Hi all
Yes, yes, cringe in horror – it really is time for another Clekinson update. Luckily for all it will be a really short one as not much has happened this month.
Emma is still doing her return to mom and dad’s bed during the night. She has it all timed out well – bed at 8pm, first arrival between 11 and 12pm second arrival between 3 and 4pm and then a third arrival if the second results in a trip back to her own bed. She doesn’t travel light though – first comes Emma and Teddy, then a return for cup and sometimes the pillows also arrive which are all ceremoniously dumped on mom’s head before scrabbling over her while holding onto her hair for leverage. On the bright side she is starting to learn to sleep without kicking me or I am getting used to it as I often wake up with bruised legs (just at Emma feet height)! Luckily for us she goes back to bed quite happily if we follow her and spend 2 mins in her room while she settles again. If she is being sneaky she goes to dad first – this always results in being pulled into bed and a few hours of sleep before dad realises what he did! As you can guess after 1 and a half months of this her parents are starting to take on the well glazed look of the sleepless zombies, no wonder we have to be in bed before 10pm!!!!
On the speaking front, Emma is talking up a storm. Please is “Peas”, Cats are “miaows”, Genitals are clearly marked “bum” and green is “geen”. She is starting to speak in full sentences and can say “I want some of that”, “me too, peas”, “that is a …” and finally “me no dodo” with a firm shake of the head! She is also spending hours pointing and naming her head, hair, eyes, nose, mouth, eyes and ears, we are slowly starting to increase this repoitaire! As an aside, was in stitches of laughter as Emma lay patting Comet (our male lab dog) in the garden, suddenly his testicles became the source of much fascination. Each poke was followed by a emphatic labeling of bum on correction that they were testicles she was not sure but eventually conceded for that half an hour that they could be “tetcles”. Today asked her where daddy’s bum was, this resulted in her walking through daddys legs to point at his penis and with an confirming nod stated “bum”! I think we are soon going to have to start the vagina penis game so watch out all shy friends when you arrive at our house – biology lesson ama Emma!
Her newest and most fabulous trick at the moment is to drag our bar stools around and climb onto tables. This resulted in my huge pyrex chicken roaster making an untimely exit from the world as it accidentally jumped out of Emmas hands and onto the floor while willing itself into a million pieces. I had to put her in her room while I cleaned up the shattered glass all across the kitchen and diningroom as she wanted to help clean up too. Boy was she genuinely upset about the whole broken “boken” thing. Took us half an hour to calm her down and convince her it was not the end of the world. The second source of frustration is her wish to wear panties and become potty trained. This resulted in a day of nappies being removed, pants on and refusing to go to the potty! Which any nitwit can see is a problem (except Emma). This resulted in me taping her nappy closed with packing tape after the third wee in her pants 15 minutes just to see what happened. Potty is an exciting pastime when in nappies but awful when in panties, you try explain it!
On the food front her firm favourites are: boiled eggs, 2 minute noodles (noodies) and pickles (hickle). Tomatoes still feature very highly but after eating about 4 large tomatoes in one sitting she was subjected to severe “ows” on her bum. Three weeks later we are still battling the nappy rash and avoiding all requests for “matie”. Chocolate is “cocky” and sweets are “weeties”. She is a firm lover of plain seeded provitas and has newly discovered plain ice-cream cones. Dad’s beer is also a good substitute for juice!
On the physical side she has discovered that she can walk backwards, do a two footed jump and kick a ball, sometimes while running!
Toy wise the new favourite is dolly “bolly” who has a lot of attention while being cuddled and put to sleep “doooodooo”. Bolly gets lots of love and cuddles including having her head dragged down the paving outside and being jumped on. Just as well we are a one child family!
The car antics for this month include the selling of the Beetle which I have had since 1992, we have now got a 1978 Mini de luxe in racing green. Now we just await the lawyers to sort their lives out and give us the papers so that we can be a 2 car family again. Walking in Melville is for the birds especially with our hills and an Emma. The golf was also up to naughty trick this month with us haveing to replace tires after the tread and tire started to part coming. This was followed by the breaks “failing” and needing to be replaced, a small part but 2 hours of waiting. Thankfully it is all sorted out now! Still no action on the landrover, but lots of finding out of details, we recon that if the car cannot drive we will not go on holiday! A good try.
The only excursion for the month has been a Trip down to Vaughn’s sister, Tania, in the Makhatini flats (near sodwana). After a year of trying to get their e-mail sorted out, they decided to send the computer to Joburg. A focused day on the weekend and Vaughn had it all sorted out. This meant that the computer had to be taken back to them, a timely time for the yearly visit. The computer was soon installed and running well, the children were all feeding off each other to make bigger and louder screaming matches. Thank goodness for Ntombizonki who handled them all masterfully, gracefully distracting emma from hugging Shae-lyn to death and encouraging Emma and Acacia to play together “nicely”. There really is a huge difference between 1 and 3 children. Shae-lyn and Acacia are lovely children but boy would the chaos drive me crazy so it looks like it is going to be Emma for a while yet if not forever. She creates enough chaos on her own without a live version “bolly” to create havoc with.
Anyway it is time to let you all of the hook and leave you to return to your days work.j
keep well and keep us posted
love
carrie