Bapples!

There's nothing more I love at the moment than talking to my baby. Every day he tries to say new words, and he babbles away to himself all the time. I'm going to miss his babbles so much when he starts talking properly; he wanders around chanting "bah-boo-bah-bee" over and over again and it's the cutest thing in the world.

He seems able to say most of his consonants, but can't string them together in the right order, so 'Bagpuss' often comes out as 'sss-Ba-puh', 'slide' is 'dide-sss' and 'sausages' is 'doshges'. He did do a very accurate 'dinodaur' today which I was very impressed with.

Without doubt, his favourite (and most accurate) word is 'Daddeeeee!' said with a great deal of glee, and used to refer to anything exciting or as a question to ask where his father is. The 'd' sound occurs more than most (except 'b'), leading to confusing conversations like the one we had at lunch today...

Jacob: Dadder.

Me: Ladder?

Jacob: Daddeeee.

Me: Daddy? Daddy's at work.

Jacob (shaking his head): Doh-doh.

Me: Dog?

Jacob (angrily): Doh-doh!

Me: Dorothy?

Jacob (pointing at fridge): Doh-doh!

Me: Yoghurt?

Jacob: Dah-doh!

Me: Magnet?

Jacob (squeals and smiles): Dah-doh!

Me: Yes lots of magnets. Well done.

My favourite of all his mispronunciations though has to be his word for 'apple'. He's perfectly capable of saying 'apple', but has started adding a 'b' sound to the start. We were wandering around Tesco the other day choosing fruit, and Jacob got very excited when we reached the apples. A lady almost peed her pants laughing as we walked up the aisle from the bananas towards the apples, and he said "nana-nana-nana-nana-BAPPLES!-BAPPLES!-BAPPLES!". I think it might be my favourite word in the whole world.

17. Sell car

SOMEBODY stood on the laptop. Somebody pretty small, whose weight shouldn't really have cracked the screen, but did, and rendered it useless until Acer can tell us whether or not it can be replaced. This is just a couple of months after SOMEBODY knocked the laptop off the sofa and bend the power adaptor pluggy-bit, so that it couldn't charge any more. Thankfully, it's still in warranty, so it shouldn't cost too much to fix. And extra-thankfully, the laptop which the new laptop replaced, which stopped working just less than a year ago, was dragged out and dusted off and appears to work perfectly well. Yay!

But the argh-factor of having yet another something which is broken and needs fixing sent my head into a downward-spiral and the all-consuming guilt over having an unused car sitting on my drive for 18 months came to a head. Instead of my usual reaction of having a breakdown, I listed the damn thing on ebay with a start price of £50 and no reserve. Less than 24 hours later, a very nice man appeared, dragged it off the driveway and round the village a few times until the wheels unlocked, winched it onto a flatbed truck, handed me a wodge of cash and was gone. Just as easy as that, and I am having NO "Why the hell didn't I do this 18 months ago?" thoughts, because I just don't care any more.

As stupid as it sounds, the car sitting there has been the one thing which has stopped me from finally feeling like everything's okay. Being on the anti-depressants has helped me find my way out of my PND, given me a crutch to sort my head out and CBT myself into a positive-thinking machine. At the back of my mind has always been that little niggly thought of the money-pit that was the car, sitting there and doing nothing. I don't know why I find sorting out things like this so hard, but it has filled me with such anguish that I've refused to look at it for all this time. I hated myself for being useless every time it popped into my head. But that uselessness stopped me from doing anything proactive, like actually listing it for sale.

I'd love to say I won't make the same mistake again, but the uncomfortable fact is that the exact same thing happened with my very first car (and I'm only on my 3rd now, giving me a 100% idiot hit rate). I think the best thing to do is never to replace my current car, then I really can't go wrong.

Today, I feel like a weight has been lifted off my forehead (I don't know why people say they carry weights on their shoulders, mine are always focused on my forehead), and, dare I say it, there is nothing worrying me. It feels lovely. And I've had my AD dose halved, and me and J-cub went to the loveliest park after school today to play. Check out our view.