Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Ah love oo

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We’re getting into some extremely unpleasant nighttime rituals around here—screaming, crying, no one going to sleep until at least 10, sleeping all day as a result, lather, rinse, repeat…

But last night, I went to fulfill my part of the ritual with Simon and something possibly amazing happened. Simon, who used to go to sleep fairly easily, has started yelling his little head off. After a while I go in and voila! I need to change his diaper. Then I comfort him a little before putting him back in bed, whereupon he falls asleep quickly.

Last night, after changing his diaper, I sat down with him in the rocking chair. He lay his head on my shoulder and held me around my neck as we rocked silently.

Then I am absolutely sure I heard him say, “Ah love oo.”

My mind started racing a mile a minute. Did my baby just tell me he loves me? Is that possible for a little one to say? Could I have misheard it?

Whereupon he said, “Ah love oo ver muh.”

Darin was, shall we say, somewhat skeptical when I reported this to him. It is a complex thought for a 16-month-old to have, let alone express. He could be parrotting a phrase he hears quite often, but it’s not like he said, “Put that down, Simon.” And he’s not talking all that much, so a complex sentence is somewhat astounding, not to mention a complex sentence in an appropriate situation is doubly so.

Still: Ah love oo ver muh. What a beautiful thing for him to say. I got chills.

Augh!

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I screwed something up in my comments — I think — because I tried to change the form so that “Remember info” was the default. Something went wonky, and I replaced the comment form with the original one…but now I’m not receiving any copies of comments made in e-mail. Color me upset (mostly because spammers have hit my site and are burying their shit in my older entries).

Philip Pullman on school

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Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials trilogy) is not a fan of the UK’s school testing regime:

The award-winning children’s author Philip Pullman today launches a broadside against the government’s “brutal” school testing regime, warning that it is creating a generation of children who hate reading and “feel nothing but hostility for literature”.

Writing in Guardian Education, the author of the acclaimed His Dark Materials trilogy attacks a lack of focus on enjoyment in the teaching of reading and writing. Drilling to meet the demands of tests makes children’s writing “empty, conventional and worthless”, he says.

You go, boy.