I have been reading a lot of blogs lately* which is a good thing, most of the time.  It does tend to make for slightly fuzzy eyes and brain after working my way through techie posts, crafty posts and parental posts all in one sitting.

But it’s not the number of blog posts and associated fuzziness that is making me see red, pardon the pun.  Instead, inspired by Solnushka’s words and phrases to be banned come the revolution series, I would like to ban people from access to any form of written communication while they are still unable to identify the correct use of the words lose and loose.

This is my one major language based pet peeve.  I can scoff at those who misplace apostrophe’s and secretly smirk at their incompetent punctuation attempts.†  But when it comes to the lose/loose duo, I can’t quite raise my eyebrows and move on.  I wonder about the education systems that allow any number of graduates to wander about telling the world that they hope to “loose some weight” or that they chronically “loose their keys”.

Sadly it seems like an epidemic of “loosers” who can’t simply leave that extra O out.

If I were to be charitable about this whole issue I would have to feel that the writer in question just slipped that extra O in, just in case the first one felt lonely.  Still, a lonely O is no excuse for not knowing which word is which.  There are plenty of homonyms, heterographs and heteronyms in the English language, but correct me if I’m wrong – lose and loose are not truly any of them, so you should be able to tell them apart!

So, after reading an interminable number of loose uses of loose, I am certainly beginning to lose it. I am almost tempted to become the comments equivalent of a parking warden – visiting erroneous blog posts leaving “spare O parking tickets” in my commenting wake.

So, listen up people !  It is time to stop providing stray Os with a new, but totally inappropriate home.
Unsure whether you are feeling loose or are losing your way?  Don’t stray into the extra O-zone, find yourself a reliable dictionary and look up that spelling and make sure you really want to set the extra O loose before you lose your dignity in a flurry of vocabulary deficit disorder.

Here endeth the bleat

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* That explains the lack of “real” books being read and therefore the lack of reviews to be found here at Oh Waily just in case you were wondering why no bookish posts have been sighted for some time.

† Yes, it was a deliberate misuse of the ‘.

Posted in Bleat!, Blogging, Humour ]]> http://ohwailywaily.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/pet-peeve/feed/ 0 ohwailywaily http://ohwailywaily.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/master-oh-waily-at-3-months/ http://ohwailywaily.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/master-oh-waily-at-3-months/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:19:49 +0000 ohwailywaily http://ohwailywaily.wordpress.com/?p=1719 ]]>

Master Oh Waily was 3 months old last Tuesday.
How the time has flown past.

Miss O at three months was honoured by a blog post in pictures which can be seen here by way of comparison. Master O will have his own photo montage below – continue to scroll at your leisure.

And here is Miss O’s nearly three month old report card.  As you would expect, Master O shares some things in common with his sister, yet remains defiantly individualistic in many others.

As for the little Master, we went for our three month visit to the Plunket nurse this morning and had our usual array of weighing, measuring, prodding and poking and here are the results of that.

Weight: 7.2kg or 15lb 14oz
Height / Length: 64cm or 1′ 11.5″
Head circumference: 43cm

This means his length is still tracking along the 85th percentile of the WHO growth charts for boys, while his weight has caught up and is now also back tracking on the same line after a small dip.  His head, however, continues to defy all reason and tracks above the 97th percentile.  Yep, the boy has a big head.  Hopefully it is full of brains.

As for what the little man is up to in his daily life, since October he has been displaying the usual marathoning traits of his age group.  He goes for regular horizontal jogs, sometimes so vigorously it could be thought that he was, in fact, training for the long jump.  He happily smiles and grins when he sees a face or hears a voice that he recognises.  He continually grins when the little Miss leans over to give him a kiss.  Personally I think he identifies her as “the blonde blur that gives me those squelchy kissy things on my cheek”.  He can’t possibly have enough focus time for the speed at which these little pecks are delivered at and then retreated from, never mind the fact that the slow kisses involve being millimetres away from his nose and eyes.  Even I couldn’t focus clearly on someone that close to my face.

