Gremlin’s Fireside Chat

Maeve is a Nat King Cole fan and its helping her English because she tries to learn the Lyrics – even to the extent of telling me to “stop – my turn dada”. Her current favourite is the catchy number “Straighten Up And Fly Right” which she bounces up and down in her car seat on the way home from the creche. Her best grasp of the lyrics is the section: “Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don’t you blow your top.” which she can just about say. At the end of the song she even joins in and claps along with the audience in the “live” recording I have.

This is a good example of learning through listening. A rather good – if worrying example – of learning through watching turned up latter on in the evening when my Daughter, who was sitting in my lap when I noticed she was holding her doody (AKA soother, dummy etc) in a rather odd manner. Instead of holding the plastic handle as she usually does, Maeve was holding the doody between her fore two fingers on the rubber part with the handle and guard on the outside. To my horror Maeve then moved the doody into her mouth (just the rubber teat), sucked then removed the doody to be followed by a tentative blowing out of non-existent smoke. My 2 year daughter was mimicking someone who was smoking!! – and quite accurately too. I am an anti-smoker and have never smoked; I even nagged my parents into not smoking. My wife does not smoke and the only place I can think Maeve can have picked this up is by watching someone at the creche or on TV (although the latter is unlikely). I am shell-shocked.

Also heard today that my niece took her first steps today – way to go.

“Oh My God!!” or better known as OMG was one of the first things I heard this morning; and one uttered by my 2 year 2 month old Daughter Maeve. The cause of the utterance was plain to see when I looked down the stairs and saw Maeve trolley on its side spilling small coloured wooden bricks all over the hall. Maeve’s arms were in the air and the appropriate verbal intonation of surprise and shock was emphasized in her speech. My assumption is that Maeve had tried to push her trolley up the stairs!!

I think that Maeve probably learn’t this phrase in the creche since its is not one my wife or I use that often, but is a good illustration of Maeve’s situational and verbal skills to date – one that continues to amaze and fascinate me. Earlier in the week Maeve and I were waiting in the chinese takeaway with another woman and her young son. I asked how old the lad was and his mom said two-and-a-half years, to which I replied with my daughters age. The mom was surprised because my daughter at the time was dancing around the takeaway dancing and singing to Petula Clarkes “Downtown” tune on my iPhone – Maeve loves learning words and phrases from tunes she finds “catchy” such as: “Downtown” by Petula Clarke, Theme tune to “Ben 10″ (and the associated TV adverts – Maeve is a BIG Ben-10 fan), The “Skye boat song” and “The Wild Mountain Thyme” by “The Corries” to name a few. The lads mom says “I am surprised. My boy can hardly speak”.

The creche told us Maeve insistently tries to speak; most of which she says I admit I don’t understand, but new words are being found all the time. Its something the creche is very good at and I try to help as much as possible – for example we took her down the harbour to look at ships and boats and she can say “ship”,”boat”, “airplane”, “helicopter”,”car”,”bus” etc; and good language skills are something that I feel is the basis of high intelligence. Maeve has come along a long way not only in speech but also in comprehension. Phrases like “take this to mommy/daddy/grandma/grandpa” are understood and Maeve can tell us what she wants to do “go down stairs for bobo (bottle of milk)”,”want food”, “go down stairs to dada”, “ben 10 on TV”, “want a wee wee”,”Wash hands” or sometimes with the appropriate hand gestures as well – “no dada, no!” when I do something she does not like – like singing when she is trying to listen to some music she likes.

This is all fascinating and I want to record it all before I forget. I am beginning to feel this blog is not only for Maeve, but for me and my wife. My wife mentioned a few days ago about reading in my blog about my feelings at Maeve being rushed to hospital with suspected meningitis, or one or two events she had forgotten about. Human memory is a fragile thing at the best of times and prone to faulty recall of events. So I will continue to record things here so when I get older I have things I can look back on with fondness and something to pass on to Maeve to remember her growing up.