It's been too long

Too many things going on!

First of all, we finally decorated a room. And I got my way and it was Sally's. Mainly this was because it needed the least doing to it and was the easiest to move the furniture out of! We had a minor disaster when I was doing the woodwork as a cat who shall remain nameless - Sephy, you rat - walked over the windowsill having escaped from the confinement of the kitchen. So I had to sand it down and do it again. Sally coped well with the whole experience, showing no ill-effects from sleeping first in our room, then in the spare room (turns out I can't sleep when she's in with us any more - she moves, I wake up!) She also seems to like the new room a lot. It took a LOT of paint to cover the dark red that the previous owners had left us with. Four coats of white paint on the white walls, and two of white and three of green on the green ones! My parents came up and helped, which made a huge difference.

Anyway, here it is in all its glory:



I love this light fitting: it's from KICO and is just brilliant!



So that's one of the things we've been up to.

Sally finally has new shoes! It has been six months since the pre-walkers were bought - and six months minus two weeks since she's been walking well enough for proper shoes. Typical. Anyway they are really lovely and suitable for going through the spring into summer, so if her feet continue to grow this slowly it won't matter.

The little one continues to astound me with her memory. She takes all of thirty seconds to pick up words. We went out into the city the other week and ate lunch in Caffe Uno. I was a bit apprehensive about how she'd go with it, but once she'd decided that the capers off of my pizza were yummy (what 15 month old loves capers? Very odd) she was fine. I broke bits of my pizza in half and it was like a little light bulb went on. "I'll break it in half" I said. "Haf!" she tweeted. The next day at teatime she had toast, and proceeded to pull each piece in two and say "Haf!" each time. She understands enough now that you can ask her questions about books and she will give you the answer. So - "who tells the story in Down in the Woods at Sleepytime?" "OWL!" "Who does Maisy leave behind the curtain?" "Panda!" We have the three Dr Seuss books sorted now - "Hat!" "Ham!" and "Fish!"

I've been working on trying to get her to use a spoon by herself, and we are now at the point where if I hold the yoghurt pot for her she can spoon it out and eat it by herself. She's still a bit behind on the cutlery front I think but the Health Visitor assures me some kids don't pick it up until they're three - so a while to go yet! She can't scribble yet either. But she'll figure it out in time I suspect - she never likes to try anything until she has some belief that she can do it, or that there's some point to the exercise. I would love to see her sit quietly and draw, but it ain't happening just yet. She has started to stack blocks in the last month now though. The current record is seven. That keeps her occupied for ages (relatively speaking for her) maybe even five whole minutes! She builds them up, knocks them down and says 'Ohhhhw!' then builds them up again.

Wordswise the list is ever-growing. We had a quiet few weeks but over the last week or so more and more have been appearing. To add to the previous list we now have

Matthew
Star
Up
Car
Tigger
Horse
Pig
Panda
Woof
Lola (Moma)
Makka (makka pakka)
Flower
Daisy
Bear
Rabbit (that’s what she’s saying, although it doesn’t sound quite right yet!)
Umbrella
Slide
Swings
Hairslide
Dolphin
Grapes
Mice
Tigger
Sephy (Essy!)
Cat
Hat
Ham
Eggs
Cheeks
Hurt
Shirt

It's really nice to record them as you can see how her interests develop - and what books we've been reading!

The big battle at the moment is to teach her that pain is not funny. She keeps pinching me and saying "Ow.Ow!" which really hurts. It's got to the point where if you say 'hurt' she falls about laughing. It isn't very nice and so I am trying to change it. At the moment when she does it I say "Ouch!" very loudly, tell her that she has hurt Mummy and that that isn't nice, and then if she does it again, she goes straight down on the floor and I walk off. We'll have to see how that plan goes.