Yay school!

Recently, Linnea has seen a lot about school on telly. She's been watching a lot of telly because I had a baby by cesarean section 16 days ago, and there's been a lot about school on it because schools in this country are reopening for the new school year within the next week, in general.

She's dying to get into one.

"I go a school wiv you?"

"Nea and Mammy go a school on a TRAIN!"

"We go visit a school a morrow?"

And so on. We will apparently do painting in school, and playing with the childrens, and the Jumping Dance, and rollerskating.

I don't know what to do. Hope the TV-induced phase passes? Hope that ERAPA gatherings of the Home Ed group fill whatever unfilled need she has? Or find a school which has a preschool that will take someone aged 2⅓ and send her there?

Her drawings are now about what I'd expect from a four year old; faces with eyes and mouth all within the outlines of the face. Eyes with pupils. Bodies and legs and arms approximately in the right places. She decides what to draw first, and then does it. That's all good.

What will happen to her in school? I keep thinking of the song...

The little boy went first day of school
He got some crayons and started to draw
He put colors all over the paper
For colors was what he saw
And the teacher said.. What you doin' young man
I'm paintin' flowers he said
She said... It's not the time for art young man
And anyway flowers are green and red
There's a time for everything young man
And a way it should be done
You've got to show concern for everyone else
For you're not the only one

Speech and language

I pootle off into hospital for a few days and suddenly her speech becomes clearer, her sentences are more grammatical, and her vocabulary expands. Clearly I am holding her back.

No, but seriously, I'm very impressed. She started off by telling me, when I spoke to her from recovery after the c-section, "You have a baby Emer there!" and later when she came to see me she wanted to see "My bruvva" and "My sista" interchangably. It took a few days of no correction for her to change to "my sister" exclusively, but she still uses the masculine third person pronouns for her, in spite of mild correction. Presumably that, too, will sort itself out.

"Where's your baby?" the midwife asked her today. "My baby a called my sister," she replied. "Oh, what's your sister's name?" she was asked. "Emer!"

She now asks to have "Baby Emer's Milk" instead of just milk. She accepts that rice milk and breastmilk are ok but Nea and Mammy can't have cow milk, only Nana and Daddy can have cow milk. She has learned to distinguish between muesli and other cold cereals.

I'd love to guess at the extent of her vocabulary but I can't imagine how I'd begin to do it.

As sure as eggs is eggs!

I know for sure that Linnea learned something, from me, today. It's not often I can point at something and say "This she has learned from her mother!" but today she learned that eggs are runny inside their shells sometimes (though as far as I know they still default to hard-boiled).

A week or two ago she started asking to peel her own hard-boiled eggs at lunchtime, which of course I proudly permitted, and today she was about to help me make scrambled eggs by cracking the eggs open exactly as she does for hard-boiled ones. I snatched one from her tender infant grasp and cracked it myself, to demonstrate, and then she agreed to be more careful. She was intrigued by the runniness ("Is very juicy!") and enjoyed whisking them.

Unusually, she wasn't interested in stirring them in the pan, but she did watch them cooking.