March 08:Happy Birthday!!! We made it through a whole year!

[turtle23]

new thread.

Leo had 20 words at 16 months (in my slightly anal way, I did an audit ) and he's definitely learned several more in the last week or two, but NOT ONE OF THEM IS MUMMY!!! There's a huge variation in my NCT group from the other boy who is at about 40-50 words to two of the girls who are still to utter their first proper word, but interestingly the level of comprehension seems to be quite similar.

The comprehension that is going on at the moment is quite amazing. Leo now understands that steam means food is hot and blows on it before i even have to tell him it's hot!

lol @ hooters, muchly

lol @ hooters!

Talking is like walking, some sort of competition. Since all my NCT babies are walking, now it's all about "Tarquin said Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious yesterday." Bleh.

G has always been very chatty (never stops) but has probably less than 20 words, although he's gaining more every couple days. He understands everything you say which is worrying. I need to stop swearing!

DP I've just emailed the Dogs Trust people to see if there are any more places on your trip! I really want to do it, but need to convince DH that he could handle a week without me. He agrees in principle but might need a little persuading. I think it would be so fun and a great way to get me motivated about something. So, we'll see. If I get a place you'll all have to sponsor two of us!

scrolls through looking for sponsor things

Ooh Jfly, really?! That'd be brilliant! I think they have plenty of space, may only be 2 others on that week so far! And one of them is an 18yr old girl cos they wouldn't let her do it last year since she was too young

I'm blogging it now on here if you want to share my pain!

Think I'll be putting my next few HB takings towards it, and am offering a distance Reiki healing for any £20+ donations My family are studiously ignoring the begging pleas so far unfortunately

Glad people have been having lovely holidays, anyone done "package" ones or are you diy-ing arrangements?

Words- E is babbling loads, haven't a clue what he's saying. Everything for the last day or 2 has been Car or Garden (that Iggle Piggle influence again), but mainly it's fnar which we think is "what's that?" and niminiminiminiminim.

FfFf have fun with the studying, and think about how much hell it must be for bloke having to endure the likes of Hooters

Right, I'm off to wii-fit now.

DP- Will be sponsoring you, just have to get my sh1t together.
Words? We are too busy for words. P's best friend knows her bloody colours as well as saying please and thank you. If it doesn't go brrm brrm or chugga chugga P doesn't really want to know. He says no, is it? (what is it?), booby(grr. sometimes replaced by pointing down my top and saying IN THERE), daddy, ticktock, and rather inexplicably...I'M NOT!!! He has come out with loads of other things but they have all vanished at the moment.
After everybody "congratulating" me on him walking at 8/9 months it is nice to have the backwards boy.

It really is like a competition although my Mummy friends aren't the worst, my parents and in-laws are!

DP and I were apparently both speaking in full sentences at six months old so every time they see T they make stupid comments and it is pissing me off. I'm not worried just wanted to check she is within the realms of normal and I think she is doing just fine, probably only has 15 words but understands very well and can copy words, just doesn't always retain them.

turtle - your friends little one knows her colours and please and thank you!? That is amazing!

The Alaska trip sounds fab! Where are sponsorship links? Can't see them!

Alaska sounds fab too, it's in northern Sweden though, shorter flight
Link's this one - don't know as yet how to make it appear on every page in the blog, it's on the homepage though.

thanks for offers of support guys, don't mind at all having to wait a bit, or splitting the vote as it were with jfly Every little helps!

Have i mentioned lately how great you all are?

Oooh, anyone else signing up for alaska? i think we should set a target of half the March 08 board visiting those huskies Bagsy not me though; I'm a cat kind of girl.

at colours and sentences! The 'forgetting' words thing is so weird. DS only has 6 or 7 in common usage at any one time. They drift in and out and back in again, so at any one point it's about 6 or 7, but over a week or so he probably uses most of the 20.

And he still only uses them for labelling things though. He will point to the pepper grinder and say 'peppa' whenever he happens to spy it, but when he wants it on his pasta he will only point and grunt. So his words aren't really that much use at the moment.

By the way we amazingly have had an offer on our house and are waiting to hear back on whether they'll accept our offer on the dream house. Just been down there today revisiting it, and then spent a pleasant afternoon in Brighton enjoying the beach and the seaside summer vibe

Ooops, can you tell I scan read? Will get on the page now and read PROPERLY!

House stuff sounds very exciting HQ, I am very jealous, I have always wanted to live in or near Brighton! Do keep us posted and when all is done, pics would be a bonus, I lurve property porn - stick 'em on your profile

DP, I will sponsor you tomorrow. Would go and fetch card now, but Boydog is asleep on my feet, so can't move. Dogs Trust is one of my chosen charities, so am very happy to contribute. And well done, JFly. Am sorely tempted after looking at the website...but can't.

