Mike's musings

Being lay

The girls slept in till past 0700. But as Jo was awake for around 2 hours during the night, this isn't so good. But we got up and went for a walk with the dog before church at 1100. Moo looked after Miri (got her to sleep) while I took Jo to Great Yeldham for what may be my last service as a member of the laity. Certainly in a parish church - I think there will be some services on the ordination retreat this coming week. Had to look after Jo for quite a lot of it, but read the Epistle, which I enjoyed very much.

Lunch, then a bit of gardening: why does garden machinery hate me so much? The mower all but died, and the strimmer lost an important part as I was using it.

After this debacle, Moo and I took the girls swimming at the Braintree Swimming Centre. We all had a great time, particularly as Miri has decided that she can go down the water slide. She can, but around 20% of the time she bangs her head on the way down...

A little recap: over the past week, the girls have really come on. Jo's coordination has developed significantly, and she now runs beautifully. She also enjoys forward rolls and similar, and we're thinking about finding her gymnastics lessons. Where she gets all this from is beyond us!

Miri, also, has come on astonishingly. On the movement side, she now can both walk and run, and is happy to carry things around all over the place (preferably bags), and to go downstairs forward, on her (well-padded) bottom. But the biggest change has been in her language. Not only are we getting more and more words from her ("Buster", "dog", "shoes", "oh dear", "good girl", "cat", "there" (well, "dere") and "sorry" spring to mind), but she understands enormous amounts of what we say to her. "Would you take the bag to Mummy?" "Would you like some more yoghurt?" "Let's go to your bedroom." All well within her grasp. And she's getting good at letting us know what she wants: her favourite is to point at things, or to pat a chair that she wants to sit on. The most confusing thing is when she's very certain about something: a strongly shaken head means either "definitely no" or "very much yes". I think that Mel's going to notice some big changes.

Labels: clergy, Jo, miri, Moo