October 2005 Archives

Dominic's latest obsession is 'the Wallace and the Gromit' and his ever-expanding vocabulary is two-thirds W&G related. 'No cheese!' 'Wensleydale' 'Rocketship! To the MOON!' 'Gromit on train' 'Naughty boy penguin' 'Wallace on the motorbike' and, best of all, unending requests for a 'nice hot cup of tea'. He's still scared of the robot dog in 'A Close Shave' and his attention span rarely stretches to a full episode so I don't think we'll be attempting a trip to the pictures for the new film just yet. Still great to share his excitement with him, although I'm a little less happy about the new requests for 'tellyon'.

In other news, Dominic once again finds himself in the shadow of Eloise Bradbury who can not only count up to ten but unabashedly revels in her own cleverness by loudly applauding herself. Happily, she's cute enough with it to get away with this kind of gloating. Dom, however, isn't doing quite so well with the numbers. He knows that the answer to any sort of question involving "how many" starts with him saying 'one' slowly and with great emphasis (WunnnnNNN) and sometimes he even throws in a bit of random pointing. After that, things go a little more unconventional.

One. Good boy. Two. Great. Six. No-no-no. Four. Eh?

We've made the big time - now findable in the OED.

A little history

Helen writes,(York, late 1940s, black and white) One day with my Dad only a tiny wee baby, Grandma Dobson went off to the Post Office in town with him in his carriage pram. She managed to return home to her Mum's sometime later without my Dad or the pram.

"Where's the baby?" exclaims Great Grandma Robinson.
"What baby?" replies Gran
"You're not fit to be a mother! Fancy leaving a baby in town," cries Great Grandma Robinson, ramming her hat down onto her head and jabbing her hatpin into it, before stalking off to the Post Office to rescue my oblivious Dad.

Gran's excuse is that she had entirely forgotten she'd had a baby or that she had to check the front of thePost Office for prams that belonged to her. Hormones do weird stuff to your brain post-baby, huh?

The case for the prosecution

(Huddersfield, present day, glorious technicolour) So, as arranged, I turn up to nursery to collect Dominic and as always he spots me from the garden before I spot him and he goes into his excited little 'daddeee-daddeee!' dance. So after chatting with his carers for a bit and signing him out I wander through to collect his bag and coat and then out to the conspicuously pram-free lobby.

'Hmm, no pram' think I; "NO Pram!" says Dom shaking his head.
Back into the nursery to quiz the staff. "No pram?" they ask, "NO Pram!" says Dom shaking his head.
Management are soon involved, "No Pram?" she asks double-checking that I hadn't been 'boy-looking' and failed to spot a stroller in a 12' by 6' otherwise empty room. "NO pram!" says Dom, thrilled to be involved in the grown-ups conversation.

We are discussing possibilities - a confused (sleep-deprived?) parent taking ours in error when they'd arrived without one, possibly - when a sheepish looking Helen pulls up outside in the wassockmobile. "Mummmeee!" says Dom, "NO pram!".

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, Helen had managed to pick up the pram, yet not the boy, from nursery.

The case for the defence

Helen had arrived whilst I was still being uncharacteristically social inside and put the pram in the car in preparation for picking up Dom herself. She then circled round the outside to the garden only to be told that I'd picked him up ten minutes earlier not realising that I was still dawdling inside, comparing how-cute-is-my-boy notes with others before launching into the 'NO pram!' routine.

To be fair to Helen, the truth of it dawned on her within minutes of driving off and it was only the one-way system round the hospital that delayed her return. Or so she says..

Yay!