Competitive talking reached new heights here today. Took Ff to a Jamie at Home thing an ex-colleague with a new baby was holding for other mums and retirees from my old company. Cheesy as you like, but it's nice to hold cute babies (or would have been, had I had the chance. Ff was transfixed by the cat, and chased it around the house for the entire morning). Old boss has a granddaughter 6 weeks older that Ff, who not only knows her colours, but can count to twenty in english and ten in GREEK. Greek? They only went away for a fortnight!

Ff chatters away at home, but is a bit quiet when we're out. She's got about 15 words I think, but they come and go. Constants are Mammy, Dadda, uh-oh, Sedden, dog, duck and nana.

Have a good weekend all.

Will happily sponsor all who participate...am thinking that I may give actually going a miss this time. Can you do it with three month old baby in a sling?

HQ- OOOOOOHHH want to know about house. Keep us updated!
btw...forgot to mention that DH has moved back in. He's being very nice at the moment. We shall see.

Good luck turtle

HQ- the house sounds great but you have to promise to host a meet and let the babies play on the beach!

Ewe- i dont think that there are any more routine check ups, but they do post out a checklist of milestones and if you hjave concerns they will visit, at least round here anyway. but honestly if T is in nursery and was in any way 'abnormal' they would have told you

Ff-glad to hear you are getting into the swing of new routine, how long till your dh is next back?

It has been a HELL of a week here, am not recovering to well from hysteroscopy, not helped by the dr messing up the paperwork and insisiting my follow up being in the infertility clinic (can you imagine how awful it would be to turn up to that clinic with my two preschoolers with me?) I had several polyps removed and am hoping i will start to feel better now.
I was feeling awful wed night so went to A and E finally leaving unseen at 1 am as ambulances full of drunk fighters were being brought in. Then when i was going to bed thurs night dd woke up and couldnt breathe, so rerun of all night in hosp, as i managed to get appointement with emergency dr at cottage hosp. So both DD and DS now have CROUP which is apparently going round.

Oh my LD, that sounds terrible. Hope you can kick the weekend off with your feet up on the way to recovery. Hopefully you have some help around/favours to call in?

Well were back from holiday, spent the last 3 weeks visiting family in Germany. (Not in a Munich nudist camp ).

DD picked up loads of German words there. I try to speak to her in german here but I laze back to english most of the time so it was a really good time to have been around the German relatives I think.

She's got a pretty hefty vocabulary but nonetheless just chatters away in nonsense most of the day anyway. Her father taught her her colours: "blue" and "not blue".

Hey dd, what colour is that fire engine? -Not blue.

or blue. at least 50 percent chance of getting it right!

This dog run sounds amazing! Would love to visit Alaska sometime, maybe when dd is older -and now that Palin's resigned its bound to be an even better place than before!

Missed the meetup AGAIN but we're still here so want to try again anyone? MB mentioned Coram fields, that might be nice for a picnic and play?

will try to read thread properly now.

oh yeah: HELLO! and sorry for all the !!!!

Staggered by the amount of talking thats going on! DD has maybe 3 words, and a wide array of animal noises (tho' not always when seeing the correct animal- last week she spent 5 minutes 'baa'ing at a perplexed cow).She understands a lot more words than she says and will occasionally do what she's told.

Mind you- DS now exclaims 'oh bonks!!' whenever things aren't going well. I'm not sure if that's him mishearing a slightly different word I frequently use . He also refers to DD's favourite kitchen cupboard as 'that bloody cupboard' .

LD hope you are feeling well? And everyone else? Just me and DD this weekend, DH and DS have gone to visit Granny. Hopefully save my sanity after 2 full on weeks of toddler.

hello

don't have time to finish reading so apologies if i've missed anything that means this doesn't make sense... have to post... am so excited that you guys are doing the Dogs Trust husky trek - my little sister set that up as a fundraiser before she went on mat leave (she works for Dogs Trust) and went on the first one they did (and yes she did have to fund her place - no freebies at a charidee!). She loved it but said it was pretty full on. Dogs were amazing though. You will need lots of properly hard core thermal clothing. Soooo cool! Good on you ladies!

re words... have been reliably informed that the professionals only worry if LOs have less than 50 words by age 2, so anything at this stage is ok. We have lots and lots but so many of them are one offs as she is the ultimate parrot - everything we say is copied and then never repeated - so very hard to keep count of them. Don't have colours but she can count to 3!!

