Talking sense

I'm sitting writing this waiting for Harry to go to sleep in the room next door.

At the moment, he's talking away to the various toys that share his bed, telling them about the day at the seaside he's just spent with my mum and dad.

And while I would like to go downstairs and get some tea, it’s lovely listening to him chatting away.

What it also does is reinforce how far his speech has come on since Christmas; he's now stringing long, often complicated sentences together, telling us about something that has happened or, more often, something that he wants to happen.

As my granddad said at the weekend, he's becoming a real little chatterbox. This is an understatement; Harry just doesn't stop talking.

He often surprises me by throwing a new word into conversation. The other day, for instance, he announced that we should go outside. "It's beautiful," he said, which isn't the sort of statement I'd expect to hear from a 28 month-old.

Of course, Harry's ability to pick up new words has its downsides, and we have to be careful what we say now because he's likely to repeat it, parrot-like. He's also picked up a couple of bad habits, including say "Eh?" when he doesn't quite catch what you've said. This is immediately followed by a reprimand from Melissa or myself, whereupon Harry looks sheepish and says "pardon".

Mind you, I was even more shocked the other day when I was sitting on the sofa when Harry tried to push past unsuccessfully. “Move big bottom, daddy,” he said. I was speechless.

If that's as bad as it gets, though, I think we'll have got away with it.
Anyway, he's just shouted "Daddy working on computer." I think that's my cue to go downstairs.

Locked in

I’ve got a confession to make: on Sunday Harry managed to lock me in the conservatory – and with Melissa sound asleep upstairs, I was stranded.

It all happened pretty quickly. Harry and I got up at about 7am, went down and ate breakfast in the kitchen before going through to the conservatory, which has an outside door with a lock on it.

After playing for about half an hour, Harry announced that he was going to fetch his tools from the dining room and promptly disappeared next door. I flicked on the television to watch the news headlines and settled back on the sofa, waiting for Harry to return.

Sure enough, a minute or two later, Harry appeared at the door, tools in hand, but instead of coming into the room he grinned and shut the door. Again, I thought nothing of it, until I heard the lock click.

I jumped up and immediately tried the door. To my dismay, it was locked – I’d foolishly left the key in – and I was trapped. Harry soon realised I was stuck and started shouting ‘Daddy’, while I tried to keep calm and explain how to go about unlocking the door.

Despite his best efforts, though, the door remained firmly locked while I frantically tried to work out how to escape.

I knew I could get outside but as both doors into the house were locked, it wouldn’t be much use. My last resort would have been the kitchen window, but it looked very small and I wasn’t convinced I would be able to squeeze through.

So, putting aside my dented pride, I decided to try a different tactic – getting Harry to wake Melissa. Harry responded brilliantly, running to the foot of the stairs and shouting “Mummy, help daddy, now!”

Five minutes later, a sleepy looking Melissa emerged – and immediately burst out laughing when she realised what had happened, although she later told me she’d panicked when she first heard Harry shouting, worrying that I had fallen and hurt myself.

Needless to say, the key will never be left in the lock again.