Mummy, Emma's thrown her crumpet on the floor

Emma is in the midst of the wonderful weaning stage now, and has, this past week learnt about gravity; that wonderful mystical thing that means when she leans over her high chair and releases the food in her hand it magically drops to the floor and makes mummy sigh.

She, like many other babies at this age is in awe of this new found wonder. She can spend her entire mealtime peering over the edge of the highchair and releasing whatever it is she is eating. It feels like we have just got out of the purposely dropping stuff on the floor stage with Daniel and now we enter it again with Emma!

She is very cute with it, sneaking a peek at me to see if I am watching then splat... whatever we are eating is dropped to the floor. I am thankful for laminate flooring at the moment.

This morning I popped into the kitchen to get my coffee from the machine and heard Daniel shouting 'mummy, mummy'. I went back in and he was pointing across the table to Emma and saying 'ay-ya drop bum-pet on floor'. (He has called Emma ay-ya for as long as I can recall, despite being able to say Emma!). It''s the longest sentence he has made himself, without me saying something and him repeating it and he was very pleased when he realised I understood what he was telling me.


When I looked over I saw Emma cheekily smiling and peering over her high chair to the floor below; pleased that said crumpet was now on the floor and even more pleased that she had commanded mine and her brother's attention.


Daniel is (and has been for some while) at the stage of repeating things. Constantly. Our morning breakfast routine consists of him telling me repeatedly what we are all eating, then what we are not eating, then that there is a mouse on his spoon (he has Gruffalo cutlery), and that the mouse is holding a nut. Today we had the added 'Emma's dropped her crumpet on the floor', followed by 'Daniel's not dropped his crumpet on the floor', followed by 'mummy's not dropped her crumpet on the floor'. Even Daddy who had left for work some time earlier had managed to not drop his crumpet on the floor. The whole thing must have been repeated some near 50 times. I exaggerate not. When my brother popped in a few hours later for a coffee he got the story about the fate of Emma's crumpet.


I know the repetition is a natural stage of language development but sometimes it drives me insane. He is on constant repeat. I know the next stage is the 'why' stage; so I am hoping we can delay that for a little while yet. In the meantime I will have to learn to live with the commentary to my everyday life; and hope that, tomorrow, Emma doesn't drop her crumpet on the floor.