Taste memories

I've decided that "Miss" is too boring a pseudonym for the small, blonde, talking-in-sentences firecracker who bounces around our house demanding that you read her books or find her shoes. Henceforth, she will be Mabel. That's Miss Mabel to you.

I watched her put a hot pebble to her mouth on Monday, as we played in a friend's yard, in a friend's paddling pool. Instead of shouting (pointlessly), "No, yucky! Don't eat it!" I stopped a moment and thought about how stones taste. So often in an Irish summer (that elusive creature) I would have picked up a stone on Killiney Beach or Whiterock - a stone warm from the brief sun and smoothly round from years of rolling in and out on the shelving shingle, shiny bright black or matte grey with a band of white running through the middle - and brought it to my lips to taste the salt and the hardness and the nothing that stones taste of. Maybe we should all lick a (nice clean) stone now and then and remember how it feels not to be paranoid about every little thing.

I also have a clear memory of how the strap on my pushchair (that's stroller to you, maybe) tasted - a memory that had been submerged until I caught Mabel sucking on something similar one day recently. I was a thumb sucker and my kids aren't, but I think I must have swapped out the thumb for a strap at some point, because I can vividly recall how it felt to suck my saliva back and forth through the vinyl-y webbing of the strap, and how good it tasted to my two-year-old self.

It's funny that non-food taste memories are more vivid than edible ones. But then, I was something of a picky eater myself as a child. I blame my mother's bad cooking, but that's probably not all there was to it. I can remember the day I first decided that I liked peas, so I was probably six or seven before that happened - and they were definitely an early vegetable. It's possible that I existed on rice krispies and chocolate Yoplaits (in the waxy cardboard cup, remember?) and mashed bananas for many years before I became the champion all-round eater you see before you today.

Parrot

I started this a while ago; here's what I had to say then:

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At almost 18 months, Miss's vocabulary is growing apace: she's starting to put two words together, though usually one is a proper noun, so it's something like: "Dolly back. Mummy back? Daddy back? Baby back?" [Cue me going "I want my baby back, baby back..."] And then I have to reassure her that yes, we all have backs. At least, I think that's what she wants to know. It's amazing to have this tiny insight into the workings of her mind. When we were in Boston she enjoyed riding the trains, and one evening she got stuck on repeat when she was too tired to think, and kept telling me, "Chugga 'way. Chugga 'way. Chugga 'way." Yes, Baby, the chugga-chugga has gone away. We'll see another tomorrow. Go to sleep.

But apart from that, she'll also repeat random words when she hears them. Like this:

Driving home, telling Monkey about cars.
Monkey says: "This is a Subaru Outback."
Little voice from other carseat: "Sooboo Ow-bak."

This evening B went out to the mailbox to get the post (as we Irishers say).
Miss ran after him: "Daddy? Pote?"

Sometimes she transposes the sounds in a word, so that for stone she says "no" and for miaow she says "yam".

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So that was then, just about a month ago. Now she's talking in sentences, with pronouns. She's conjugating, for goodness sake.
(Seriously. She saw a bird: "Birdie."
Me: Yes, there's a bird. Did the bird fly away?
Her: Birdie flied away.)

Some of it is still parrot work, like when Monkey says "I want it," and she starts up, just to bug him: "Ah wan it." But more and more she's putting words together herself, and practicing, and asking me for words and repeating them to herself, filing them away:

Me: Did you get an owie on your elbow?
Her: Ebow.

Me: Will we look for the cat outside?
Her: Cat owside. Where cat? I dunno. (Shakes head concernedly.)

Her days are filled with looking for cats, seeing birdies, hearing woof-woofs, finding Dolly, trying to wake people up (with a very clear "Wake up", as of yesterday, while she jumped on her sleeping brother's head), asking for more Cheerios, for milk, for a waffle straight from the freezer ("code waffle"), for fizzy apple juice, for a pea (or ten) to throw on my new floor. If you start the alphabet song she will chime in at the beginning of each phrase: "Abc...hij.....qr...".

She's clearly a prodigy. I don't even want to mention the fact that she seems to be spontaneously toilet training, lest I jinx that. But I think the universe owes me one on that front, so maybe it's true.

Numptiness

Miss comes for a walk strapped on my front in the Ergo, clutching a still-damp wipe that she insisted on grabbing while I changed her. She keeps stuffing it down my cleavage, then producing it again with a manic chuckle.

At some point in his linguistic journey towards becoming the chatterbox he is today, Monkey started to say "Uh-huh" in response to everything, as if to say "Yes, yes, of course, tell me something I don't know." Miss says "Ohhhh," in the tone of one who has just had everything explained to her satisfaction, thank you very much. It's a lot more gratifying to the explainer.

This evening as I was trying to persuade her to get sleepy, she kept repeating "Goggles" (looking at the table behind me, where there were indeed a pair of goggles) and "Go-go" (beating her chest a little because this is her word for gorilla). She was getting agitated, and eventually I said, "Yes, those are goggles. Go-go is different, that's a gorilla."

She replied, "Ohhhh," in a very relieved tone, as if it was all clear now and she could stop worrying about it. And put her head down and went to sleep. (Well, not quite.)

