Gavin, Rachel, Matthew and Peter's Diary

Matthew invented his first ever joke that actually (I think) counts as a joke:
What is a cross between a sack and a phone?
A saxophone.

Peter is trying to learn to tell knock-knock jokes but has not learned which punchline goes with which joke:
[Peter]: Knock knock who’s there.
[Me] Er, who’s there?
[Peter] Nobody.
[Me]: Nobody who?
[Peter]: I didn’t know you were a cowboy [which is the punchline for 'ya' / 'ya- who?']

But Peter did manage, which I thought was quite clever, to develop a joke out of a tired Mummy coming out with the wrong words:
[Me, as we arrive home, having just been talking about watching telly before lunch]: OK Peter, time to get out of the telly, I mean buggy.
[Peter, delighted]: We’re not going to watch the buggy! And we’re not going to get out of the telly!

And he is still unfailingly funny just by being two and a half:
[Matthew] I think I’ll have a toasted sandwich for lunch today, like Peter has when he’s at home with Mummy.
[Peter] Matthew, you can’t have a toasted sandwich, because you’re not little, you’re big.
[Me] Peter, you’re a funny little chap, aren’t you?
[Peter, seriously] Yes, I’m a funny little chap.

We’ve started trying to teach Peter some of the talking games that have kept Matthew entertained on many long walks. We’d forgotten about this stage:
Me: I spy with my little eye something beginning with… G.
Matthew: Grass.
Peter: Grass. My turn. I spy with my little eye something beginning with… Tree!
Me: Tree.
Peter: Yes! Your turn!

Me: Peter, your turn to think of an animal… OK, is your animal furry?
Peter: No, not furry. It lives in the jungle.
Me: OK… Is it big?
Peter: No, it’s not very big, it’s quite little.
Me: Is it a toucan?
Peter: No, it’s a hippo.
Me: OK, right, except you said it was quite little…
Peter: Yes, it’s a little hippo.

Matthew, meanwhile, is still trying to learn to tell jokes, which is quite a painful process. He does ‘get’, and enjoy, and has even more or less memorised, a poem about the train to Morrow that left today (I just looked for a link to the lyrics and could only find a Muppets song version that isn’t the same as the one in our book).

As a kind of apology for hardly posting at all this year, we hereby bring you the Burnell/Muers household review of the year 2010.
The general synopsis: occasional storms, sunny intervals and fog patches; fair or poor. 2010 was not a great year for us. It had drama, much of it hospital drama. It had comedy, some of it bittersweet. It had little triumph and little disaster. It just had rather more than its fair share of low-level rubbishness. And definitely too much vomit.

