Mike's musings

Trinity Sunday

(backposting) Up pretty early, and managed to find a church nearby, the Good Shepherd C of E church, on Bishop Road, where I attended the 8 o'clock communion. A nice, friendly, quiet BCP communion, which I really enjoyed, though I couldn't say why, particularly. Nothing special about the service, the sermon, the congregation or the church: I just felt very calm.

A quiet start to the morning, and Jo was starting to get tired (having been to bed late last night), so Jim, Moo, Jo and I drove to the Downs for a walk. Jo walked a bit, then got in our baby rucksack on my back, and we walked a bit further. She then fell asleep - which was the point - and being unwilling to wake her, I decided to walk back to Jim and Nina's with Jo on my back, while Jim and Moo drove back. A nice walk - though some of it through town - and Jo slept all the way, even failing to wake up when we got home. So, I took the rucksack off, and left her in it, propped up against me while I read the paper, so she got another 20-25 minutes extra. A good walk: I always forget how much I really enjoy walking, particularly with the Jo on my back.

From about 1215, family started arriving: Hayley (sp?) (Nina's sister) and Giles, her husband (only recently back from honeymoon), Alan and Jill (?) her parents, my Mum and Dad and Polly and Lee, who'd not seen Jo for ages. We all piled off in 3 cars to the Delmonico Restaurant, where we had a good meal. The only real problem was the heat, and Jo kept having to get up to go outside as she was very wriggly and hot. But that's all part of the fun, and we had a good time.

Back to Jim and Nina's, where I had a brief sleep, and, around 1545, we left to go home. I started driving (which is why I'd had a sleep beforehand), and Moo slept while I listened to the football on Radio 5 Live. We hit some very slow traffic on the M25, and by the time we got to the M11, Jo was begining to lose it. Some classical music helped (Eric Whitacre, about whom I must blog soon - good, good stuff), but not enough, so we stopped at the Bishop Stortford services. After a nappy change, we sat down outside for a few minutes ("lorries!", "rabbits!", "cars!" - you get the picture), and then headed home. After getting our heads round things a bit, Moo took Jo to bed with her in the spare room, and I resolved to go to bed soon after.

Up messing with my new laptop till nearly midnight. Silly, silly. How time flies.

Jo language update

On a different topic, Jo's language is progressing so quickly at the moment. As well as understanding lots of words - and sentences - she now frequently asks what something is, and will then start using the word (stone, bus, step, flower, etc.). She now knows that all men aren't daddy ("man"), and that all women aren't mummy ("lady"), talks about boys and girls, and says please thankyou. She's getting very good at asking for things, and it's not going to be long before we're having rudimentary conversations. Most exciting at the moment is that she's started stringing words together, as I mentioned a few days ago, and has also started to use verbs: her favourite being "play".

I was astounded today over lunch when one of us said to her "do you want the spoon?" and she answered "no, don't want the spoon". Leaving out the fact that she didn't use a pronoun this is amazing! She understood what was asked, made a relevant, well-formed reply, used the definite article, and a verb. Cool!