Last time my mother was visiting Hawkeye was communicating with very basic sentences and a relatively limited vocabulary. Now, he’s a full blown threenager, and while much of his babble is still in that mysterious language unknown to grownups, there is also a significantly more complex communication going on. Observing natural language acquisition from up close…
Tag Archives: motherhood
Day #312 Helping
The end of ever-increasing incrementally exhausting number of days began with me waking up not even knowing if my mother had made her flight to Dublin and ended in a bar with a friend’s birthday party, full of people I dearly loved seeing, but costing so much effort from my non-existent energy reserves that I…
Day #265 Autumn (and piglets!) come to the zoo
So… that zoo trip over the weekend that I casually alluded to a couple of days ago when talking about getting up close and personal with a duck. Here are the highlights, because I can’t get over how much I’ve gotten invested in keeping track of the animals we see. And it was beautiful to…
Day #237 The Ideas Fairy
I woke up this morning to a message from my mother asking me a question: “У меня полночь. Я только что прочла твой последний блог и у меня возник вопрос к тебе. Когда ты успеваешь найти идею для блога, а потом эту идею развить и написать маленький рассказ, который легко и интересно читать?” “I just…
Day #182 The irrational joys of parenthood
It pretty well remarked upon in parenting circles that there’s something magical about that new baby smell (when it’s not emanating from the nappy area). There is even a growing body of scientific literature about how this may, in fact, work together with the hormonal changes a new mother’s brain undergoes to help strengthen the…
Day #100 One’s house to oneself
There’s a line in the BBC adaptation of Pride & Prejudice where, following the removal of the Bennett sisters from Netherfield after Jane’s illness, the delightfully snooty Caroline Bingley exclaims “How pleasant it is to have one’s house to oneself again!” I am sure that people who have had their houses packed to the rafters…
The Feathered Rose 