Reading material...?

Tis the season! We've all been ill again!

Jay developed a chest infection, kindly passed on to us. He was having such trouble sleeping that I had to prop his bed up at the head end so he didn't drown in his phlegm overnight. Trying to find books* that were of sufficient and equal depth I returned to his bedroom and encountered raised eyebrows from the other half.

"Are you sure those are appropriate?"
"Sure, they're about the right depth, why on earth not?"
"'Mass murderers' and 'Children who Kill'? He might get ideas..."
"They're to prop his bed up with, not bedtime stories!"




* I have a strong interest in forensic and criminal psychology, something which several of my previous partners have also found unnerving over the years.

Master of the Univers(ity)

I am now allowed to call myself a Master of Health Psychology.

That is all.

How Many Jaffa Cakes?

Jay has been attending nursery for 3 full days a week for the past month. And he LOVES it. It's been easy to see some big changes in him over the past few weeks, the main one being his language development. He can now hold a conversation with you, sometimes with a lot of babbling interspersed with real words, but you can always get the gist. He likes to speak to people on the phone and tell them what he's been up to, this includes telling people that the car got broken (Mummy locked the keys inside!) and the man came to fix it and fixed the wheels (the wheels weren't fixed that day but Jay's life revolves around fixing wheels on all sorts of items at the moment). He also likes to get a carrier bag from the cupboard, load it up with toy cars, take mine or Daddy's keys and announce, "Goin' shops. Get Jaffa Cakes. Ok, bye." That boy has his priorities straight!

He had swine flu round 2 a couple of weeks back. This time Daddy and I succumbed as well. However, Daddy got it first, cue many many 'man flu' jokes from me, until I myself came down with it a week later. That was when I decided to get confirmation from the National Pandemic Flu Service, who offered us Tamiflu (we didn't bother). I guess it had mutated enough for Jay to get it again as he had all the same symptoms, except this time he was very sick too, so we had the midnight bathing session whilst I tried to scoop/wash undigested spaghetti off of the bedding and carpets (more difficult than it sounds!). Anyway, we're all fine again now, although my asthma flared up for a week.

Now it is time to be looking at nurseries for him for EYFS learning. His current nursery does this, but I would prefer him to go to a nursery attached to the school he will (hopefully) attend. The one I want him to go to we are right on the edge of the catchment area, so there are no guarantees he will get in at Reception if there are other children closer by. I'm just hoping that as it's a 2-form entry school with 60 places per year we'll be alright.

We're trying to teach him little things ourselves - we have alphabet and numbers wall charts and he can count to 7 or 8 quite comfortably, although he still has a preference for the number 'fwee' and a dislike of five, meaning he will often count "One, two, fwee, four, fwee, six. seben, eight" but he's getting there. He knows enough about numbers to ask for fwee Jaffa Cakes, which at the moment is probably all the numerical knowledge he needs to get by.