Sorry I post so infrequently - i lurk loads but rarely feel I have anything worth saying!

xx

Littleducks, how are you & the rest of the family? Hope the drugs are working & you're all catching up on some sleep inbetween coughs.

CM, what a small world! If your little sis has any hints & tips apart from avoid the p*ss & poo from the dogs in front (and hey, we're mums, we should be used to that, no?), let me know!

Jfly, have you got the info and/or sent off?

CM, that is spooky! I think that means it is destined that we participate. Does your sister have any hints on how to fundraise? I've got all the gubbins and forms but haven't sent off yet. DH is worried that I won't be able to raise the £3k and we'll be left to make up the difference. That's the only thing that makes me hesitate - if I sign up, I have to make sure I get the cash. I've had a few good brainstorms about ways to raise the money, but will probably email Dogs Trust people and find out exactly how much assistance they give on that front.

The other thing DH I worry about is that I won't get fit enough. Or more to the point, I'll pay for a gym membership and won't go. I don't have a great track record in that area, but then again I haven't ever had a concrete goal to work towards.

DP, I'll send you my email on FB so we can chat more. That kit list was intimidating, but I think I actually have most of it from skiing.

LD, sorry to hear about the complications from your procedure. I really hope you get some good care soon. And also hope you get out from under the croup.

Turtle, have fun with your parents!

erm,

sorry, very distracted by minor nonsense today. you should raise money with a sponsored dog thing or two. what gets dog lovers out in force? sponsered dog walks? some kind of canine fete? am also scratching my brains for you, but am cluelss , truly!

turtle, i hope its going ok. i hope he's given you some good grounds for expecting sustained behaviour improvement!

ggg and talking, yes also loads of words lost. but he's found the K which ends words, and has begun to drive me nuts the last few days with cries of:
'Loooooookkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk' where the K's sound like really loud radio static.

'Kkkkkkkkk'

night night

Just read Merryberry's post and got unbelievably excited about the number of dog related things you could do to raise money. Locally, we have a lot of 'Funny Dog Shows'. (Yes, I know, I practically live in Dibley...) Mad though this sounds, you get people to bring their dogs and take part in all sort of crazy competitions - we have tried, but Girldog is too ugly masculine looking to win the prettiest dog competition, and neither are particularly adept at the Not-Eating-The-Sausage competition. But you see what I mean, yes?

Dog walking? I would gladly pay someone to take my two out sometimes, especially when the rain is hammering down and all I want to do is sit on the sofa and drink tea.

When I was raising money to do the Three Peaks Challenge we did a slave auction - the admin dept at my old job bought the MD and had him make their tea and coffee for an afternoon, and I was sold to sales and was made to do many things that I considered beneath my dignity .

Good luck.

Bought Ff some Crocs today. We've been making do with her one pair of 'proper' shoes, but decided I needed something to slip on her when she is on one of her mad dashes to the garden. She LOVES them, and wore them to bed this afternoon.

Littleducks, I hope all at yours are recovering.

Meet up soon? Because before we know it the summer will be over...

MB- We have similar, but it i the T at the end which we get. Is itttttt-T NOTTTT-T bootttt-T etc.
Was thinking about it and actually he has loads of words. Is only that we hear the same few soooo many times.
LD-Cant believe I have forgotten to send you get well wishes. Sorry!
As for fundraising...no good at dog-related stuff. How about having a swish and charging £20 for entry (which could include a glass of wine or something?)
"What is Swishing? The Art of Swishing involves getting your friends together to swap gorgeous clothes and party at the same time. Every lady must bring at least one good quality, clean item of clothing, or an accessory, that she'd feel proud to hand on. (Large sacks of designer frocks are also gratefully received. And people who bring along anyone else with a bulging wardrobe.)

What do you need to do? Be ruthless! Go through your wardrobe with a fine toothcomb! There?s an old fashion saying, if you haven?t worn it for three seasons you?ll never wear it again. Of course, this is negated by the fact that fashion is circular and if you hang on to it, you?ll be wearing it again sooner or later (or your kids will!). But, storage nightmares aside, be tough here. Fill as many bags as you can with your cast-offs, too-big or too-small rejects and unloved impulse buys! Who is to say that something you have never managed to find an occasion or time to wear won?t be the perfect item for someone else?"
This will let you have a good old clear out as well.

enjoying swishing idea. now all i need is a room full of size 20 people who like posset stained park bleached work wear and you guys will be on your way ;)

Ff lives in Dibley, and we all live in Dribbly. Very LOL at not-eat-the-sausage comp. I have a household of humans to play that with as well

LD, any signs of improvement? x