Journal Entries
On ducking and diving (NaJoPoMo #1)
Posted Nov 1, 2011
So the Comet has discovered reaching. And manipulating things with her hands.
This is particularly amusing when combined with her proto-crawling. She will lie on her tummy, stretching as far as she can, trying to reach the toy that is just too far away, kicking and straining, with an exceptionally intent look on her face.
Of course, when she remembers, she has developed a method of getting around that involved rolling and spinning. Sadly, sometimes she realises she can do this and reach at the same time.* Luckily, she still can’t get very far yet.
She is very keen on books. This is a good thing as she is beginning to look very much like your MiL**. The passion for books reminds you to love her anyway.
Of course, what she does when she gets hold of things is put them in her mouth.
Or, because her fine motor control is not all that, fall on them with her mouth usually.
As well as books, she really likes computer cables.
Today, you turned round and discovered that someone*** had left a vase of roses rather close to the moses basket the Comet naps in sometimes.
A baby with a mouthful of yellow rose petals is a sight to be seen.
*The Star always looked a lot like Tom Cruise in That Scene from Mission Impossible during this phase. The Comet is more the chap who dives, rolls, rolls back, swivels, dives, rolls and shoots the bad guys from behind the handy abandoned car.
**In addition to looking like a goblin. The ears are not getting any less pointy or large.
***You.
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Latest reply: Nov 1, 2011
On education, education, education and sacrifice.
Posted Sep 28, 2011
Since the Star has now turned three, he is eligible for the 15 hours of nursery provision the UK provides, and you could be enjoying blissful toddler free afternoons.
You aren’t.
The Star did, in fact, get a place at the nursery of your choice. The one where they don’t just follow the children around and attempt to get the to count the fish as a nod towards numeracy teaching if he shows a fleeting interest in the aquarium, but actually collar a few kids at a time and spend a short time with a bit of structured learning each day.
You don’t have much time for ‘dogme’ in your profession, so you don’t see why you should support something similar when it comes to your children. ‘Dogme’ rose from Scott Thornbury’s attack on handout driven lessons. You think that a teacher who doesn’t know how to use resources properly is the last person to have the skills to go it alone. You don’t doubt that this kind of student led learning can be done, but only by the most skilled, and even then it is your professional opinion that making it up as you go along is not as successful as a teaching strategy as actually giving it some thought in advance. Although you are also undoubtedly against photocopying a badly designed worksheet as a substitute for actual preparation.
Not that you are opposed to a bit of impromptu teaching.
No, you were satisfied with the school.
The problem was that even though you had booked the Star in for the afternoon session at the nursery and the Star’s Russian playgroup slash language lessons are in the morning, the fact that they are at the opposite ends of South London meant that the clashed horribly and on Tuesdays and Thursdays he wouldn’t make it to the school anything like on time. Plus, if you are honest, you didn’t really fancy plunging the Star into a monolingual English environment for the full five days a week.
You went down fighting. You spoke to his (bi-lingual in Portuguese and English) teacher. You officially requested that the Star be let off Tuesdays and Thursdays to further the bilingual and bi-cultural diversity of his individually tailored diffentationalised syllabus. The (bi-cultural but regretting not being bi-lingual in Norwegian and English) Headmaster himself phoned you up to chat about it.
Both were sympathetic.
But his absences would mess up the school’s official absence stats and that in turn would have an impact on their standings in the school league tables*, and so you had to choose.
Choose to send your child to the excellent local school you hope to get him into when the time comes for compulsory education and enjoy afternoons of sitting, feet up, in front of the TV watching property programmes** and feeding the Comet without the distraction of a toddler demanding attention to contend with. But tip the precarious balance you have gained between English and Russian firmly away from Russian.
Or continue to slog through London traffic for an hour twice a week and have to provide the Star with opportunities to get messy, explore the world and learn maths in the afternoons yourself. But manage to keep a reasonable amount of Russian input in your child’s life.
No contest really.
*You don’t blame the school, you blame The System.
** This is a joke. You don’t watch property programmes in the afternoon. No, in the afternoon it’s mostly antique shows.
Discuss this Journal entry [2]
Latest reply: Sep 28, 2011
On nicknames
Posted Sep 9, 2011
The truth is that your children have too many.
The Star is, of course, the Star, although rarely to his face.
But you call him Sausage and Monster and Boo. Malinki Malchik*, Malinki Chelovek** and Pipiskin***. Smelly Pants Russian-Surname. Stroppy Pants Russian-Surname. Sweetie. And, of course, all Russian people who meet him call him by the diminuative form of his given name.
It’s no wonder the Star has a tendency so shrug when strangers ask him what he’s called.
B pointed out that you would need new names for your daughter.