2010 in months:
January: Begins well with a Mummy-and-Daddy escape to Skipton in the snow. Then melting snow, slush, frozen slush, and repeat. Peter talks.
February: Trip to Dumfries to see Granny Lilo and Grandpa Morris. Peter acquires more words. Rachel starts learning to co-clerk business meetings. It seems to take rather less time and effort as the year goes on. Either I’m doing something right or I’m doing something very wrong. Or, quite possibly, both.
March: In between acquiring words, Peter vomits a lot. Matthew reads a lot.
April: The campus has a brand-new state-of-the-art educational facility – for under-fives. Got to start somewhere. So Matthew becomes a Dragonfly and Peter a Ladybird. Peter vomits a lot more. Muers family gathering on Easter Monday, at which photos are taken with Peter looking small and thin. Hoping for a healthy gathering in 2011. We eventually find out why Peter is vomiting a lot.
May: Peter stops vomiting. We start to work out how to cope with a gluten-free diet. The country starts to work out how to cope with a hung Parliament. After several false starts, failed mixtures and faintly sickening episodes, at least one of these coping efforts seems to be working OK. Hmm. Towards the end of the month we note the end of the brief period during which three of the four of us were square numbers. Gavin (who by this point can see rather less than he would like) convenes Yearly Meeting Elders. Rachel plays with Yearly Meeting Toddlers.
June: Peter celebrates his second birthday with a toddler fracture and a gruffalo cake.
July: Sun, sand, sea, spades, trains, gluten-free cream teas, hooray. I think it was also in July that a mouse managed to get inside our boiler and cause over £1000 worth of damage (aka an enforced boiler upgrade) by chewing the wires.
August: Gavin spends a few hours under general anaesthetic, which some would say was a rather extreme way of catching up on sleep. Matthew spends a few days in Edinburgh with Grandpa Martin. While Matthew’s away, Peter decides that being grown up is clearly worth a try, and potty-trains himself (more or less overnight) in preparation for growing up.
September: It all gets very exciting. Matthew celebrates his fifth birthday at a picnic in the park with lots of Dragonflies; is very sick in the early hours of the next morning; starts school the morning after that. Meanwhile Gavin crosses miles and timezones in a selfless quest for the perfect very-expensive-bit-of-scientific-equipment. And finds it and buys it before the budget gets cut. We say “welcome to out of your mummy’s tummy” (in Matthew’s words) to the boys’ first ever first cousin, the small and perfectly formed Marcus Raphael Muers.
October: Matthew loves school. He also loves half-term with grandparents. After his trip to the Natural History Museum, we have to revise our out-of-date dinosaur knowledge. It’s true – the brontosaurus has now been expunged from prehistory. In other dubiously-justified pieces of educated guesswork, Browne reports. Rachel learns, somewhat to her surprise, that the teaching she’s been doing all these years isn’t of any public benefit. Something’s revolting, and it probably isn’t the students.
November: RIP Kepler, the cat who never learned to miaow or purr (but had a nice line in riding round the house sitting on your shoulders). Plenty of opportunities for the boys to spot police horses around campus.
December: Snow falls, snow on snow (snow on snow). The city grinds briefly to a halt, but Matthew’s school keeps going, as do the student protests. Someone fails to break into our bike shed, and leaves us a red-handled screwdriver and some broken hinges as a souvenir of their efforts. Peter learns to recognise Ps-for-Peter (they are everywhere when you start looking for them) Christmas happens, with lots of food and family, and added mystery viruses for the children. We eventually collapse in an overfed midwinter heap, prepare to wave goodbye to 2010, and thank you all for sticking with us.

Yes, we know. Lots has happened, and we should have blogged about it and didn’t. As follows:
Matthew had his fifth birthday party, shared with his friend Marcus, which involved about 16 four-year-olds (we lost track of responses to invites, and on the day they didn’t stop moving for long enough for us to count them) having a picnic in the park. They treasure-hunted and played tag and pestered the teenagers who were sitting in the most climbable tree in the park, and they ate a jungle cake with superhero monkeys on it (this was the Matthew-and-Marcus jointly-devised cake concept). Peter ran around with balloons. We wished all Matthew’s friends luck with their first days at school. We felt a little sad that this was the last gathering of the nursery group. We tidied up, went home and collapsed.

Then: That night Matthew had a bout of sickness and diarrhoea. Very worried enquiries the next morning suggested that (whew) we had not managed to poison about 16 four-year-olds the weekend before they started school.

Then: Matthew turned five on the day he started school. This had the advantage that the very long wait between the time he woke up and the time we left for school could be occupied with opening presents. Peter was a little upset that none of the presents were for him, but not nearly as upset as he was when he discovered later that he was not allowed to stay at school.

On the second day of school Matthew and Marcus ran off into the classroom without remembering to say goodbye to their mothers. This seemed to be a good sign.

That was last week. We think school is going fine. Matthew is obviously tired, and obviously tired of being asked how school is going, but everything that he says is positive (apart from that the bell is very loud, which is fair comment). He likes the teachers, and the pirate ship in the playground, and the interactive whiteboard (which I failed to recognise from his description), and bringing books home in his book bag, and even most of the school dinners.