We still have a flat patch at the back right of our head, which is slowly coming right.  It will take growth and yet more visits to the osteopath to encourage the bones to realign themselves.  Apparently it is a fairly common occurrence, and has little or nothing to do with the sleep positions you put them in.  Based on the first few visits, I can vouch for cranial osteopathy (i.e. no crunching or manipulations) loosening up stiff necks and making babies a lot freer in their movements.  Now we are in the loosening up of the lower back, which tweeks to compensate for the cricked neck and head.  Nothing like a knock-on effect to keep your parents forking out the cash for running repairs.
Just a note too about the cranial osteopaths:-
1. Find a good one.  Use referrals.  Here in Auckland the clinic to go to is Stillpoint.
2. I have been told, in the past, that baby’s sleep difficulties can also be relieved by osteopaths.
3. They don’t crunch, and it looks like all they are doing is holding the baby’s head and neck, but don’t be fooled it does actually do things.  I’ve had it done before and you can feel subtle, gentle pressure but nothing painful or uncomfortable.

Master O is now fascinated by his hands, mostly his right one.  He spends quite a bit of time examining it every awake time.  He is also slowly getting to grips, pardon the pun, with opening and closing his fists.
He has discovered the joy of blowing bubbles and making raspberry noises.  This naturally leads to poking your tongue out at all sorts of weird and wonderful angles.  I would definitely categorize him as having a “thinkers tongue”, it moves with his thoughts and his efforts.

Master O also “shouts” along the same lines as his sister did.  Some of his versions of shouting sound remarkably cat like.  If I didn’t know better I’d say he demonstrated an evolution of man from cat.
He doesn’t cry very often and when he does it is usually due to some frustration or internal gas bubble that just doesn’t want to move.

He sleeps well, most of the time.  Daytime still produces one or two hour sleeps at the most.  After his bath and last meal of the night between 7:30 and 8:30pm we are able to sleep through until 4:30am most nights.  We still get the odd 2am waking, and since we are theoretically about to hit the three month growth spurt, I am just waiting to see what that does for his sleeping and eating patterns.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the night sleep staying the same or lengthening out an hour or two.

As of yesterday Master O has shown the beginnings of learning to roll over. He began twisting his neck in an attempt to look over his shoulder (while lying on his mat on the floor) and began to arch his back.  He did this vigorously at each afternoon awake time.  So we are now on the path to mobility.  I imagine I will be reporting on his success in about four to six weeks time.

So that covers most things going on with the little Master.  Here are some more recent photographs.  There are even one or two humorous ones with his sister on my Flickr stream should you wish to see sibling interaction at it’s funny points.

Fist of Concentration

Maraca mistakes

The Sitting Smiler

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And, finally, I have joined Circle of Mums through Facebook.  If anyone is interested in connecting up that way, just drop me an email and I will send through the links to the kids’ pages.

For those of my fellow bloggers here at WordPress, you probably don’t need to be told about the new email subscription widget that has been released.  You will probably have already decided whether or not to add it to your sidebars.

For those of you who are non-bloggers, or non-WordPress bloggers, I have to say it is a really nifty addition.

I subscribed to Oh Waily so that I could see it in action, and immediately after publishing my post this morning I popped over to my email account. Before I could blink my eyes there was the newly minted post waiting for me. No delay. No need for a feed reader if you’re only reading one or two blogs regularly.  In fact, it couldn’t get much more passive than this.

If you are not a technology type person, or are unfamiliar with the world of RSS, then this is probably a good answer for you. You will get a fair approximation of the actual blog post (in html) via email.  You don’t get the full blog template, just the post contents.  But if you are not interested in the ephemera♥ that sometimes is a blog sidebar, then that should suit you very well.

You simply have to visit the blog website once, click on the Subscription button in the sidebar, enter the email address you want the blog posts delivered to and Bob’s your Auntie.

What are you waiting for?  Go on, click here and then click on the subscription button under the title “Oh Waily By Email”.

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♥ the only problem with avoiding the ephemera is that you don’t really get to know the blogger and their tastes if you avoid the sidebars.  I for one have found more than one interesting blog after another by blogroll hopping.  If you have a rainy afternoon one weekend and can’t be bothered doing the housework, I would recommend that you try blog-hopping.  You may find a whole new, and interesting world, opening up to you.

