Nothing major has been happening except more and more words from Sally and slow progress decorating the house. I have picked up some tuition work however which is brilliant - brings in a bit of pocket money and makes me feel useful.
Sally is now using far more words than I can count. Someone said to me today that her vocabulary was huge; I've not much idea because I have nothing to compare it to but certainly she says a lot of things I wouldn't expect her to say!
She has the little hide and seek books that we take out on trips with us, and up to now she's been brilliant at saying what all the animals are (starfish, walrus (tusks!), cat, horse, eskimo (drinking TEA!), husky etc etc) but a couple of days ago I noticed she can now also label most of the things they are hiding behind. This means she will sit there and say "shipwreck", "coral", "seaweed" or "iceberg", "waves", "sledge". But she can now say virtually anything - book, beef, cushion, fruit pot, nuisance, chair, sit, pour, ding-ding (doorbell!), lightswitch... it just goes on. She learns about one new word a day now. My favourite (which was yesterday's word!) is 'delicious'. The other morning she had some dry cornflakes after breakfast and I asked her 'did you enjoy your cornflakes?' She gave me an enormous grin and said 'delishus!'. It was very very cute.
She has finally figured out how to climb so now scales every chair in sight calling 'sit! sit!'. This does lead to some rather lovely moments however: everything will go quiet and I will discover her sat in an enormous chair reading something to herself. That or emptying everything out of the wardrobe drawers...
Sally has also started to sort things. I had been worrying that she was quite slow to pick up the idea of her shapesorter, but on closer inspection I discovered that she does understand it and in fact knows exactly which hole to put each shape in - she just can't be bothered to fiddle with them until they go in! So she will pick up a shape, turn the sorter to the correct hole, have a couple of goes at shoving it in - then get cross and give up. She really has no patience whatsoever, equally in evidence in the way she tries to stand up the flamingo shaped skittle two or three times before shouting at it in frustration!
I've been reading a fascinating book called Mind in the Making http://mindinthemaking.org/ by Ellen Galinsky. It's a discussion of the seven key skills that children need in order to succeed, including things like 'making connections', 'perspective-taking', 'communicating' and, significantly for Sally, 'focus and attention'... It's a great book because it doesn't focus on intelligence - a hugely overrated and oversimplified concept - but on skills that can, she suggests, be improved and developed from a child's natural starting point. There are various games and tasks you can use in it, and it explores issues such as how we ask questions of our children. I think Sally and I may be looking at ways to improve her attention span before very long...
In other, more meteorological news the weather has been very hot. The paddling pool has therefore been out and Sally - who has been very good about every aspect of this and seems to love her hat and glasses - has been suncreamed, be-hatted and be-spectacled for her own protection.
After five months of waiting her canine teeth have also finally popped through. We'd had terrible, painful, sloppy poos for ages and then at last the little white dots appeared - all four within a week and a half!- and now things are back to being a bit more reasonable. The total number of teeth to date then is now 16!
I wanted to use this to record some of Sally's best bits but having been so rubbish I can't now think of things to put down in writing. It is worth mentioning how lovely it is that she understands a lot more now though - I told her to give Daddy his fathers' day card on Sunday and she trooped off through the house, found him and gave it straight to him. I think he was quite pleased...! We have been very excited as well about Sally's counting. She can now reasonably reliably get to ten and the other morning made it to 13 - which turns out to be the number of pictures of Sid on one double page spread in Six Dinner Sid... or 'Sid! Sid!' as it is known! She is a bit overkeen on eight and three however, so if you are not careful that is how many things there are, honest...
Finally I've given up on the Bedtime Hour and the absurdity that is In the Night Garden. We're now onto iplayer, which works beautifully as madam can ask for what she wants. Currently this is 'Ting Tales' or 'Timmy' or 'Lola'. All of which, to my delight, I can understand!
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