Holly's Accidental Photography

Holly loves my ipod touch. I have a wary eye towards children and too much media, but I accept that the ipod has been a godsend in certain circumstances. A 15 hour flight back to Vancouver, dinner in a nice restaurant and the occasional ten minutes of peace are valid reasons to give Holly the ipod. And there are some great educational apps. The Intro to Math by Montessorium is great, though a little above Holly's abilities right now. And a lot of the words games are great. However, it's certainly something she would spend far too much time using if I let her use "mummy's phone" as she calls it. She also has an annoying habit of deleting all my apps :(

But the funniest by-products of her use of the phone are the photos she accidentally takes using the built in camera. She usually just repeatedly hits the camera button to hear the sound it makes, but then we end up with a series of photos of Holly's knees and feet.

And...we're back

So it turns out that in order to be a writer all you have to do is put letters on paper (or screen) in an order that pleases people. Having neglected this blog for too long, I have decided to resurrect it just at a time when I should be doing something else. I have recently begun a Certificate of Technical Writing at BCIT, in an attempt to carve out a career for this post-archaeology me. I have homework to do! The old me would have used her stock-standard procrastination tool of solitair, tetris or bejewelled. But the new me will waste time by using my writing skills to create prose that will earn me no money, gain me no grades and generally be read by no one.

I used to have a blog call Shanathalas, which was pretty much my musings and a place for me to broadcast the amusing things I found on the internet. But now we have facebook, and twitter...and stumbleupon and last.fm..whatever the hell that is. So I started another blog about life as a parent and pretty much what the three of us are up these days. And I was pretty lame at keeping up at that. So in the spirit of renewal I hereby rename this blog "Noisy Penguins" in honour of Holly's regular and insistent request to see this video.

Now I know, blogs aren't cool anymore. Generally words aren't hip unless they utilize less than four letters, 50% of which must be "fail", "win" or "bieber". But I need to get into a habit of writing on a regular basis, and as I gave up my Nanowrimo attempt on November 2nd having written exactly zero words of my magnum opus, a blog is probably just my pace.

So in summation (see that? technical writing :) my blog will have updates on the family, recipes, general musings, and more crap I find on the internet. And there may be some fail and win and cute kitties.

Today Holly Learned...

That she doesn't need a tissue when she can just rub her nose on mum's shirt.

Today Holly Learned...

That cherry blossoms don't taste anywhere as good as they look.

You turn your back for a minute...

shick, shick, shick...shick, shick, shick

I heard that noise for about for 30 seconds before I turned around to see that Holly had gotten ahold of a small container of baby powder and was shaking it all over the floor with glee. I don't use baby powder very often (only when I'm reusing gloves for colouring my hair), so I guess this was the first time Holly had encountered the material. When I finally discovered the carnage she had made, she ran off giggling, leaving a trail of powdered footprints in her wake.

Naturally I went to grab the camera, returning to find her rolling around in the powdered mess. I could stop her or I could take photos of her. I chose the latter.

Holly on the Swings

Thanks to Charlie for taking this video on her iphone

All the Words Holly Can Say*

Mamma, DaDa, baby, goal (Ice Hockey), shoe, star, copt (Helocopter), kitty, koo (Kangaroo), ball, fishee, tree (which applies to tree, plants and aquatic plants), book, bird, toes, peas, straw (strawberries), cheese, cheeries (Cheerios), Nana, blue, socks, cow, soon (Spoon), buba (Bubbles), bear, peng (penguin), Wawa (water), Pretty, boat, shee (sheep), cay (cake), dee (dessert), tee (teething ring), cah (carrots), cello, bah (Balloons), bath, Srah (Our friend Sarah), poo, bye, dass (dance)

I think it's a lot of words for a 13-month old. Amazingly, she doesn't just mimic words, but seems to understand their concepts as well. Today is Holly's friend Luke's 1st birthday party, and as I was putting out a dress for her to wear she pointed at it and said "pretty" and smiled. I have never described that object as pretty, but she knows what it means.

She's just on the verge of being able to say "Plane". She has a picture of it in her word book. She points to it and then points up in the sky, as to say "that's where the plane is".

If I say bath, she runs to the bathroom to get ready for her bath. If I say helicopter, she gets excited and runs to the window saying "copt". While we were having breakfast I was talking to Jaime and said "penguin" (as in I wish I could get that penguin shaped waffle-maker) and Holly said "peng" and pointed to the penguin that was on the bib she was wearing. And today I made the mistake of saying "Nana" (a word she's just learned) and she ran to the front door because she thought we were going to my mum's place. She was very disappointed when I told her mum is away for the weekend and we weren't going there.

I suppose it's natural that she'll be an early bloomer in the talking department; Jaime and I are real talkers and I never shut up.

* List soon to be out of date