Peter has become reconciled to the idea that he doesn’t go to school. He quite likes being taken to and from nursery on his own, and being able to control the conversation (which at the moment means mainly demanding that Mummy makes up songs on any subject with first lines provided by Peter, and enquiring after the current whereabouts of anything he can’t see any more: “Where’s bike gone? Where’s plane gone? Where’s Daddy gone? Where’s Matthew gone?”)

Gavin beat me to incredulous reporting of Peter’s potty-training (entirely Peter’s own work). I can report that during the same period Matthew was having a wonderful time in Edinburgh with Grandpa Martin. Interestingly, Peter, in Matthew’s absence, played at being Matthew. He kept getting into Matthew’s bed and asking to have stories read to him; he also started saying things Matthew usually says (most amusingly “What are you talking about?” at a mealtime conversation), and insisted that he had to work the DVD remote control (at least until it became clear that he wasn’t going to manage to watch the DVD that way).

Matthew left Bright Beginnings (the nursery) on Thursday. He seemed positively happy about this, although that may have been because he was about to go to Edinburgh to visit Grandpa Martin (and stay a few nights without Mummy or Daddy, which is extra exciting). He went to a picnic-and-play for the children who will be in his reception class, and picnicked and played quite happily, and afterwards couldn’t remember anything about any of the children – but I hadn’t really expected him to. It was a useful opportunity to calm nerves and make new social connections – even if not for the children.

I am looking forward to getting to know more people in the immediate locality, better; it’s a small school and, judging by the group I met, many of the pupils live within five or ten minutes’ walk. And it is an odd thought that we have now also met several of Peter’s future classmates (the little brothers and sisters who came along to the picnic).

Meanwhile, Peter has decided that he doesn’t like nappies, and wants to wear pants. More by luck than by judgement, he is currently managing this without a huge number of accidents. We are very carefully not allowing ourselves to assume that this is the End Of Nappies.

Peter’s language is far less advanced than Matthew’s was at the same age. On the other hand, it is exactly as advanced as he needs it to be; he uses as many words as are necessary to communicate the ideas he wants to communicate, no more no less. He has also picked up a few classic toddler speech habits much earlier than Matthew did. He’s already started using “Why?” for one of its main purposes, viz. to delay an undesired event: “It’s time to put your shoes on now, Peter”. “Why?”. “Because it’s time to go to nursery”. “Why?” (etc until parent plays the “Because it is” card). He also uses one of Matthew’s favourite lines – “It’s NOT funny” in response to parental smiles or laughter at something child-related. Unfortunately, Peter saying “It’s NOT funny” in an attempt at a sulky voice is, in fact, extremely funny.

And he’s learned “That’s MY such-a-thing” and “not fair”, so he’s well set up as a younger sibling.

He likes counting, though he tends to claim that there are ten of everything. Shown a picture of three cows he will count “one, two, TEN!”; four will be “one, two, three, TEN!”. Ten is, obviously, the number of completion. It makes a kind of sense.

One thing I don’t remember Matthew ever doing: Peter will start crying about something, calm down a bit to note your attempts at soothing him, and then whimper “want to still cry!” or “want still be sad!”. Usually at that point the worst is in fact over (he will not do that for one of his all-out tantrums, which happen relatively rarely but are proper force 11 severe storms).

And we’ve had the first few occurrences of “want to go school too”, before Matthew has even started school. This could be difficult at the beginning.

We went to Looe again. All the way by train there and back this time – more than 6 hours each way, and hooray for seat reservations. And also for a child who can keep himself entertained at least some of the way by reading. And also for the netbook with headphones and children’s DVDs.

Once we got there, there were no problems at all keeping the children entertained. ‘Beach’ said Peter. ‘Go beach. Play sand. Play water. Dig hole. Build castle. Need Peter’s spade. Need Matthew’s spade. Need bucket. Mummy carry bucket. Daddy carry spade’. And that was about it. We did go on a very bumpy boat trip, and to the Plymouth aquarium and a National Trust house. And we ate a few cream teas, notably at Daisy’s Cafe. (We like the people there even more than before; not only did they remember us from more than two years ago, they also turn out to sell gluten-free rock cakes and pasties).

