mlatu and Mother Lang (by sarah)

Last night Mary said her first full and clear Lojban word mlatu meaning cat, she has been saying contractions and muddled versions of words such as dui for ladiu (milk) and of course saying half English half Lojban words. But this was really clear - it came after a day of her pointing to the cats and asking me 'Cat?', to the kitten - 'cat?' yes, 'baby?' yes, 'itten?' yes, 'baby ca?' yes and so on. Then when Alaric had her and the kitten on his lap she said 'mlatu' to which he responded yes.

I'v been working on this concept of making a language primer starting with English and Lojban, it started with lojbani chicken and I have been constructing characters ever since. As part of teaching Mary lojban Al had drawn a face and written the lojban words on it so I thought you know I should get a move on with this and draw Mother Lang's face so we can make a proper version of this.

And so I have. Of course I had to completely finish designing her first which ment drawing all of her! That picture is still a pencil sketch! I'm happy with this one. The idea is that she is the Mother of Language, she has two daughters Coni and Nat who represent constructive languages and natural languages and they live on a farm with such creatures as Lojbani Chicken etc...

Lojbani Chicken or jbojipci (by sarah)

Just before we moved to the new house I came up with the idea of Lojbani Chicken, a character who would help Jean or anybody else understand and learn Lojban but I wanted it to be more than that. I wanted some sort of all languages web-comic thing which is obviously very complex and so it never happened - there were some biro sketches in the back of a note book and that was that.

Then I saw this year is Lojban's 25th and so I sat down and revisited the idea of my chicken. The result was more biro sketches and Mother Lang and her two daughters Coni and Nat, they live on a farm where Lojbani chicken is one of the animals.

A full first story will hopefully be appearing on Wiggly Pets soon 🙂

Once the image above is digitally edited (this is just what I russeled up using my new birthday pens and colouring pencils.) there will be speech bubbles saying such things as fi'i - meaning welcome.

Other existing characters include Esperanto Cat and Toki Pona kitten. I haven't decided yet what creatures should represent any of the natural languages - mainly due to worrying about offending people :/ I might do something like have made up creatures for natural languages and real animals for the constructed languages - suggestions welcome 🙂

I am hoping to produce some more of the characters as part of the 100 birds in 100 days challenge I am currently doing over on Orange Monster.

Cuggles! (by sarah)

Little Mary is now two! The last two weeks have seen her suddenly saying more understandable words, she asks for cuddles (cuggles), she says Dean (Jean which used to be meemee), she repeats and put her hands on her eyes, ears, nose, mouth, arm etc... she will sort of count with Jean as long as Jean goes slowely enough - just mimicry at the moment. And I was startled to hear her doing the alphabet with my mother.

She still mainly uses the baby sign and asks for milk in Lojban rather than English, she does appear to have taken to only trying to copy the English words though she responds best to the Lojban ones.

She is a little cheeky monkey who climbs on everything and escapes from everything!

She pretends to give herself injections in the tummy (just like my Dad does) and has started proper imagination play.

She was potty training and doing really well and then she forgot to pull her trousers down and now refuses not to have a nappy on. Unless it is near bed/nap time, she will tell us she needs changing - she knows that having her nappy changed is what happens before bed!

She is obsessed with cloths! She has opinions on what she will and will not wear and gets excited - she will even try and steel Jean's cloths - like the rainbow cardigan my mum knitted - 'MINE! Mine!'.

She sings nursery rhymes enough for me to guess what she is singing (normally twinkle twinkle little star), her grin is so large if I get it right 🙂

She mimics sounds so clicks like indicators (Jean did this too), makes a squeak like the broken tumble dryer and the scraping noises of zombies in Mine Craft.

If she wants to go out she will go to the clean laundary pile, select cloths, put her wellies on, get her ruck sack, fill it with toys and beaker, put her coat on and drag a blanket around - she gets very annoyed when you then say it's nap time. Sometimes we take her out just because she's put so much effort into it.

