Mike's musings

zzzz, a goose, miaow, not strained, fireman

Well, last night Jo went down around 1900, slept through to around 0230, and then to 0715. This is a real break-through, and if we can stick with this, we're onto a winner. 0230's not too good, but an unbroken sleep till after seven is great. A huge relief, and Jo was greeted with "angel baby" this morning by Moo, which seems entirely fair. We'll have to see how things go over the weekend, but it's a positive move. A very positive move. Indeed.

Jo's discovered the "boo!" game. Not only does she love it when you hold something in front of your face, then reveal it to a cry of "boo!", but she also does it herself. If you play the game a bit, then give her a cloth, she'll hold it in front of her face, wait a bit (for, it seems, quite a random interval), and then drop it to show her face. Sometimes she'll blow a raspberry or make a noise beginning with "b", but she's quite happy for you to say "boo!". It's really funny, and she seems to love it.

Jo (as mentioned in blogs passim) loves our cats. Yesterday she learnt to grab Willem's tail. He doesn't mind (we've never quite worked out why. Anyway, given her fascination with the species, we often point out the cats to her. This morning, we were in bed with Jo, talking, and I said the word "cat" in the conversation. Immediately, she started to look around to where Willem tends to be in the morning (though he wasn't there), which means that she definitely knows two words now: "Jo" and "cat". Useful...

Jenny's baby now has a name. In fact, has done for a couple of days, but I've not got round to blogging it. She's called "Mercy Élodie", Interesting choices: we know that Jen was very keen on Mercy from the beginning, but I'm not sure where Élodie came from. Mercy's safer than some, but I think there's a danger in naming a child for an attribute into which you hope they'll grow. For instance, given the level of physical coordination that I have (generally low), calling a child "Grace" would be asking for trouble. Likewise "Joy": she'd end up as a mardy cow. And as for "Chastity"...

Hi, Gary! Can't remember if I gave you my blog address: I guess I must have done. Nice to have you with us, anyway. Feel free to comment on anything and everything. (note: I realise that people might be able to work out from the content of the other paragraphs how the heading above was derived, but this is unlikely for this one. To help matters somewhat, apparently, in his (fetching) blue shirt, Gary looks like this member of the emergency services).