Then there's "Nump." If you're singing Insy Winsy Spider and you get to the end, Nump means "Again please." If you're re-hooking your bra cup because she stopped nursing, an indignant Nump means "Where do you think you're going with that? I was just taking a break." If you're trying to quickly note that you are out of Cheerios yet again, Nump means "Gimme that pen and paper so that I can scribble all over your shopping list and render it illegible." It's a great word. We should all use it.

Monkey was being threatened with tickles, and then being tickled. Miss came over to us, pointed at her own pyjama-clad tummy, and said, "Nump?"
"What, you want to be tickled too?"
"Yup."
Happy to oblige.

Musical beds

That house. The one I saw. We put in an offer today. Who knows what will happen now.

I am determined to go to bed early tonight, after last night's non-sleep-apalooza. Usually when I'm woken at 3am or whenever it is (I can't see the clock without craning, once I'm sleeping with Miss), I'm quite alert - no doubt from however many years it is now of being woken around then by one or t'other. But last night when I moved my arm and it was enough to make her splutter awake, suddenly totally bunged up with an insta-cold, it was only one-something, and I was still in the depths of wanting to be asleep. The exciting new nasal-congestion issue meant it took forever to get her back to sleep and I had to sit up (horrors!) to do it, so she could nurse and breathe at the same time (always a plus). And then gently ease us back down to a horizontal position an inch at a time, ending up with her head elevated on the pillow and mine falling off the back end, ensuring that I couldn't sleep myself.

It felt like 15 minutes later when Monkey appeared on the horizon. Every morning in the grey light I register the pad, pad, pad of his feet through my shallow sleep and raise a grim hand in warning to make sure he knows where his sister is and not to wake her, and hopefully to convey that I'm not at all pleased to see him and would be a much nicer mummy if he would just wait an hour or three. Then he slides under the duvet on my other side and says in an all-too-shrill whisper, and as if I didn't know, "Please may can I have morn-side?" (May can is his ultra-polite asking. I think it's because his father taught him please may I and I went with the simpler - I thought, for some reason - please can I, and both stuck. Sort of.)

His appearance has been getting earlier lately, from a very reasonable 6.30 to 7.00 a while ago to hours with 5s in them lately. This morning I looked at the clock, saw 4.30, and ushered him straight back to his own bed. But then I had to stay there with him, which I did for about half an hour and then, though he still wasn't asleep, I reckoned he should drop off so I left with a quick pat and an excuse about getting back to the baby. I crawled into my own bed once I'd ascertained that Miss was fine, and had 15 minutes or so of trying to get warm when pad, pad, pad, he was back. Lather rinse repeat. This time I fell asleep in his bed and was woken by B telling me very quietly that Miss was awake and looking for me, so then I had to go back to her, long-windedly put her back to sleep... or did she even go back to sleep? Maybe at this point it was 6.30 and I let her get up with her father and took myself back to bed, finally, for an hour's lie in... it's all a blur.

It's probably a blur for you too, in the unlikely event that you're still reading this, and you're no doubt wondering why I let my children walk all over me like this and why their father can't lend a hand. Honestly, I prefer him to get a solid six or seven hours and then be able to get up early with them than to disturb him during the night, when he's usually a lot more comatose than I am and finds it hard to get back to sleep once woken. And really, it's not normally this way: Monkey has been sleeping through the night very reliably for almost two years now, and Miss is having a particularly bad time just now with the stuffy nose and the five - yes, five - teeth she's working on. I just found a molar poking through this evening. The other molars are all right there, bumps under the gum, and the last incisor is so close I can practically see it, but it refuses to break through. Poor girl.

So today I forwent Monkey's nap, at great personal expense (oh all right, I mis-timed our walk and he was still awake at the end of it) and he was in bed early and I hope hope hope this will be enough to break the pattern and get him to sleep a solid twelve hours. Eleven? Ten? What are the chances? Tune in tomorrow to find out.

Also to see whether we're home-owners.

Vocabulary

Excuse me if I'm a little distracted. While child one is slumbering peacefully on the sofa - as well he should since he woke at 5am, the sod - child two is buzzing around, arms windmilling, pausing now and then to find a new hat (the door to the coat closet fell off / was removed for safety / is no longer there, so the hats are right there for her to grab at will, scattering mittens as she goes), playing with everything at once and telling me "ap-pul, ap-pul" as she points to the apple in the big word book. Now she's got the kid camera out and is saying "jheezz". It's very entertaining but it's not what you'd call taking a nap, exactly.



She's having one of those vocabulary explosions that her brother didn't have till he was 20 months or so. In the past couple of days she's added ball, apple, cheese, down, hi, no, and go-go (for gorilla) to her previous Mummy and Daddy (interchangeable), bye, yes, up, ba for bath and de for dog. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think she'll be an early talker. She also says things that sound suspiciously like "go away" and "mine", but let's give her the benefit of the doubt on those.

She's not sleeping very well just now; I've decided to call it the 15-month sleep regression, but I'm pretty sure the talking has something to do with it. I'll think she's finally dropped off but then she'll lift her head and shout "ball".

(In other news, I think I've made five different sorts of muffins in the past week, since The Snows began. Plain chocolate chip, modified chocolate chip (I used part wholewheat flour and banana baby yogurt instead of plain yogurt; I was at the end of my supplies after Snow Round I), choc choc chip, banana butterscotch, and probably something else I can't remember. As well as banana buttermilk pancakes, a loaf of yeast bread (still not rising properly; must keep trying), french toast, chewy seedy apricot bars, and, you know, dinners.)