Category: journal

What’s that, Daddy?

What, this?

No, that.

This?

No, that.

This?

No! — that.

What, this?

No! — that.

This?

Yes, that.

That’s a little fly.

Oh, good.

Have finally decided that the trees that line the West side of Stroud
Green Road are Narrow-Leafed Ashes. They are really lovely looking
trees, with cloads of fine leaves that look fantastic with the sun
behind them.

I also detected quite a lot of hazel around the old railway bridge at
the top of Crouch Hill and some kind of Willow that has been trimmed
into a hedge down near Brambledown Mansions.

Yes, I’ve caught the tree-spotter bug again. It all started last weekend
when we arrived down in Somerset for a short visit: one innocent, “I
wonder what tree that is” lead to another and another…

We had a wonderful few days down there. Lola was tearing round the whole
time full of excited energy, ready to go and see the inciminchin or down
to the seaside and play in the sandpit or to go up the stairs and no,
Daddy wait there and Lola go down Uno Due Tre Cinque Sei and have lunch
and no, Lola not want fish pie, no and then put shoes on and go seaside,
yes, yes Daddy?

She’s such a lovely bundle of positive, happy, intelligent, chatty fun.

“What happened to Muzzy, Daddy?” “What’s this doing here, Maddy?”

“Is it pasta time, Mummy?” “Lola go to parco, Dummy?”

“Is Rosie coming?” “It’s broken — I’ll put it back on.”

“Oh: it’s going beep and now it’s ready!”

Lola, although certainly developing a streak of wilfulness and the
tendancy to begin any decision-making process by snapping, “No” and
turning her head fully to the left-stop and giving a good pout, seems to
have been in a perpetual good mood for the last six months.

She chatters, plays, sings, cuddles from morning till night. She does
lovely little intricate drawings. And she auto-magically potty-trained
herself.

“Lola read a book to monkey!” is what is being cried in a loop from the
bedroom at the moment. Now and then it changes to “Pee-pee, mama!” or
“mummy cuddles!”. Lola so enjoys her night-time cuddles with Mummy that
it’s been getting really hard to put her down since we’ve been back from
Italy. The big soppy nana could cuddle all night long.

Lola came into the kitchen this evening and asked me where the other
part of $some_toy was. I can’t recall her ever asking me where something
is before.

She is in such a perpetually good mood these days (although a touch of
croup has woken her and us the last few nights). And so very, very
chatty and singy (“See saw, margey door, jonny av noo marser”).

You’ve never seen anyone enjoy their time like Lola did in Italy this
last trip (we got back a week ago). I’ll try to find the time to
elucidate when it’s not bedtime…

‘Night

Not untypical: a week after Spring begins, with trees budding
enthusiastically and birds twittering excitedly, and it snows. Big,
thick, sticky snowdrops which have already deposited an inch or more on
the ground and on the upper parts of all the trees’ branches. (Pretty
effect, that).

“Raining, it’s pouring,” as Lola puts it. An awful lot of Lola’s output
is musically oriented. Dunno where that comes from.

Lola has come on a bit since my last post. (Not a surprise given the
long expanse of silence since then: what a bad biographer.) She’s
talking a lot: just now, she managed to tell me the story of how monkey
got his foot wet and dirty in a puddle on the way back from the
library.

We spent Christmas in Somerset and visited again for Easter. Lola got
very excited about going at Easter — it was great to see evidence of
the fixing of all those neural pathways. You could tell her we were
going down to see i nonnie (or Grandma and Grandpa) and she’d be off,
talking excitedly about the beach, Lucy, the Choo-choos…

Easter was tinged with sadness, as we sad good bye to Lucy for the last
time: the day after we left, Mum and Dad took her to the Blue Cross
centre where she’ll wait for a new owner who can offer the kind of home
she needs. I guess Lola isn’t going to take it in until she next visits,
at which point the memory may have faded a little, anyway. Mum had a
really hard time, though, and was very upset. It’s not often I wish I
were a farmer but this is one occasion where I’d happily have been one
so that we could have taken on Lucy.

Anyway, must get on with preparing for lunch with Vanessa, Tallulah and
Eoin; we’re having lots of Moorish (and, we hope, more-ish) stuff, most
of which we cooked last night, but enough of which still remains…

More later, I hope.

More! . . . More! . . . More!

This! . . . This! . . . This!

Akla! Duddle! Ly! (butterfly) Lucy! Lucy! Nonno! Dor! Appo! (apro) Giu! Ooks! (books) Hooraaay! Choo-choo! Lah! Lah! (yes; usually accompanied by furious nodding) Hellooo, Lucy! Hellooo, nonno! Hellooo, Dom! (Tom) Hellooo, this!

Moon! ‘Tar! (star)

Duddle! (cuddle). Muh-hee! (monkey)
Gone! Down! Ut! (up)

Bye-bye!

Alex Hooper
via mobile

Yes. Lola will now come and tell us if she’s done a pooh. Sometimes, she’ll get us the information before the event and this Friday such forewarning occurred and she was able to get her nappy off and sit on the loo and deliver stright into the water. And, lo, did we cheer.

Unfortunately, the weekend that followed (the very same which is now ending) was not replete with cheer. For sure, we have good cause for cheer being, as we are, in receipt of Isa’s sister, Lola’s aunty, and my cognata. They are all staying in the sitting room under the name of “Denis Feltrin”. And indeed, it’s lovely to have her (back for a second visit after 12 years!)

The unfortunate thing is that Lolly is not well — just as she was picking up after her recent tummy bug/teething thing, too. Maybe it’s part of the same thing; she never got rid of the phlegm or the runny nose, really. Friday night, though, she couldn’t sleep and was drooling gallons and swallowing snot and crying all night. Saturday, we all drove up to Hitchin to go to the market. It was wet and cold and the market was crap and we went to console ourselves with lunch in a Cafe Rouge where, it turned out, the service was pathetic but the food quite edible. Lola ate quite happily, too, but then suddenly was crying with every mouthful and we noticed she had a very red tongue with some sort of blistery little spots (I wondered were they the taste buds, inflamed). She rallied, and we advanced on the rest of the day, taking a cross-country route back home which gave us a bit of a lift as we took in some pretty villages and some great storm-light-over-the-fields views.

That tongue has stayed with Lola, though, and she’s found it really hard to eat since then and has obviously been feeling pretty rotten. She’s ragged because she can’t sleep (she eventually fell asleep in our bed at 04:30 on Sunday. So far tonight (Sunday) she’s managed an hour and a half (after a rough start for an hour or two). Fingers are crossed.

Lola took the sponge and washed her own feet in the bath tonight. Then,
with Isa prompting, did her hands, her knees, her shoulders.

Her vocabulary is growing quickly now, and she’ll pick up on words that
she likes and play with them. She’s starting to string two words
together more often now (while, as you may have noted, I do so less and
less) — usually stuff like “this: nice” or “daddy: snack”.

She’s had a really rotten couple of days, though, with a terrible nappy
rash, diarrhea, a bunged up nose, a temperature, and a cough. I came
home yesterday and she was sitting on the sofa with Isa looking very
folorn — she hadn’t stood up all day, nor worn a nappy as it was too
painful, and she was avoiding peeing as that obviously stung. And she
had a fiercly red face that was quite scary.

I’m happy to report she’s considerably better today.

She gathers all her toys from around her cot (Leone, Gabriella the
giraffe, the clockwork lamb, Fillipo Floppo, and a couple of other
nameless soft things) and, while kneeling in her sleeping bag, piles
them in front of her. She then collapses on top of them. If any escapes,
she rearranges the pile until she’s lying on them all. Then she sleeps.