Accent

I suppose it had to happen. But the speed at which G has gone from a fairly generic toddler-type voice to a broad Manchester accent has taken me a bit by surprise.

At her old nursery, she picked up a few words with a bit of an Oldham sound, which she occasionally dropped in ("mun-keh" was a particular favourite of mine). But those seemed to have faded away since we moved to our new place and she started at a new nursery in town.

That was until last week. One day, I noticed G had started talking like a Manc. It seemed to come on almost overnight, but it was definitely there. A sort of verbal tic in which she goes up-then-down during a sentence, then up again at the very end. Not just as a one-off though, this is now how she says every single sentence. As you can imagine, it gets slightly wearing after about the 5,000th time. It's going to take a bit of getting used to.

Until that day, G is better seen rather than heard. So toys like this Thomas the Tank Engine jigsaw which she spent ages quietly doing, then taking apart, then doing again on the kitchen table, are my current preferred entertainment for her.

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.

Scooting Along

G got a scooter for Christmas, but it's taken her quite a while to get the hang of it. For a while she seemed very nervous of it, and would push it along without daring to actually stand on it. But a couple of weeks ago she finally started scooting up and down the living room, and while we were away last weekend she was happy enough to go along the pavement, as shown in the picture.

The next stage will be persuading her to go back on after she's crashed and taken the skin off her knees, elbows and nose. That might still be easier than getting her to wear pads, though.

Road Signs For Dolls

As befits the daughter of a stay-at-home dad, G has a wide range of boyish sorts of toys. It's not that I've deliberately set out to keep her away from dolls, it's just that an afternoon playing with her train set offers a better prospect of enjoyment for both of us. Which is of course the important thing.

This manifested itself once when, during a call by a health visitor, G completely failed to recognise a doll, and stared at it blankly intstead of brushing its hair as she was supposed to.

I got a sign the other day that G might be getting around this doll denial. When playing trains, she decided that all the signs were sleepy. So she laid them out on the floor and patted them, as shown in the picture.

She then decided that the signs had to kiss each other, so I was treated to the sight of Danger getting cosily intimate with Road Narrows Ahead. Poor G, I should probably give in and let her get a Barbie or something. But maybe not quite yet.

Christmas Day

This year was G's third Christmas, but the first in which she has shown more interest in the actual presents than the wrapping paper and packaging. It wasn't quite a morning of full-on excitement for her though. She let us have a lie-in until almost 9 o'clock, and seemed a bit confused when she came downstairs to find a pile of colourful boxes underneath the tree.

No doubt it'll be a bit different next year. But for the time being, G struggles with the concept of the future tense. The general build-up to Christmas had little effect on her, to the extent that, when Mrs J took her outside on Christmas Eve to sprinkle some glitter on the doorstep to attract the reindeer, she threw a mini-tantrum because there weren't any actual reindeer there. The fact we'd all just had venison casserole for tea didn't register either, which was probably just as well. Might have to drop that dish off the meal rota in future years.

G soon got the hang of opening presents, as the picture shows, although she instinctively wanted to actually get each present out of the box and play with it straight away, rather than move on to unwrapping the next one. If we'd let her do this we'd still be sat under the tree now, so we had to briefly hide some of her new toys so she could concentrate on the important task of opening the others.

She did find time to deliver her own Christmas message, of sorts. Not quite The Queen, but she's getting there:

Handbag Substitute

The weather's been getting better lately, so sometimes I take a few of G's toys into the front yard and we sit and play out there for a while.

As proved by her recent bafflement when presented with a dolly by the health visitor, I've done my best to keep G away from too much girly stuff so she doesn't grow up to be, you know, all girly and that. But it doesn't seem to be entirely working. The other day, instead of bashing her toy drum as usual, she decided to pose with it as if she were in a fancy shop and it was a fancy handbag.

This photo isn't really conclusive proof one way or the other. But perhaps some aspects of gender are innate after all.

Bouncing Into 2011

Here's G playing with one of her new toys. We had some friends over for Hogmanay last night, and one brought a trampoline for G. As you can see, she's very taken with it.

G's confidence on the bouncy trampoline has coincided with a much greater steadiness on her feet. She's now happily toddling around the living room, a few steps at a time, rather than always getting back on her hands and knees to crawl.

Both the extra walking and last night's bouncing may have combined to tire G right out, so she didn't wake up until 10am this morning. Given that both me and Mrs J were feeling a bit rough after the night before, that was just as well.

Christmas Day

This was G's second Christmas. She's grown up a lot since last year, and was able to investigate her sack of presents for herself. She's also got the hang of the idea of taking the paper off her presents, but still needed a bit of help from me to fully get at all of her new toys.

In fact, because she still doesn't have much idea of what Christmas is and why it's incredibly exciting, G actually let me and Mrs J have a lie-in until 9am. That's something that I can't imagine we'll be able to do on Christmas Day for an awfully long time to come.

G also didn't complain as we soon dragged her away from her presents to go into our local village of Dobcross at lunchtime to check out the brass band's carol concert. As it has been for most of the last month, it was well below freezing even in the middle of the day. But under all her winter clothes, G didn't seem to mind too much.

There were quite a lot of families with young kids at the band club, many of them clutching various gadgets and other things they'd clearly unwrapped that morning. G was in the mood for showing off, and crawled all over the room smiling and gurgling. She even bumped into some of her little friends from one of the parent and baby groups I take her to. There was still no proper walking from her though.

G started to get tired so we took her back home for a nap while Mrs J cooked up Christmas dinner. Once G got up later we all sat down to eat. G had a bit of everything on her plate, and happily munched through just about all of it.

The only exception, predictably enough, were the sprouts. As soon as she put one of the little green things in her mouth she made a disgusted face and spat it out. Seeing as me and Mrs J both quite like sprouts, her dislike of them can't be genetic. Maybe we'll try them out on her again next year.

First Birthday

G was one year old yesterday. The whole day was a lot more civilised than the same day 12 months ago, which I seem to recall involved a lot of waiting around (me), pushing (Mrs J) and screaming (Mrs J again, and then G once she finally arrived).

Mrs J had the day off so in the morning we sat with G and helped her with her cards and presents. The fact that she got way more of both than either me or Mrs J did on our own birthdays this year wasn't exactly a surprise.

I suppose I should really write something about the sense of pride and achievement I feel at having brought a baby up to be one year old, especially one as happy, fun-loving and easygoing as G. But that would be tempting fate. So I'll just leave you with this picture of G enjoying her new trike, and say no more about it.

Besides, although G doesn't know it yet, I'm taking her for her 12-month injections this afternoon. That'll soon take the smile off her face.