She is getting there with petting the cats and they tolerate being used as warm fluffy pillows.

She is still diddy but seems robust enough - not as much as Jean was she can't take the cold very well where as Jean never seemed to notice or want to really ware cloths!

She will tiggle tiggle you! This is high pitched and involves lifting your top and tiggling your tummy 🙂

She is a putting things away baby 🙂 She will tidy up putting stickle bricks away etc... unlike Jeany who is a messy little moo 🙂

She can get very cross - not laid back at all like her sister and is more clingy but at the same time is more likely to sit and play on the carpet next to the dest rather than having to have me entertain her. She loves her sister most of the time and runs up and hugs her but not when Jean is asking for hugs! Though if anyone is crying she will hug them.

I made Jean cry by telling her off about tidying bedrooms, Mary took one look at the poor sobbing Jean and instantly joined in and this was proper crying from both of them. I felt like a really bad mummy but had to stick to my guns.

Mary is definatly a hobbit - she has second breakfast though you are hard pushed to get anything other than a snack into her for the rest of the day.

Mary is 2! (by sarah)

Mary was two on Monday - she spent most of the day in nursery with her friends who made her a lovely card complete with scribble signatures 🙂

When she came home she opened her card from Uncle David and Aunty Michelle and the one Jeany had made her with a little drawn birthday story in it! Then there was one present from Al's mother - a ball pit which both girls had much fun with.

We sang Happy Birthday in four different languages - English (all of us), Lojban (Daddy), Polish (Mummy - or what I cold remember of it), and French (Jeany).

Due to Dad being ill and me having med issues too we have posponed the official celebration ie the party until the 16th of Feb.

The End of the Festive Season (by sarah)

Today we had our last Christmas visitor, Barbara, so I put out the minced pies and cut up Christmas Cake and we apologised as we seem to have lost her tea towel with Mary's print on it that we were going to give her - so we gave her same homemade jam instead.

She gave Mary some lovely Hello Kitty wellies which is brilliant as it was starting to be a squeeze to get her into the ones she has and the previous bigger set she lost one of whilst we were out shopping one day. Jean got an art casse which she was excited about and Al got cheese which is always a hit with him. I got a pot of tulips which shall be going outside the front door.

Jean also tidied the front garden, litter picking the litter that blows in and sweeping up the leaves - mainly as she is whipping through her worst witch books and wants to earn money to buy the missing ones.

There would be photos of today but unfortunately Jean was taking photos yesterday and dropped it and today it has gone completely screwy 🙁 It was on it's way out anyway which is why I had saved up money to get a good one but I spent it on the TV so that we could use the X-Box, I do not regret this but I do now find myself with out a camera - right at the point where I am trying to launch myself back into things seriously - sigh.

On the other hand I do have a rather serious back log of photos to sort out anyway so maybe this will give me time to do that?

After Al's aunt left we started taking down all the decorations to general chagrin of the kids - Mary was walking about saying 'Oh! No!' whilst Jean was whining that the room was starting to look so bare which we felt too. Somehow Christmas went so fast this year.

It has been a fun one though.

Of course tomorrow I have one of my best friends from school visiting in a sort of post-Christmas/pre-birthday type of way which is going to be ace!

And last night I forgot to go to the pub with one of my local friends which I feel really bad about - It wasn't a good day medically for me but still...

Anyway the good thing about the decorations coming down is that I am in the mood for Spring Cleaning to be honest. We started today with putting hooks up to hang various house type things up, such as sun catchers and wall art butterflies and the broom and duster and carrier bag suasage.

Today also marks the constructed language Lojban's 25th Birthday - this is the language that Alaric has been learning for the past few years and that he has been teaching to Mary. So we have begun work on a little language comic type thing - we came up with the idea ages ago but haven't had the time to act upon it!

Apart from that we made bread in the bread maker and made our own sauce for the chickpea hodge podge we had for dinner - January is already a month of highs and lows but net effect seems to be positive at the moment.