It had to come. We both knew it; but we were hoping for a few more years before it manifested itself. Maeve has started singing the odd phrase from a song or two lately – words from the Corries “Skye boat song” or Petula Clarkes “Cannot live without your love”; but today we were watching “Ratatouille” the cartoon movie about a cuisine loving rat when Maeve said the ominous phrase – point to the main rat lead she said “Mickey Mouse”. Americanisation has started.
Tue 12 Jan 2010
The first Americanism….
Posted by gremlin under Children, Family, Fatherhood, Maeve, entertainment
Comments Off
Tue 12 Jan 2010
Happy new year all,
and what a xmas – its been quiet mostly because we have all suffered from one cold or another. New year was fun because her family came to visit and food and drink was shared.
After the new year snow arrived – the worst in Ireland for 30 years. I remember the one 30 years ago, but I was in England at the time – and I remember the fun of six foot snow drifts that lasted for weeks and digging snow tunnels, school being cancelled and the roads so bad you cannot drive on them. I remember fantastic snow covered vista’s. We lived in the country in a small English village miles away from most so called “civilization”.
One of the main things I remember is using sledges full of food which we teenagers pulled to out-lying houses containing old people who needed our help.
Back to the present and we see Ireland brought to a stand still by a prolonged cold spell (>14 days) and a meagre 2cm of snow – that and a lot of dangerous black ice on the roads. Funny thing is the government has run out of road salt (blames local council’s and the “rare” condition). Everyone is angry at the government’s incompetence in handling any crisis – before the snow it was the flooding, banking, housing etc. No imagination or planning with our rulers.
Fri 18 Dec 2009
New Talents – some disgusting
Posted by gremlin under Children, Family, Fatherhood, Maeve
Comments Off
Its Christmas and the creche Maeve is at is very good. The day before yesterday (Wednesday) Father Christmas visited the creche and Maeve got a lovely present of a book of nursery rhymes – I know she loves it because she rarely puts it down. Anyway I digress. I started to sing in my rather poor singing voice some of rhymes to be joined in by Maeve; Not perfect, but the words and small phrases she does understand – as well as having a go at some new ones she does not know as well. I know that Maeve does know certain words because she repeats some words a number of times until she finds its closer to what I said than she originally uttered. Rarely a day goes by with Maeve learning a word or two. I noticed that she has learn’t to plan her actions somewhat because when she climbed up the kitchen steps (which have 2 steps) and she grabbed a bottle of apple-juice in one hand and some fruit in the other she placed one of them on the top step, stepped down and then moved it to the next step down.
Ok thats the good bit…. now one more “skill” thats not so nice. Maeve has learn’t to spit. I was holding my beer sitting on the sofa watching the TV when Maeve climbed onto the sofa and then lean’t over my beer glass and then started to spit into it; Fortunately she missed …. but I was shocked.
Tue 15 Dec 2009
Ireland is one of those places that goes nutty over christmas – not that we get much snow here which is a pity. When I went out to lunch and I saw the following snowman on the move.
Made me laugh out loud – something good on a miserable day like today.
Wed 9 Dec 2009
New words and new understanding
Posted by gremlin under Children, Family, Fatherhood, Maeve
Comments Off
Maeve, like most children her age is coming along in leaps and bounds. There are many sights to be interesting in, concepts to be learned and the slippery complex task which is speech mastered. Maeve has shown definite progress in these area’s in acquiring new words and has started stringing simple sentences together along with showing understanding of simple instructions and expectations of other people.
A simple example would be Maeve in the last couple of days has picked up the words “Help” and “Tower” – the latter usually said when she is building a tower of large lego like bricks to impressive heights. This evening my Archos hand-held music/video/browser which Maeve likes to watch childrens movies on ran out of battery juice and needed recharging. Maeve came across and grabbed my hand and said “Help Me” in a clear voice; I said “and” to which she replied “Please”. She also likes to come over to me and throw her arms out and say “carry me”.
This week I have started to ask Maeve to put her toys away before she goes to bed. I say “Put away X” and normally she understands and moves the offending item from the floor to someplace like her toy box. Maeve also can understand and to correctly respond to questions like “where are your shoes”, “find your shoes”, “Find your bobo” (Bobo = feeding bottle or mug) and “go to bed”. Needless to say her favourite word is still “no” although other new words seem to be “socks” and “spoons” have started to appear (along with Panda,Lion, Elephant,Dog,Cat and Ben-10) and she shows the basics of counting (2-6) when she walks down the stairs.
Maeve as every is a happy loving daughter who loves to smile and has a ready dirty laugh.