December 2007 - Not Quite Two, Already Terrible ;)

[claraquack]

Just checking that this worked....

love your halloween name Bookle

I know, they are only babies for a blink of an eye and then they don't need me anymore and I want another one!!!!!!!!!! Am I going to turn into one of those crazy women who has 18 children because she's addicted to babies?

Although it is lovely watching them growing up too - DD managed to read a reading book tonight - a bit randomly as they haven't started teaching them reading yet at school - but it was so sweet, I had to try really hard not to cry (and of course [proud]!)

I think potty training is going very slowly, so far I haven't as yet managed to get him on the potty. I will keep trying though, every nappy change I won't put a new nappy on straight away I'll ask him if he wants to sit on the potty.

I don't think he is ready yet!

Skid, that's very clever. DD wrote most of her christmas list last night by sounding the words out, amazing how just being at school has seemed to make it click.

her list says
hello kittee
barbi
doora and boots
gayms

Yes she can run, quite fast. But does trip over the turney in foot a bit, especially when her feet have just grown.

Am going to an open day at UWE on nov 20th to find out about the course I have wanted to do forever, see if it's feasible. Careers people at school put me off it whenI was 14/15 because they said I should do something more 'academic' but as I am still interested in it 15 years later I'm going to at least look into it and see how likely it is I'd get the fee waiver. Although I do feel a bit guilty and like I should just get a job and support my children myself. Would be doing it PT as otherwise fees would be £6k so would maybe be able to work a bit as well, supermarket or whatever. Worth looking into anyway.

ooh clairey, how exciting - I can give you tutorials!! Am just preparing one now on how infants segment spoken language into words by using statistical learning [geek emotion]

Will the uni provide childcare? A friend of mine has just started a PGCE and the uni are paying for her childcare and giving her £1000 a month!!

BT - good to give it a go - at least it will give him an idea of what he has to do. I found with my DS that we stopped and started a few times and that made him keener to try

PS clairey - that looks exactly like what my DD would want for Xmas - love the 'gayms'!!

Skid that sounds really interesting to me, maybe I can do clever post grad stuff on language acquisition once I've done this. Should have done it for my first degree really...

Just had bit of fight with ds He is still obsessed with sticking his hand down my top and I have to keep removing it. Just now he was really pulling on my clothes so I moved him away from me and he started hitting me, I shouted and made him cry I cannot stand having him pulling at my clothes though, drives me mad.

clairey - good luck with the course, I hope you are able to do it.

My dd's reading really came on towards the end of preschool and now they are talking about needing to borrow books from yr 1 or even yr2 for her - she just loves books and reading though. Luckily she is still pretty grounded and happily declared she is the slowest runner in her tennis class and only managed to hit the ball once in four lessons!

Skid - I can't understand what your tutorial is about - do you mean that they learn words by the amount of times they hear them or something? I tried keeping a record of dd2's speech and how she learnt to talk but of course it's easy at the beginning when they only say mamamama or gagagaga but suddenly the floodgates open and before you know it they are fluent!

BT - don't stress about potty training, I honestly think it's better to wait until they are ready rather than forcing it upon them. We did force it a bit with dd2 as the school told me not to put her in nappies, and consequently had loads more accidents than we did with dd1. Luckily living here accidents are easier to deal with as it's all tiled floors but I wouldn't have done it so early in our UK home with it's carpets....

Oooh look at my clever hallowe'en name change (I didn't think of it, so feel ok calling it clever!).

We have a bit of a family deilemna. The clients that used dd1 in their advertising campaign now want to use all of us in a video coming off a flight pretending to be holiday makers. Then use dd1 again in a shot of her being handed a St Lucian flag by a choir of local school children . Anyway there are a few obstacles which I think we may be able to overcome - dh doesn't want to be identified but apparently they will only film us from afar (thank god - I am not exactly a supermodel!) but it clashes with a swim meet the girls are taking part in on Sunday and also dd1 said she didn't want to do it again after the last one!

I will have to ask her and also hope that we can at least do some of the races at the swim meet. After all when are we ever going to be asked to be models again?!

Very subtle Halloween name there strandead!!

