Verbiose

Mum ran through the words I can say so far.

- "Joel, can you say,'Daddy'?"
- "Dada!"

- "Good boy! Can you say 'Mummy'?"
- "Baba!"

- "Hmmm. Moving on... Can you say 'Dog'?"
- "Dork!"

- "Good boy! Can you say, 'Cat'?"
- "Tat!"

- "Can you say, 'Duck'?"
- "Duk! Duk."

- "Can you say, 'Star?'"
- I smile, because I'm confident about that one. "Tar!"

- "Can you say, 'Cheerios'?"
- "Chee-ya."

- "You're such a clever boy, Joel! Can you say, 'Cheese'?"
- "Chs."

First snog!

This picture appeared in all of the gossip press and all over Uh-Oh, Not-OK! and Tatter magazines and websites within hours of it being taken.

Let me explain.

I took Mum and Dad along to see all of my friends from NCT this afternoon. It was great - Dexter's mum works at a educational charity centre and there was a load of fun playgroup stuff, and.... toys! Here's a picture of my butch pals Dexter (left) and Rafi (right). Rafi appears somewhat bemused by Dexter's confident swagger:

Here's a picture of the lovely Evie, who can enunciate the word "doggie" all too enviously:

Here's Maddie (right) feeding grapes to Chloe (left):

And this is the mystery lady herself, vivacious Isla, on the trampoline:

Isla and I had a great time in the ball pool. It mainly consisted of me floating and finding two balls of the same colour and presenting them to Daddy, saying "Dall!" "Dour!" "Doar!" Isla decided that the best fun was had by throwing the balls out of the ball pool, and one donked me on the forehead very hard, which dazed me for a few seconds.


When it was time to come out of the ball pool, Isla's dad said, "Give Joel a kiss!" and Dad said, "Joel, give Isla a kiss!" So we did, because we're young and obedient in that way, and haven't worked out the ick factor of the opposite sex because we have trouble identifying who's a girl, who's a boy and what's a toy. Isla's also great at puckering up: I think her mum taught her.

The grown-ups' main achievement of the day was getting all of us eighteen-month-olds all together on the same bench at the same time in a row, to take our first group photo. Dexter sort of wandered off, but nevertheless the effect was basically there:

Yep, all in all a rather good day.

The year started with chicken pox

Yes, dear readers, it's a sad start to the year for me. On Thursday Mum noticed that I had a strange boil on my palm and wondered where it came from. But then lots more appeared all over me and the doctor confirmed that I've got chicken pox.

I'm not feeling too happy right now. It's all itchy and I've got lots of unpleasant looking spots all over, including on my otherwise very pretty face. It's quite uncomfortable to lie down at the moment, but at least I've found a solution for this - last night I just decided not to go to sleep. Of course, Mum and Dad tried to put me to bed a few times but it was easy to get them to give up on that - just scream your lungs out for a few minutes despite everything they try to do, and they take you downstairs again. I'm just sorry that I eventually got so tired that I fell asleep for a couple of hours, from 7 am to 9 am. It's been a while since I've done an all-nighter...

Apparently I could be better as early as the middle of the week or as late as a whole week after that. I want to be cute again so I hope it's sooner rather than later.