Science And Industry

At the moment, Thursday means a day at home for me and a day away from nursery for G, which also means it's down to me to come up with a reason for getting us both out of the house. Today I decided on a trip into Manchester to take G around the Museum of Science and Industry. Or at least the bits I thought she might be interested in.

First, that meant wandering along to the old Liverpool Road station, which dates from 1830 and was a terminus of the world's first proper passenger railway. Now it's part of the museum, but G didn't seem thrilled by my monologue about the remarkable engineering that allowed it to be built, and the tragi-comic death of William Huskisson MP on the railway's opening day. Instead, she pointed at a couple of sections of train standing idle on the track. "Blue one Thomas, red one James. Look daddy, Thomas and James!" Which made a lot more sense.

Inside, I took her around the area aimed at children, which has plenty of hands on things for even little ones to do. The picture shows G turning a wheel, which through a series of gears moves a full-size car up and down. She was extremely impressed at herself, although this time I spared her the physics lecture.

She had such a good time that she didn't want to leave, and I had to bribe her with the promise of ice cream so we could get back home in time for a very late lunch. Although I didn't mind too much. Taking such an interest in trains and gears seems like a good enough reason for a little girl to get a reward.

Entertaining Herself

I was ill for a couple of days this week. Nothing too noteworthy, just the usual early winter bit of sickness that makes you not want to do anything apart from lie in bed, groaning pathetically. Unfortunately, the worst of it coincided with Thursday, which just happened to be my only day of the week with G at home.

She gave me a lie-in, which was very decent of her, but the long sleep only served to give her more energy when she finally decided to wake up. "Get up daddy!" she repeated, excitedly, trying to pull the duvet from where I'd attempted to securely anchor it. "Daddy's feeling sick, daddy's very sad," I managed in response. G thought for a moment, and said: "I kiss you and make it better!" followed all-too-inevitably by, "There! All better! Get up daddy!"

Later in the day I had to go back to bed, but managed to persuade her to come with me with the lure of Mrs J's iPad, which she'd thoughtfully left behind for just such an eventuality. I dozed off, and woke up some time later to find G still enthusiastically tapping away at the thing. She could well have been ordering boxloads of fine wines and other expensive fripperies for all I knew, but at that particular moment I was happy that something other than me was keeping her occupied.

I'm feeling much better now, by the way. The picture was taken last weekend, on the swings in a park in Salford.

Impressing The Health Visitor

It's been a while since G last saw a health visitor. But as we've recently moved, one came round today. It was to let me know about what's on offer in the local area and, presumably, to check up on me a bit.

G has been a bit under the weather this week. She had a temperature on Monday night so I kept her off nursery on Tuesday, and she came home within an hour of being there on Wednesday morning with the same problem. She was pretty sluggish waking up this morning, and after refusing breakfast clambered back up the stairs and got back into bed: "Close the curtains daddy, I'm still sleepy," she said, sounding sorry for herself.

I needed to get her up again because the visitor was due at 10:15am, and I had to bribe G with the promise of biscuits if she went back downstairs and ate some cereal. She was just finishing the biscuits when the doorbell went, which was good timing (they were only ginger nuts, nothing chocolatey or fancy, but still, these first impressions matter, at least to me).

Even better, as we all sat down at the kitchen table, G turned to me: "I'm still hungry daddy". I replied: "What would you like to eat?" She paused, then delivered a winning line: "Um... an apple!" I wondered whether the health visitor thought we'd been rehearsing it all morning.

Later on, G was playing with her blocks as she often does, when I noticed that she'd taken to separating them all out into different colours, as shown in the picture. Possibly a bit OCD of her. Not sure what I'll think if she starts colour-coding the fruit bowl.

Back On The Telly

G's status as semi-regular media commentator continues. We were on ITV1's Daybreak this morning, talking about the government's latest attempt to introduce a bit more flexibility into the system of parental leave. Well, I was talking about it, G was mostly shown playing with her train set.

