Better

The Peanut is better and is home and pretty much back to his usual self. I haven't had time to write a blog post since; I hope if you were worrying, you also read my mum's blog. He was only in the hospital for one full day and night, plus the next day until mid-afternoon.

He's still coughing a little bit, but is now only taking his inhaler if he needs it (and that's been once in the last two days). So we think he's more or less out of the woods. My sister has been up this week, and he's been very happy to see her - also my brother came down yesterday, so we have had lots of nice family time. Being a doctor, he gave the Peanut a once-over and said the wheeze was gone. Good.

The Peanut's verdict on all of this: "Nee-naw!" He's happy that he got to go in an ambulance with its lights flashing.

Unconnected to this, he has had a language explosion lately. Until quite recently, the vast majority of his utterances were phrases a couple of words long ("Big lorry", "Walk please" - that kind of thing). Mostly observations on the scenery or requests.

Then a few weeks ago he started saying "Yes I do!!!" when he wanted to do something, whether or not we had asked him a question. Now that's stopped and it's "Ha ha ho ho". Like this - "Tractor Ted ha ha ho ho", which means "Mother dear, I would like to watch my Tractor Ted DVD now, if you would be so good." We think that "ha ha" is really "uh-huh" and he's filling in the response he wants from us. He also says "Okay okay!" after his request on occasion, in a slightly harried tone, as if yielding to persuasion.

But pretty much since he got home from hospital, he's started saying much more complicated things. The other morning, he and I were in the kitchen while I made his breakfast, and he picked up an empty mug and said "Daddy have cuppatea. Mummy have cuppatea. [Peanut] have cuppatea - ha ha! Wheek wheek."

He knew that he was making a joke - Peanut-size people don't drink tea - although he clearly has a grasp on his parents' cuppatea addiction. (The wheeking was because the mug has a picture of a guinea pig on it.) For the full effect, imagine a two-note "ha ha" like Nelson from The Simpsons (not that he's ever seen it).

Then this evening, I was feeding the Sweetpea before putting her down for the night. The Peanut was in his cot, in his sleeping bag, not yet asleep. He asked for some water and I said I'd get him some as soon as I finished feeding her. "[Sweetpea] water?" he asked. I said no, Sweetpea only drinks milk because she's a baby. "[Peanut] have water, [Sweetpea] don't. [Peanut] have star bag, [Sweetpea] don't."

I would have to admit that the second statement is inaccurate - both the kids are actually using sleeping bags with stars on at this particular point of our laundry cycle - but hey, it was dark. Also, we evidently need to work on grammar a little bit. But this is the first sign of making comparisons!