Malinki Kusochik Kolbassa****, Small, Cheripackha*****, Goblin and the diminuative forms of her given name are all popular.
But the Star calls her Hobooka.
He means Helicopter******.
Because she waves her arms and legs about a lot apparently.
And you are consumed by delight at his cleverness.
*Little Boy.
**Little Person – this always makes your MiL laugh. It’s not a Russian collocation.
***Penis Boy [affectionate].
****Little Piece of Salami.
*****Turtle – there’s a resemblance.
******It’s not Russian, it’s just the way he pronounces ‘helicopter’.
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Latest reply: Sep 9, 2011
On vive la difference
Posted Sep 7, 2011
So the Comet has learned to roll.
This shocked the heck out of you. The Star didn’t roll for at least six months. Of course, he had torticollis. It seems the medicos were right when they said it had delayed his development.*
Anyway, this underlined a suspicion that has been forming lately.
You children are not the same.
The Comet is a hedonist. She emphatically does not like to get hungry or tired and is not afraid to say so. She can spend hours lying around, soaking up every last drop of sensation from any given situation. She is the baby who found her hands in the first few weeks. Which is good because now she can use them to explore interesting new textures. She crinkles her crinkly toy with abandon, carefully fingers the plastic toys the Star brings her and you caught her stroking the leather sofa, an expression of bliss on her face the other day. She regularly tries to get her feet into her mouth. She hasn’t managed it yet, but you suspect it was an aborted attempt at that which first flipped her onto her stomach.
It is all quite strange and new to you, because in the time it takes the Comet to become bored with her surroundings, the Star as a baby would have demanded at least ten changes of position, tried to fling himself off the sofa, out of your arms, over the side of the bed and out of his bouncy chair and insisted you bounce him up and down for at least ten minutes.
This is because the Star is a thrill seeker. Contemplation is not his thing and neither is sitting still. He gets bored easily and does not see the point in waiting around once that happens. If he can’t do it, he is ruthless about abandoning it and all in all patience is not his virtue. He has an absolute disregard for physical discomfort. He is so busy looking for the next buzz, one that’s bigger, better and, preferably, more likely to cover him in dirt, that he just wouldn’t notice if he were hungry, tired or running a temperature of 150. He wants to know what’s over there, not over here, and by god can he shift when he sprints off to find it.
Anyway, you are not complaining (much). The Star keeps you fit and the Comet, well the Comet will soon be able to help you out in other ways.
*Brief pause while you struggle with the urge to google ‘long term effects of torticollis’.
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Latest reply: Sep 7, 2011
On play hard, play hard.
Posted Sep 7, 2011
The noise splashed over you as you entered, roaring, screaming, shrieking, and yelling. It was loud. It was relentless. It was the sound of one of those huge wherehouselike soft play areas and it was your first visit.
Oh you’ve been to similar places before, but nothing on this scale.
This was a four-story, small row of terraced housing length cage for padded ladders, ball pits, rope bridges and the occasional four lane bumpy slide. With a side order of dodgems and a whirligig fairground ride.
The Star took one look and tried to climb over the gate to get in rather than wait for it to be opened.
Now the Star is three and this was a very wet afternoon at the tail end of the school holidays so the place was heaving with children of all sizes and shapes, and you did suffer a qualm or two about just flinging him into the maelstrom and letting him get on with it.
The Star himself had no hesitation, so before you could quaver, ‘I’ll be over here, sweetie, if you need me,’ he was off, dragging his little friend behind him.
And that was it for the afternoon. He would pop up occasionally, sweat soaked and carrying another balloon, to sit with you and drink some water or have a banana*, but before long he would be off again and you would have to be content with such meager contact as tripping over him on your way to the ladies as he raced around a corner in the middle of a gang of small but very feral looking boys.
Anyway, after thee hours you had started to think that the noise levels weren’t that bad after all.
And then you left.
Given that it was on a road in the middle of London, next to a railway track, opposite a helipad and directly under the flight path to Heathrow, it was surprising how blessedly quiet the world suddenly seemed.
The Star rested quietly on your lap for the entire bus journey home. ’That was my birthday!’ he said happily as you opened your front door.
Higher praise there is not.
And just to prove that you can have a birthday every day, you went back the next day. Well £17 is £17 and they had a special offer on where it was free tomorrow when you signed up for your first go.
You rather regretted it when just after you had arrived at Granny and Grandad’s a few days later he woke up coughing and coughing and coughing until he was sick though.
But it was fun at the time.
Your advice to anyone thinking of going is take earplugs, invest in disinfectant and burn their clothes afterwards.
*It turns out that you are not supposed to take your own food into such places but buy the incredibly expensive chips they have on offer there. Yeeeeeeeees.
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Latest reply: Sep 7, 2011
Sol
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