FO - DS does the same to me! Drives me nuts!
I like your DD's Xmas list!

clairey - I quite like it when my DS does that but I wouldn't like grabbing at my clothes. Think you did right to tell him off

clara - I'm sure you have long forgotten and aren't really interested but I'll tell you anyway - the tutorial was about a series of experiements which have shown that if 8 month old babies hear a string of nonsense syllables (gatipolagatipoka....), they can identify which syllable strings are 'words' from tracking the statistical probabilities of one sylabble following from another (e.g. real life example: in the words 'pretty baby', the within-word syllables 'pre-tty' go together much more often than the across-word syllables 'tty-ba') - I find it beyond incredible that babies the same age as my DS2 can do this - the first stage of word learning

[takes off geek hat while kidding self that anyone is interested]

Very impressed at your (and clairey's) DD! It's great when you know they are doing so well and enjoying it.

DD's birthday today, party yesterday. I can still hear the high-pitched squealing ringing in my ears....

oh and what happened on Sunday clara? Did you do the photo shoot? can you send us a photo??

Me! I'm interested Skid! That is zactly what I want to do...

I don't think I'd mind him doing it if he was tired or whatever but he pretty much wants to be holding my boob ALL DAY and it gets really annoying! Especially when he fishes one out in front of people.

What happened about the shoot Clara? Did you do it?

Happy birthday to your dd skid

Happy birthday to your DD skid!

That was an interesting little fact there

FO - like the Hallowe'en name!

Skid - that's pretty amazing about the babies and the sounds. Must be really interesting for you to know all this and then observe it in action with your own dc's.

Happy birthday to your dd. I don't know if you remember me telling you that dd1 is a right little tom boy (she had a pirate party for her 5th) but dd2 has turned into a totally typical pink princess - loves dancing and ballet, everything has to be pink, she adores princesses (yes we are having breakfast with cinderella et al when we got to Disney next week), and oh god I have just brought her a Barbie (well it's a very cheap barbie type doll but she calls it Barbie girl). She is also incredibly materialistic and always after "new" things. So go figure - how do I get such different girls when they are brought up the same?

As for yesterday in the end we didn't do the video because my dh ummed and ahhhghed about it (not sure whether he wanted to be on film for security reasons) and left it too late so they got another family. They do apparently still want dd for part of the video though, we might be doing that on Wed. I won't be able to show you a pic until it's out - then I am hoping it will be on the website as I will be very proud!

Can't take credit for my name BT, someone else came up with it!

Looking forward to seeing the pic Clara

speaking of differences in siblings clara (and everyone), anyone who considers themselves even vaguely feminist should read this book

That does sound interesting!

I have to say that I have always from the beginning tried to go for gender neutral toys, but DS has naturally gravitated towards cars, trains, lorries and the like. Having said that, my nieces love playing with toy cars and trains too!!

Sorry haven't been round much, been too busy suffering from hideous morning sickness and hanging around the due June 11 thread

what??? did we already know this?? Is my memory failing me again or is this an official announcement??? If so, massive massive congrats how exciting! Have two friends due then IRL so it will be an exciting month! Sorry you've been feeling rubbish (girl? although I'm sure Cordelia Fine would not approve of such gender stereotyping even in utero ) - hope the sickness fades soon - how many weeks? I know I could work it out but I'm too lazy busy

No, hadn't mentioned it before.

Chinese gender predictor says girl. Said a boy with DS

Wahoo, that was quick BT! Seems only yesterday you said you were TTC.
Any news on the house front?

Clara, how's the book coming on?

Congratulations BT!!

We've given up on trying to sell the house. We are going to convert the garage instead.
DH has kind of gotten used to the commute and he is allowed to work from home once a week so that helps too.

Good luck BT... hope the sickness is managable.

dd3 is such a madam ... if we go for walks she either runs ahead, stops and goes backwards. The other 2 were such good walkers... but she has ofter ideas = it is very annoying.

She is screaming - better go!

I was amused watching DS watching the Adverts on milkshake.

Ads for Baby Bjorn and Barbie were "ewwww" and for "handy manny tool set" was "me like that!"

I honestly don't know where he gets the attitude from as I honestly can say I have never tried to steer him towards certain toys, but may I have done so unconsiously, plus there is also the fact he has an older brother?

and the whole of our society is set up to expect boys to like boy toys and girls to like girl toys - unfortunatly we can't brainwash influence our DC as much as we might like to

Although my DS did pick out a bright pink notebook yesterday as his present for being so good at the eye hospital [proud]