. Elizabeth loves the swings and the chutes, the forts and pirate ship, and the little obstacles, like the 4-inch wide beams set a foot or two off the ground with occasional steps up or down. Of course, she needs a bit of hand-holding to negotiate some of these hazards, but she could do them all day, and doesn't ever want to stop.

Many steps

Elizabeth has been able to walk for a couple of months now - she just hasn't believed it herself. Hold her hand and she can walk without any trouble at all. During our trip to the Yorkshire Dales, she had her first walk outdoors with reins on, and had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the car after half an hour in the pouring rain. Recently, it's often been possible to let the reins go slack and she'll quite happily keep her own balance. But she won't walk without them.

Until today. This afternoon, Helen stood Elizabeth with her back to an armchair and I knelt on the floor six feet away. After a bit of encouragement, she took about four steps towards me, stopped, turned around and walked back to the armchair. She did that twice.

I backed off to the far end of the room, about ten feet away. A bit more coaxing and again she walked half way then turned back. That must be more difficult than walking in a straight line.

Finally, at the fourth attempt, she walked the ten feet from one end of the rug to the other. After many congratulatory cuddles, I put her down and she walked back. She then spent ten minutes walking to and fro across the room, until Helen went to the kitchen to make some tea. Elizabeth followed her. Now she just walks, as if she's been doing it for months.