As is often the case with these things, it was an old colleague and friend of mine who now works at Daybreak who teed me up for it. I went to collect G from nursery a bit early so she could be at home for when the video journalist came to film with us.

G's been on TV quite a few times before for various things, so she wasn't at all bothered by the camera. She dutifully sat quietly on my knee throughout the interview, then gave plenty of winning smiles as she played with Thomas. Although as I pointed out to the reporter, the lack of children's TV on ITV these days meant we had to go with a character seen on Channel 5. How very off brand of me.

A slightly bigger mishap occurred when the reporter mistook a side table for a stool, and sat on it. It immediately broke in half and he ended up on his backside, the sort of moment that could really have done with some canned laughter to go along with it. So if you ever wonder where the money from all those adverts on ITV goes, I can say that a little is going to be spent on a new table for our living room.

G actually seemed a bit poorly and hot overnight, and didn't sleep very well, so neither of us were inclined to get up to watch our performance actually being broadcast. But I taped it, and showed it to her later. Straight on after our bit was none other than Nick Clegg, announcing the new policy on behalf of the government. Long-time readers of this blog might recall that it's not the first time he's shared the media spotlight with G, but that's another story.

(UPDATE 13/11: Our local ITV News programme, Granada Reports, turned my interview into a whole report, which you can watch in full here. If you want to watch Gwenno eating a sandwich in excruciating detail, then make sure you stick it out to the end! Also, note the slightly weird use of our wedding photo, kind of as if we'd died)

Wrong Daddy

I was away for the weekend, and I came back to find that G's infatuation with Thomas the Tank Engine continues. This is her tonight after she'd been reunited with her favourite little train. This morning, before I took her to nursery, there were tears at the breakfast table when I told her she wasn't allowed to take him with her.

"I want Thomas!" she repeated, wailing plaintively. I was unmoved, but only because I have developed the instinct that parents have for this sort of thing. A typical toddler tantrum is over in a minute or so, but the kind of epic tantrum that would ensue if Thomas got lost at nursery, well, that just isn't worth thinking about. "Thomas will still be here when you get back later," I reassured her as we got in the car, to which I got a very doubtful look in return.

As I went to pick G up, I was walking down the corridor towards her room when one of the nursery nurses came by leading a little boy, who was black. "Daddy!" he said, pointing towards me, hopefully. "No, I don't think that's your daddy," she replied, with the air of someone who had already had to say the same thing several times, probably in quick succession.

I didn't wait to hear if she went on to explain precisely why I was unlikely to be related to him. Besides, this all demonstrates another truth of parenting that I have discovered: three-year-olds may be able to talk more, but they still aren't the best recipients of any kind of logic.

Playdate

We had a trip up the road to Aberdeen last week, so G could see a couple of friends, including her first meeting with a baby boy over from Australia. It's a long drive even without a recently-potty-trained toddler in the back, so I was prepared for a lengthy and miserable journey. But G's new-found love of Thomas The Tank Engine helped no end.

After a bit of a snooze on the way up, she managed to use the potty at a service station then spent a couple of hours quietly watching Thomas chuff his way about Sodor (the DVD I'd brought was mostly from the Ringo Starr era, obviously). So no trouble at all.

The return journey on Friday evening was even more successful. I hoped a night-time drive would help her sleep, and sure enough she dozed off in front of the DVD before we'd even reached Dundee, not waking up again until we were passing Lancaster. "Where's Thomas?" was the first thing she said, rubbing her eyes, as I'd unplugged it as soon as I'd realised she was asleep. So she got an extra half an hour or so of train-based fun before we finally made it home.

You might consider all this TV to be a bad thing, and I suppose it is, but it's infinitely better than a long drive on your own with a whining toddler. And for that reason, the portable DVD player remains one of the great inventions of mankind.

Our actual stay in Aberdeen, cold and surprisingly snowy even though it's only October, was well worth the trip. G is a couple of years older than the little ones we went to see, but she managed to play nicely and share the toys without too much persuasion. However, as the photo shows, she preferred to get me to join in with even more ludicrous games of hide-and-seek.