Peter’s language developed quite a lot during the holiday, I think. Matthew’s negotiating/arguing skills developed even further, in that he learned to enlist Peter on his side: “Let’s watch some more telly. [No, you've already watched enough]. Peter, do you want to watch telly? [Yes. Watch telly]. See – Peter wants to watch telly too! We want some more telly!”

We’re not sure when, or if, Peter will start arguing with Matthew. At the moment he pursues the frankly more productive tactic of giving a minimal answer and carrying on regardless.

Every now and then I decide that my children don’t have enough opportunities to do the creative things children are supposed to enjoy doing, like making models and painting. So on Friday I decided we’d do painting. Part way through setting up the painting I decided that it would make more sense if the children wore minimal clothing while painting. So they painted in their underwear and aprons. This was, on balance, a good move. Peter discovered how to tip the water from the water pot into the paint pots, and back again. Matthew discovered how to make the paint splatter by splatting his brush onto the paper. Both of them quite enjoyed applying paint to paper, lots and lots of paint with plenty of water mixed in. After about ten minutes they were bored. I took the paint-soaked sheets of paper away to dry, on the unlikely off-chance that anyone would want to look at them later. I then suggested a bath. This was popular. I put them both in the bath and hosed them down. This was extremely popular. I left them in the bath while I quickly wiped the wet paint off the floor, walls and furniture. This was even more popular, but as I came back up the stairs I smelled a strange tarry smell. Two small boys were just about visible above a mound of bubbles. The bottle of special medicated coal-tar shampoo was empty. The other bottle of shampoo was half empty. Matthew announced that they were playing polar bears and this was the snow in the Arctic. “Polar bears!” said Peter.

Matthew’s main inspiration to start painting had been the idea that we could “have an art gallery in our house”. So once they were hosed down again, and dried and dressed, I took them to the art gallery in the city centre, to find out what you need in an art gallery. Matthew decided that you should, ideally, have automatic doors. Peter clearly thought that you need a cafe, and those little low barriers set a few feet out from the wall, at just the right height for a toddler to run his hand along them as he races around the exhibits. I think they both concluded that pictures were a nice bonus but not essential.

The following day Matthew said at breakfast time “Mummy, I think we should do just the same thing today as we did yesterday. You know, do painting, have a bath, go to the art gallery…”

Peter is two. He isn’t at all terrible. His second birthday didn’t exactly pass without incident, though. On the day before his birthday he decided to demonstrate how healthy and energetic he is these days by jumping off the sofa, several times. On the several-and-oneth time he hurt his foot. “Hurty foot”. When he still couldn’t walk on it the next morning (that’s his birthday) we decided to take him to A&E. So he spent his birthday morning finding out that his foot wasn’t broken – at least, not so an X-ray machine would notice. We were told that a “toddler fracture”, if such it was – ie a small hairline fracture in a small person’s leg – would heal of its own accord within a week or so. I like this idea that toddlers have their own category of injury.

Anyway, Peter, as a true toddler, is now definitely getting better, and walking quite long distances if he temporarily forgets that his foot is supposed to be hurty. He did his birthday party (balloon-and-bubble-chasing and all) at a rapid crawl/knee-shuffle. And he liked his gluten-free gruffalo cake, and his small cuddly gruffalo (is that a contradiction in terms?), and being sung Happy Birthday to, and having other children to watch.

His new word is “person”. This is an interesting one. If he starts playing with a toy vehicle that doesn’t have a toy driver or passenger, or sees something that could be an accessory in a pretend-game (eg a box that looks like a bed), he stops and demands “person”, i.e. a central character for the game. Toy animals are, of course, perfectly acceptable as “person”. I think faceless objects of about the right size and shape, designated as “pretend person”, would also be acceptable.