After our intermission due to  ill health, Ms Oh Waily has managed to snaffle an hour or so to herself.  That might just be enough to complete a blog post and catch up on some knitting*.

In the time away from the blog we have been doing more pouring activity.  Gran Oh Waily¹ kindly found a small metal milk jug just the right size for a small pair of hands and then together we found a rather gaudy, but good sized china jug to be the second jug.  We also found a backup in a plain white cream jug too.  I will take some photographs of the little Miss in action the next time we do this, as she is now on to pouring water.  This doubles as a lesson in how sponges work, but that’s fine, she learns to pour, clean up after herself and strengthens her hands at the same time.

What I do have photographs for is a size matching activity that comes from Montessori for Everyone. There are two versions, and of course it would be a straightforward matter to create your own at home.

Size Matching

Size Matching - In Action

Size Matching - All Done All Finished

When I sat down with Miss O she managed to do the first board completely with no difficulty, while on the second board she had three cards out of place.
Sometimes it is difficult to know whether she is doing this deliberately to see if she will get a reaction.  She often eyes me up when she places things in the ‘wrong’ place and the glint is clearly there waiting to hear me say… “are you sure about that?”
Normally she will hold the item in the ‘wrong’ place, rather like kids do when they are moving chess pieces around the board but haven’t quite committed themselves to the move and want the opportunity to ‘take it back’, and give me her challenging look.  On the second board she just went ahead and placed them down saying ‘that goes there’ as she placed each card, until they were all down.  Part of me wonders whether she had lost interest, rather than didn’t understand the concept and the ‘right’ pattern.  I guess I’ll get to see the next time she takes it down to do.

Also enjoying a resurgence in popularity is the old faithful, Playdough.  We needed to renew her tubs recently due to a tendency to leave them in the air a little too long at each session, so I took the opportunity to buy the 1kg tub with four colours and a set of small cutters.  The toy store also had mini rolling pins so I added one of those too.  She’s been having great fun squishing the dough with it, and at some point she will be able to move on to real food instead of just pretend ‘pancakes’.

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* Just like all my craft activities, they start with good intentions and then end up dragging on and on.  In this case it is a scarf for winter.  Shame it is now Spring-ing along and will soon be Summer. Oh well, it’ll be ready by next year, maybe, perhaps.

¹ This would be Ms Oh Waily’s mother, as opposed to Nana Oh Waily who would be Mr Oh Waily’s mother.

I am currently reading Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot and am finding it quite enjoyable.
I had thought that it might be a bit dry or worse a bit voyeuristic, but it is in fact a dispassionate and well presented insight into Ms Gilot’s time with the painter. (So far.)

Before I go into what made me stop and write this, a brief review of my life in art.
There is none.  The closest I come to having a relationship with art is the old chestnut: “I know what I like.” Other than that, my general experience with the true biggies of the international art world is some twenty years old and comes from my OE where we dutifully traipsed around nearly all the major art galleries in Europe.  I really do mean nearly all of them. The standard fare of the Louvre, Prado and National Gallery down to those dedicated to individual artists, like Chagall and even Picasso himself.
Basically what I’m saying is…”I didn’t do Art History at uni so you will need to excuse me if the following is something you consider a simpleton should know.”

Right.  Here is what provoked me into writing today.

Part of a conversation between Pablo and Françoise about his philosophy and the choices he makes regarding his creation of art contained the following comment by Picasso:

Someone, at least, who might be able to get painting back on the rails again.

Françoise comes back with this:

Where had it gone off, I asked him.

Then comes the insight that made me stop and actually think about art history.

‘That’s a long story,’ he said, ‘but you’re a good listener, so I’ll tell you.  You have to go all the way back to the Greeks and the Egyptians.  Today we are in the unfortunate position of having no order or canon whereby all artistic production is submitted to rules.  They – the Greeks, Romans, the Egyptians – did.  Their canon was inescapable because beauty, so called, was, by definition, contained in those rules.  But as soon as art lost all link with tradition, and the kind of liberation that came in with Impressionism permitted every painter to do what he wanted to do, painting was finished.  When they decided it was the painter’s sensations and emotions that mattered, and every man could re-create painting as he understood it from any basis whatever, then there was no more painting; there were only individuals.  Sculpture died the same death.