Thomas

G has been through a few favourite TV characters recently. She's had a long-standing interest in In The Night Garden, and was also obsessed for a time with The Adventures of Abney and Teal. But after a weekend away at a wedding, all it took was a small new toy for her to change her affections to a rather older favourite, Thomas the Tank Engine.

G's grandad got her a little battery-powered Thomas to go on her wooden railway set. And the picture shows what she then spent the greater part of the weekend doing. Round and round the track he went, until we rebuilt the track to put some more tunnels in, then round and round he went again. His battery eventually ran out, so I think I'm going to have to stock up on plenty of them to get through the next few weeks.

She's always enjoyed playing with trains, but the Thomas toy may well have taken this to a new level of fascination. On getting home last night, we let her watch a bit of TV as a reward for a well-behaved car journey. "I want to watch Thomas!" she said, excitedly. Our TV's on demand section has a whole load of them, so we're in luck as far as that's concerned. Although it's all the new series, so within two minutes of watching one episode I realised I have no idea who half the characters are. There's even a Thin Controller now, presumably to encourage the Fat Controller to attend his Weight Watchers meetings.

As it finished, G said: "I want to watch Thomas again!" I'm going to have to get used to that, for a while at least.

Potty Training Wallchart

G has been potty training. We've waited longer to do this than we might have done, largely because of our recent move and her change of nursery. But I had a couple of weekdays at home just over a week ago, and thought it was as good a time as any to finally get started.

Being a stubborn sort of girl, G had steadfastly refused to go anywhere near a potty before then (on one occasion at nursery she was shown one, and responded by kicking it across the room, no doubt accompanied by a teenager-style pout), so we agreed that we would resort to bribery from the off. This took the form of giving her a treat every time she sat on the potty, either a biscuit or a chocolate button.

At first, I'd pretend to sit on the potty, then I'd put her favourite Teal doll on it. After a while of cheerily watching me eat biscuits, G got the idea that she could have a biscuit too by doing the same, and we started to get somewhere.

Mrs J then introduced a sticker wallchart, as shown above. G spent last week collecting stickers every day for different achievements. Not just using the potty properly, but also staying in bed all night and eating up all her tea (less challenging for her, admittedly).

G quickly learned to expect not only a chocolate but also a sticker for sitting on the potty. By midweek, she'd become a bit blase about it, so on Thursday morning after sitting on it in the bathroom and coming downstairs, my offer of breakfast was met by an insistent: "No! I want my sticker and my potty treat first!"

By the weekend, G had filled up each row with stickers and qualified for the various rewards shown on the chart. The lesson is: bribery works.

Hide-and-seek

Hide-and-seek is one of G's favourite games. Although she actually insists on calling it "hide peekaboo", and this could offer a clue as to why she is, well, no good at all at it.

The video shows a typical game. I think it's fair to say she needs to work on her tactics a bit.

Third Birthday

G was three yesterday. We continued the tradition we started on her first and second birthdays by taking her to Chester Zoo. Having made it pretty clear the other day that giraffes are her favourite, we made sure to head there early on:

G was also looking forward to the elephants, although she seemed to enjoy this one even more:

Before leaving, G had opened one of her presents, a child's first camera sort of thing. I'd actually assumed it wasn't a real camera, but as Mrs J demonstrated to both G and me, it takes pictures just as well as anything else. So we stuck a memory card in and took it with us.

G was extremely excited about this, and took dozens of pictures as we walked around the zoo. Mostly, these were of the floor, or her own feet. But she did manage to almost capture a zebra in this one:

Afterwards, we made it home in time for cake. I'd made my first-ever attempt at a Victoria Sponge, and although it turned out ok, the structural integrity of the top layer was a little bit suspect. Thankfully, Mrs J came to the rescue by covering it all in icing.

I suppose I've got another year to have a few more attempts and get it just right. But no doubt by then she'll be demanding something much more elaborate.