On Friday 1st February I caught a train to Manchester to visit my son and family. I found it a tiring day as I didn't get to bed until about 2.30 am on Friday morning, on account of watching too much TV before kitchen clear-up, house-tidying and packing before finally falling into my bed. Then I arose at 7.30 in order to complete the packing etc before ordering the taxi.
My grandson was so excited to see me, he was too excited to go to bed early, also he had had his nap very late, so he only went to bed at 9. He's talking all the time now, though it's an effort to understand what he says. He repeats everything you say to him, so he's learning new words very fast. He wanted to know where Papi (Grandpa) is, so I showed him lots of photographs of Paul which he liked and he asked to see more - 'encore Mami?' (Mami is the French for 'Grannie' - he is speaking a mixture of French and English).
On Saturday it was sunny though freezing, and my son and I took my grandson out to meet his mother after she had finished teaching Saturday morning French School. He was a bit grizzly so we gave him his scooter and he scooted like mad around the playground of the school for ages. It was very cold just sitting watching him! Then he fell over and was deciding whether to cry or not, but a passing dog bounded up to him and kissed him better, so he felt more cheerful and decided not to bother crying. Then we went out to lunch. He had an enormous plate of fish and chips, and then was a lot more cheerful so perhaps it was hunger that was making him grizzly.
Life was very noisy in Manchester on Sunday. My son did woodwork in the morning, so my grandson and I played and sang songs until he was clearly exhausted and had to go for a nap. His nap lasted quite a while, then everybody had to get ready,and we went to a friend's house for their daughter's birthday party - she is two.
The party was amazingly noisy and chaotic; everybody did running about and screaming, especially my grandson! Later, the birthday girl got quite impressed by the bubble blowing, so she went upstairs and raided the party bags for bottles of bubble liquid and drank it. Then she was sick! So the lovely party frock suffered a bit, and she had to come back to the party in trousers and a tee shirt. And her mother had to spend quite a while scrubbing the carpets! Fortunately, I think it's mainly soap and water in the bubble mixture, so I guess the scrubbing wasn't too difficult after the bits of cake and crisp were all scraped up.
On Monday it was snowing when I woke up. I am not looking forward to Edinburgh, where there is probably snow and even more freezing weather. I am really feeling the cold and Manchester seems very damp, which makes my bones ache. I am sleeping in the attic bedroom, and last night the skylight leaked. I kept hearing a 'plink' noise, and eventually worked out it was coming from the part of the bed next to me. I watched carefully and saw big drips falling onto the bed from the skylight above. It was after midnight by then, so I didn't like to wake anybody. The bed was too heavy for me to move, so I found a plastic bag to put over the place where the drips were falling and added all my dirty clothes on top of it so the sound wasn't too loud. I decided somebody could sort it out the following night when he came home from work. (He says it was just condensation and has closed the skylight blind, which seems to have stopped it)
My grandson at 22 months is chatting away nineteen to the dozen, though it is still somewhat difficult to understand him as he can't manage all the sounds yet. Yesterday he came to find me to explain that he had lost the 'ca-ki' under the sofa. With visions of the difficulty of anybody driving anywhere with no car keys, I had a look, but could see no sign of any car keys. He then gave me a look of withering scorn and wriggled under the sofa to fetch his little car, which turned out to be a TAXI! He can't make those sounds yet, so 'ca-ki' was the nearest he could get to taxi. He can manage 'monkey' but 'giraffe' is a bit beyond him (fi-aff) and 'crocodile' is a bit difficult (ca-a-deal - he learned it in French first). These are important words, as he has a giraffe and a monkey, and lots of crocodile stickers. Today we were learning colour words with his cars and trains, so we can manage 'reh' and 'boo' and even 'geen' but we have some difficulty with 'lel-ow'.
The highlight of our day was to visit the Trafford Centre where we hired a little yellow and green car for him to ride in. He didn't find it entirely satisfactory though, as it doesn't go where he wants to go, largely because I am pushing it.
The highlight of Tuesday was a visit to the Library, but unfortunately not for the books. It is a nice big space, wonderful for running up and down, and it has a colourful circular carpet, suitable for encouraging little boys to turn round and round in circles until they get dizzy and fall over. Usually he is interested in all the books, but not this time. He was interested though in a new game. A couple of days ago I remembered another nursery rhyme I haven't sung him before, 'One Two Three Four Five, once I caught a fish alive.' He liked it very much and after a couple of repetitions was soon singing it himself. (Just the tune and the 'one, two, three, four, five', he can't manage many of the words) So the new game, found in a charity shop, was with number tiles, to see if we can put down the tiles in the right order. He can recognise the first five numbers, though putting them in order is more difficult; the next five numbers are a bit more of a problem to recognise, 6 and 9 are too similar, and 5 is not that different. Still, he is learning all the time.
My son and I were intrigued in the evening to hear him singing bits of 'Old MacDonald had a Farm' and making all the animal sounds. The visit to the charity shop had also produced one of those shape puzzles, and this one has a pig, cow, sheep and chicken so that reminded him of the song I suppose. Anyway, the animals were all taken out of the puzzle and spoken to, there was a lot of singing of 'moo moo here, baa baa dere and snort' (I can't spell the sound he made)!
The most successful and exciting thing so far has been the bubble mixture; it was so successful, we had to buy more.
He was pretty hard to photograph, he danced about so much; he was so active, you can see that one sock has come off!
On Thursday night, my sister arrived prior to our visit on Friday to Edinburgh for my cousin's funeral.
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