I found this quite an eye-opener.  Being a complete simpleton in matters of art I hadn’t really come to the conscious realisation that the Impressionists provide a boundary between the very traditional, mostly realistic painters and the modernists of Cubism, Surrealism and latterly Pop Art.
It is interesting that in the 1940s Picasso considered there to be no more painting and that there hadn’t really been any from before his youth.

Little did I know, before today, that my love of Monet meant I was supporting the downfall of painting. According to Picasso, anyway.

Once again it proves that there is so much to know and consider in life, that sometimes we barely scratch the surface of understanding.  It’s also a reminder that small comments like these – a single paragraph – can provide a moment of awakening to the obvious and spark an interest in finding out more.

Does anyone else have these sorts of moments?
The “ah-ha”, that’s so obvious, why didn’t I see it before moment.

Oh, and if there are any art historian types reading this, can you please leave a comment with recommendations for “potted history” type books that would be a good starting point for me.

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On another note: the Oh Waily blog went silent this past week, not through lack of things to say but the means to say it.  Miss Oh brought home a lovely cough/cold combination from daycare just before last weekend and kindly shared it with the rest of the family.  Master Oh is the only one to have remained fairly immune to the whole thing.  Personally I came a hair breadth away from losing my voice, which some might say is a blessing for those around me.
We are still not quite out of the woods yet, but at least I don’t feel completely flattened now and I may even manage to create a post or two this week.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

This wonderful idea was found on Montessori for Everyone’s blog and so were the initial animal families from the very generous download section. You can find the animal families under the Cultural Materials section.  Using this initial group as inspiration I am now in the process of identifying and creating my own additional family groups so we can keep expanding Little Miss O’s vocabulary and knowledge of the animal world.

Animal Families

This was actually one of the first activities that I created for her, and using the Montessori principle of “follow the child”, I was following Miss O’s love of all things animal.

Then a little while later she came up with her very own variation.  She wanted to add her animal fridge magnets into the mix, which she did by pairing up the magnet with the most appropriate animal image.

Match the magnet to the picture

This Miss O variant has had me finding new animals for the remaining magnets. They are currently waiting to be laminated and cut out to join her growing stash of animal cards.

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Recommendation

And to follow on from all of this is Miss O’s love of sitting by me at the computer constantly asking me to find pictures of elephants, rhinos, giraffes, and any manner of other animals.  This little wander around the internet in search of wild animal photographs led me to my next recommendation – National Geographic has a great website for kids.  Loads of pictures and information, as well as games and activities for older kids.  A great resource for teaching (or learning if you have an animal lover, but you didn’t pay attention to all those David Attenborough documentaries) and generating your own activities.

Since discovering the world of the blog, it is often my first point of searching for information.  This was no different when I wanted to learn more about Montessori, especially as it was applied at home.

What this led me to was a whole host of blogs, nearly all from North America.  My feed reader was full to overflowing for a while there as I assessed which were going to suit my reading, education and inspiration needs.

As of today, these are the blogs, in alphabetical order, that still make the cut:

• Adventures of a Rainbow Mama
• Confessions of a Montessori Mom
• Daily Montessori
• Itty Bitty Love
• Montessori for Everyone
• My Montessori Journey
• Teaching Montessori
• The Wonder Years
• Wide Open on the Mommybahn

These blogs each have a different character.  Some are regularly active while others haven’t posted anything new in some time.  I have enjoyed many posts from this selection, but I have to confess to turning to The Wonder Years and Montessori for Everyone on a regular basis for ideas, inspiration and resources.

For those interested in seeing a Mum attempting to integrate Montessori ideas from birth, then you should definitely visit Wide Open on the Mommybahn.  It’s not something I necessarily aspire to, but I had a darned good time reading about it.

So, if you are interested in learning more, then I think you would do well starting with this list and then expanding out from there.

