Author Archives: Autumn

Liam Update

New sentence yesterday: “Cello? See cello?”

It took a while to follow up on the “Mama car?” phrase he said to his caregiver a couple of months ago, one afternoon when he decided it was time to go home and thus I should magically show up in our vehicle to whisk him away, but we now have more proof of linking two ideas in a phrase. Yay Liam!

Oh — and of course I took the cello out so he could see it. He’d clearly asked for it, after all.

Now if he could just get the meals/eating anything/napping/wakeup time settled back to normal after the gastro upset it all, things would be ducky.

More new words: “banana”, “Pooh”, and I keep forgetting to share the coolness of having Liam totally in love with owls. He calls them “AH-whuls!” (complete with strong emphasis on first syllable, and exclamation mark). He was particularly in love with my stuffed snowy owl known as Fflewddur Fflam, calling to get it down from the top shelf where it sits, but the pleather on the feet began to flake off so I hid it, and now he plays with my classic Pooh stuffed Owl instead. His use of “Plss” and “Ta” are also now more correct, thank goodness.

Liam Update

Apart from the gastro thing (which appears to be officially over, hurrah!… except now HRH is very ill indeed) Liam’s doing really well these days.

New words lately: “Tigger”, “ta-ta” (as in thank you, and used infrequently, but when it is it seems to be to ask for something; I think we need to work on the concept of cause and effect), the rats are now “tss”, please is “lss” (as is his playmate Elise), Cheerios are “ch!”, Rice Krispies are “kss”. The trains have become “choo-choo”.

Those ankle boot-shoes just rock. They are so darned cool.

He made up a new game last week. He tossed his ball over the child gate into my office where I was doing some online banking and then grinned at me, looking like a little puppy. So I tossed it over his head into the hall. He followed it, and the next thing I knew he was tossing it over the child gate again. I started tossing the ball further and further down the hall, saying “Go long, son!”. (I am a geek. He’d better get used to it.) He loves this game; he absolutely beams while he plays it. The whole ball thing kind of came out of nowhere. We’ve been trying to teach him how to play with it for months, and nothing. Then out of the blue he found it one day, stood up with it, and dropped it on the floor. He saw it bounce. And that was the end of that. The ball is now one of his favourite toys. He throws it two-handed in that adorable underhanded throw toddlers have.

I don’t want to say this too loudly in case I jinx it, but it looks like we have the one-nap-a-day thing down. He goes down after lunch for an hour and a half to two hours. And as a result, he’s sleeping a bit more at night, which means sleeping in later in the mornings. This is a Very Welcome Thing.

He pulled the Muppet Movie off our DVD shelf and asked to watch it yesterday, so we loaded it and he sat on my lap holding the case, touching the photo of Kermit with his banjo, then looking up at the screen where Kermit was singing ‘The Rainbow Connection’ and softly saying something that sounded like “kog”. Which was, in all likelihood, his version of Kermit the Frog, and charmed me utterly. I cuddled him closer very gently, despite wanting to squeeze him as tightly as I could, overwhelmed by that surge of love and joy he inspires in me.

Sometimes, even in the middle of all the stress and rushing and frustration, all I need is a moment like that to reset everything.

ESTC Update

Gah.

Current word count stands at 46,746 and page count at 206 after tightening and polishing Chapter 4, which isn’t fully polished to my satisfaction but could be handed in like this. It’s something I can go back and fiddle with if I have time after everything else is done, and if I don’t, I’ll get it in the rewrites. (I hate thinking that. I want it done right the first time.)

Also, something I wrote in Chapter 4 today inspired a ritual that got written in Chapter 6. I orignally thought this ritual had to go into Chapter 7, but I was evidently on another planet at the time. So that’s been crossed off the list of things to do for Chapter 7, even though it shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Tomorrow: Chapters 5 and 6. And since 6 is such a little thing, maybe some of 7. (The actual stuff that needs to be done in 7, I mean. Wow, I’m tired.)

I need to go find dinner. I think there’s leftover chili.