26 February 2007

Words

Kathleen is a true female. She babbles constantly from morning to night.

I, however, am relatively quiet. I am not a true female. But then you'd already know that if you measured the lengths of my fingers.

Kathleen has been saying "mama" and "dada" for several months now. However lately she has begun repeating several syllables over and over, and we figure these must mean something.

1. CAT. Whenever she sees the cats she makes a sound that sounds remarkably like "cat". This in itself is kinda strange because we have always said "pussycat" to her, and in fact when she first began saying mama and dada she also said something which sounded like "poosk", so we thought her first word was pussycat. We have always taught her pussycat because she gets called both "Kat" and "Kitty" and we didn't want her getting confused.

2. DUCK. In the bath she has a couple of toy duckies. When she sees them she always says something that sounds kind of like "duck".

However, both CAT and DUCK also sound remarkably like "GA".

3. WHAT'S THAT. Her most common phrase. I don't know if it is intention that it sounds like "what's that", but it is always accompanied with her looking or pointing at something. And so I always reply "What's that? That's a birdie" (or whatever).

The closest I can approximate to what she is actually saying is "oo dzat" or "oo dza" or sometimes just "mmm mmm".

4. OH DEAR. The one that cracks us up the most is something she says with increasing frequency, for no reason at all. Sometimes when she's just talking to herself or sometimes instead of saying "what's that".

It sounds alternately like "or shear" or "or shed" and sounds amazing like either "oh dear" or "oh sh*t".

We are going to get in so much trouble one day because whenever she says it, we crack up and repeat it back to her. Pretty soon she's going to start saying it just for the reaction. Uh oh.

She's also very good at making "duckie" noises...



-Megz

09 February 2007

Nero

20060311u Nero

A terrible thing happened today. Something so awful that I still can't accept it's real. My beautiful cat Nero, my adorable baby boy, apparently got hit by a car and died. I found him this afternoon in the back yard. He was the most beautiful cat you ever met, but you would be lucky to meet him because he was very shy around people.

20010408a Baby NeroWe got him almost six years ago. Peter and his friends found him at the paintball field, lost and alone and abandoned by his mother. He was barely six weeks old and so tiny. We took him in and fell in love with him immediately. He was so small he couldn't even climb over the bottom rung under our coffee table. We named him Nero because he was black but also after the Emperor Nero, keeping the theme we'd already established with Cleopatra, and Spot sometimes known as Spotarcus.

As he grew he became a very beautiful boy indeed, but he hated having his coat brushed and by the end of winter he would be covered in knots and his hair would start falling out. He hated loud noises, and whenever people came to visit he would usually hide (especially if they had children). He was very affectionate with Peter and I, and when we would pet him he would start drooling and drooling. It was so cute.

He seemed to have coped with the move back to Wellington well enough. He managed to find a way into the workshop under the house and would spend most of his time there, as it was quiet and cool. I don't know what would have made him go on the road.

I miss him and love him very much.



20010718a Nero has a drink
A very young Nero drinks directly from the tap
20011225a Nero sleeping after opening all the X-mas pressies
His favourite pasttime - sleeping
20020406a Basket cat
Sleeping again
20070116d Nero
Nero in the back yard - 3 weeks ago



-Megz