And to the ladies of the blogs above, I’d like to say “Thank You” for sharing your experiences, your knowledge, and your resources with the rest of us.  I, for one, greatly appreciate it.

Happy reading everyone.

By some lucky coincidence I was looking to see when I began this blog for another post I am working on, otherwise I would have completely missed it.

It’s exactly four years since I migrated from Blogger to WordPress (thanks Bruce).
So…

Happy Bloggiversary to Me…
Happy Bloggiversary to Me…

Happy Bloggiversary Dear Oh Waily
Happy Bloggiversary to Me !

Small things are making me very happy at the moment.

Courtesy of my ever vigilant parents I was able to find suitable box shaped shelving for Little Miss. It’s currently plain pine as you can see below, but we will make a decision on the final look over the next week. So far I have been tossing up varnish, oil or a neutral cream paint finish. I’m still not 100% sure which way we will go.

The Pine Shelves

The other issue is where it will eventually live.  Currently, for convenience, it is sitting at the other end of the same wall that Miss O’s activity corner is on in the living room but may be better placed in her bedroom.  The only problem is – which bedroom.  She is currently in the smallest room in the house,  and we are debating what to do when Master Oh Waily moves from his spot at the bottom of our bed.  Will he inherit Miss O’s room?  It is closer and smaller, and therefore more suited to a small baby who doesn’t require space for Froggy, Thai, Lumpy, Leo, Patches, Piglet, Brown or Sneezy and drawers containing big girl clothes.  (I would provide a photograph of “the boys” as they are collectively known, but unfortunately only Leo and Sneezy are currently not having a nap with “the girl”.)

Or will he move into the larger room, further away from our bedroom?  The preference is to move Miss O into the current “guest bedroom” / office and give Master O her bedroom.  The difficulty this presents is one of computer logistics.  The internet connection is in the “office”.  Even though we have a wireless setup and therefore can put the computer anywhere in the house, we still need a secure space for the modem/router thingumybob.  Offering up something with flickering lights and antennae to a two-and-a-bit year old is like waving a red rag in front of a bull, or thumbing your nose at Fate.  Neither of which will result in smiles and pats on the back for the brainiac who thought it would be a good idea.

What to do, what to do, what to do.  The first small thing makes me happy but gives me cause for thought.

The next small thing was actually things – a set of little boxes that I found today, which are reasonable quality at a reasonable price.  I know.  I had almost given up on that possibility.  I will give them internal cardboard bases just to give them a bit of protection from the undoubted hard life they will suffer at the hands of one rough and ready little girl.  Now all I need is a few more and we will be well supplied for any and all toy or activity storage requirements.

The White Boxes

A practical small thing came from a quick trip to Warehouse Stationery (thank you Clare for the pointer) when a beautiful pair of apple green toddler scissors joined our household.  I really like these, they are a vast improvement over our small round-end scissors that I have been using with her.  The primary improvement is the fact that she can put all of her fingers in the bottom handle instead of only two or three.  Other things I like are the fact that these came with a sheath made out of rubber (supposedly an eraser – but who would use it?), they are ambidextrous so her penchant for cutting left-handed will not be hampered, the handles are that rubberised plastic stuff so they should be fairly forgiving on her hands while she’s learning the opening motion and, of course, the bright green is aesthetically appealing.

The Green Scissors

Then there is the stash of small goodies that I purchased a few weekends ago, but didn’t have the camera available to show you.  Just to refresh your memory, I wrote about the shopping expedition a little while ago.  The items that came home then were all small things, and they certainly made me very happy.
Here, finally, is a photograph of that little haul.

The Shopping Stash

Are there any small things in your life making you happy just now?

Courtesy of a friend, (thanks Marc), I have this link to share with you.

It sends you to another set of amazing cakes, this time with a theme.  They are steampunk inspired.

Oh, and this blog aptly called Cake Wrecks also provides a bit of a culinary laugh at the expense of cake decorators.
If you’ve ever had or seen a professional cake blooper, then this is the blog for you.
There are some amazingly bad cakes that someone, somewhere has thought they could charge for.