Children are amazing: everyone who’s had had on knows this, and if I say that it’s incredible how quickly Noemi is developing and learning, well, it’s kind of a given really. But just now, she keeps on making all these unexpected leaps and taking us by surprise with a certain regularity. “How the hell did she pick that up? Did you tell her that?”
Yesterday she said “sorry” after she poked me in the chest a few times and I said “ow”. It rather took me aback; I know plenty of people who haven’t learned to say sorry as adults, so I couldn’t help but feel rather proud. We’ve been teaching her a bit of counting on staircases, up to about ten (and dieci) and she’s picking that up pretty quick. She’s known about 0–3 for a long time thanks to the lift. I‘ve been trying to teach her that she has two hands, feet, eyes etc. but she’s labouring under the delusion that she has “two” noses as well.
And she’s clearly been listening to everything, which again is something that everyone knows, but when she comes out spontaneously with all these things that we haven’t been trying to teach her it still takes us aback. She asks what things are now (“Z’at?”) and has – mercifully – taken some small steps into the world of appreciating a lie down despite her eyes being open: just like Mummy and Daddy!
I already said that she knows the words of songs before. She likes doing the ends of lines with Mummy. I was sort of surprised that she hadn’t started singing a bit – we’ve been singing to her for ages and she’s really talkative – but apparently now she’s started singing la-la-la in the shower. I guess it was because the idea of singing actual words was a bit daunting. She likes it when Daddy sings choir-style vocal warm-ups for the high notes. She’s always liked having music (“Mukia!”) on, and now she makes requests (unfortunately generally for the one song, I due liocorni, in which Noah gathers the animals together for the flood but somehow omits to rescue the unicorns); she’s generally happy with Abba (18 Hits), The Beatles (1) or Queen (Greatest Hits). In fact, the other day, as soon as she woke up she decided to list the Beatles at me (though poor George always gets left out).
