Sick again...

I've caught another cold ... and another ear infection. This one's really gross, with all this brown stuff coming out my ear. Check it out:

I am half!

I am half a year old today.

Today is my halfth birthday!

Like all birthdays - but perhaps more than most - the halfth birthday has traditionally been seen as a propitious occassion. It's an opportunity to take stock, to look back at what has been achieved, as well as to consider - or day I say re-assess - one's aspirations and objectives for the future.

A milestone, if you like, on the road of life.

With this in mind I have spent the day in a contemplative mood. Absent-mindedly chewing the beak of my rubber duck, I began to daydream about what things might have been; and what they turned out to be.

• Does being half mean a new lease of life - or is it simply marking time, treading temporal water towards some as-yet indeterminate end-point?

• Half means a new set of challenges - and of responsibilities.

• Am I all I dreamed I'd be at the age of half?
  

Well, for all that thinking (not to mention the chewing), I didn't get very far in my search for answers. I suppose that, despite all the burden of anticipation, turning half does not guarantee an epiphany of insight into the human condition.

All I can say for sure is - with a mum and dad who adore me, a roof over my head and plenty of bananas to eat - back where I started isn't such a bad place to be.

Oh well - here's to the next half year!

This is a pcture of me with my friend Anna, taken at grandma Sherry's house in America.

Happy Birthday Gran

Tomorrow is my Gran's 60th birthday. This is a big family photo that we took at the party last Saturday. We girls had gone to bed by that time.


For the record, comparatively few of the empty beer cans on the table are actually mine.

Earlier in the day, Nicholas and Alexis had tried to look after Sylvie and me. We saw our chance to raise merry hell!

And here I am biting mum's nose, which is my latest way of showing I care:


Happy Birthday Gran - and a big bite on the nose from everyone in London!

More America pictures

I've been meaning to post some more pictures of my visit to the USA. Mum took me for a swim in Grandma's pool:



I can wriggle my legs and make my feet like flippers:


After swimming practice at Grandma Sherry's, I had standing practice at Grandpa Bruce's:

The flight home was tiring, but at least I had my own luxury bed.

I've been sick

I've not been online for a few days because I've been sick. I've had a bad cold that started in my chest and then went up to my throat and then my nose and is now in my ears. Where next - my feet?

I saw a doctor in America who was very nice and let us fly back to the UK today. But he said I had to take some medicine and I hate that stuff. Mum and Dad tried to trick me into liking it by tasting it themselves and saying "Yum" very loudly, but I'm not fooled. I wasn't born yesterday, you know.

It was in March.

Flew in from Miami Beach, BOAC

Arrived in the USA for the first time yesterday. The flight was pretty good - Mum had me listening to some Beatles on the headphones:



And I finally got to meet my great grandparents - they had flown up from Florida just to see me! This is me with Grandpa Bob:

And I had a nap on Grandma Fern:

Baby Einstein

Little is known about the early life of Albert Einstein, other than that he was born in Ulm and moved to Munich at an early age. It is reputed that his parents fostered in the young Albert a love of classical music.

Some have postulated that this early tutoring may have had a formative effect on the young Einstein's impressionable mind, being one causative factor of his singular genius. The irony in this theory is that, from an early age, Einstein himself was familiar with the precepts of Kantian philosophy and the methodology of deductive reasoning - therefore, he would have laughed at the simplistic assumptions and myriad non-sequitirs which are required to sustain this theory of cause (childhood exposure to classical music) and effect (the phenomenon of "genius", however defined).

Nonetheless, this theory is the central conceit of the Baby Einstein Company (slogan: "Where discovery begins"). The Company was founded by Julie Ainger-Clark a decade ago as a start-up toy manufacturer and it has since mushroomed into a fully-fledged cultural meme in its own right. It was recently sold by its founders to the Walt Disney Company for a sum reputed to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Clearly this is a venture which makes sense on a business level, if not on a philosophical one.

Indeed, President Bush is a big fan of Baby Einstein - and he's the president, so he must be intelligent, right?

Anyway, all of this is a prelude to telling you that, despite my misgivings regarding the misappropriation of the name of one of the 20th century's greatest thinkers as a marketing tool for chew toys, I myself am a patron of the Baby Einstein Company and a dedicated user of their products.

In the video below, you can see me enjoying their latest invention, the pithily titled Discover & Play (TM) Activity Center (sic), which happens to be one of my favourites. As you can see, it is an object I am able to appreciate with discernment, on an intellectual as well as a cultural level.

Happy Birthday Granda!

Today is my Granda's birthday 60th birthday - Happy Birthday Granda!