Living the dream

"Mum?"

"Yeah?"

"My bear. Hold."

"Okay, baby."

I love having conversations with her. It never gets old.

I love that she wants me to join in with everything she does, and comes and grabs me by the hand and drags me over to whatever she's playing with.

I want to be a better mama. I want to interact and engage with her more, be more present, be less half-with-her and half-on-my-laptop.

This morning we put Dada's jumpers round our necks like superhero capes and danced to the hokey cokey. Audrey especially liked the turning around bit!

Then we put on some Tchaikovsky and did more twirling around, this time with our arms in the air like ballet dancers. Goggy joined in, gripped tightly by the ears.

We did painting, with brushes and our hands, then had a bath and got all cleaned up before nap time.

The other day some friends of our gave Audrey a dear little wooden rocking horse which their children used when they were little. They wanted it to go to someone who would appreciate it, and let me tell you - Audrey appreciates the HECK out of it.

I tried to count up the number of words she can say. I got to about 200 before giving up. She knows a LOT of words and is making simple two-word sentences. Little lady loves to talk.

My life is full of motherhood. There are toddler books on my bed and my bath is full of bath toys. Do you know how long I've waited for a bath full of bath toys. When I walk past the bathroom my eye catches them and sometimes I just stop and drink in how lucky I am.

There's a little person who yells "Mama!" - and she's talking to ME.

I am treasuring every moment of this.

From Piano to Paint: a post by Audrey's dad, Ian

I recently received a rejection letter from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alleging that Audrey simply doesn't have the track record to be inducted in to their museum and something about "an insult to our establishment," whatever that means. I haven't had the heart to tell her, so instead we've started on the next project: teaching her the ins and outs of fine art. Except fine art is really difficult and technical, so we're doing the next best thing. Tate Modern, here we come.

The creation of modern art always starts with laying down of plastic sheeting. We selotaped four coloured cards together to make a canvas to paint on. What does the selotape represent? The fragile bonds in human social interaction. We also set up paints of various emotions (red, orange and purple) and let her loose. We showed her this beforehand as a guide:

While it may appear she had a merry time splatting the paint with her hands and feet, I may note (especially in my application letter) that Audrey was experiencing artistic strife when composing this work. She took to the painting like someone enthusiastically punching a cake, which is to say she was very enthusiastic. What followed was a ten minute whirlwind of painting fun.

After a while she started to lose interest and wander towards things that weren't under a protective layer of plastic sheeting, which meant we had to initialize Operation Science Distraction. We placed her in a bath tub with wooden blocks and glass marbles. The blocks float, and the marbles sink. Why? Nobody really knows. Actually I've just looked it up on the internet and apparently it's something to do with density. The point is, she was distracted enough that the paint was washed away.

The final result is hanging up to dry now that everyone is clean. This is "untitled" by Audrey Plummer. Note that it is not untitled, its title is "untitled". It just wouldn't be an art without a pretentious confusing title.

I measured out Audrey's pros and cons of becoming a major force in the art world. Here we go:

PROS

 * The artist created this whilst wearing a nappy.

 * The artist probably doesn't remember creating it.

 * The artwork is, at its heart, an indecipherable mess.

CONS

 * Canvas and paints were used in its creation. What is this, the renaissance? Come on now.

The odds are very much in our favour, although my friend reckons the pros I've come up with apply to pretty much everything in the Tate Modern already. We'll see.

Last holiday bits and some recent pics and vids

Some photos wrapping up the last night and leaving-day of our holiday.

Aunty Kate, Audrey and I went for a walk and got absolutely drenched in two sudden downpours. Oh well! When life gives you rain - jump in puddles!

We dried off and got into warm, clean clothes. Audrey snuggled with Aunty Kate, all post-walk sleepy.

Bye bye everybody!

Audrey had the most wonderful time with her grandparents and great grandparents. She's so loving and full of fun.

She's had very disrupted sleep at night lately, thanks I think to two molars I can see working their way through the gums. Which means she's a tired lady during the day. It reminds me of when she was newborn and all my photos of her were taken when she was sleeping.

We use the emotions flashcards to talk about feelings - how Audrey feels, how other people feel. Audrey is too young yet to have a developed sense of empathy, that's actually several years away. But as with all areas of her growth and learning, we want to help her and encourage her in the right direction. We talk often about how other people might be feeling, using lots of open questions. I actually really like the Meg and Mog story books for this, as they use very simple pictures and language that Audrey loves and can more easily understand. "How does Meg feel now?" "What do you think Mog is thinking?" "Meg is smiling - do you think she's happy or sad?"

We also want to teach Audrey the vocab to be able to express her own feelings, to avoid the frustration of not being able to communicate. She can say and correctly identify "happy" and "sad".

Of course, sometimes the only things she's feeling are "sleepy" and a little bit "snory".

Let's finish this post on a song. Audrey loves music, she's had a couple of goes on Ian's keyboard and this is definitely something I'd like to do more often with her. She LOVES it!

A few days in the life

The other morning while Ian was getting ready for work, Audrey decided to play with some of my clothes.

At one point she was wearing my dressing gown and walking back and forth with it trailing out behind her, saying "pretty - pretty".

We've been doing a lot of fun activities lately. For sensory play, I set up a big ikea plastic tray with a big of flour - half plain and half gram flour - and let Audrey have at it with a wooden spoon and her hands. Afterwards we had a bath and Audrey helped me to sweep up the spilled flour with a dustpan and brush.

We've been playing more and more with the marbles (or "bubbles" as Audrey calls them - she thinks they are frozen bubbles). We work on the fine motor skills, transferring them between different jars, bottles and boxes using fingers, spoons, spades etc. We sort them by size, talk about "more" and "less" and have just started working on the concept of "one".

I try to encourage her to move things across the mid-line of her body, as this is really good for her development in terms of gross motor, muscle control, and body awareness or "mapping".

We've been having SO much fun lately with the home ed folks, including going on a boat trip yesterday on the canal!

Audrey was most impressed by the ducks, and made some little friends at the play park we went to when the boat stopped. One of the little girls had a toy doll, Audrey pointed to it and said "baby!"

We collected flowers in the park on our way back. Wonderful day.