The Georgous

As Georgia’s vocabulary continues to explode at an astounding pace, as it does with most toddlers, it is fascinating to notice that she is not just copying and mimicking what we say but is starting to build some sentence structure and grammar, albeit miniature versions.

That’s how Me’s becomes the new possesive noun.

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Georgia has started saying some Hokkien Chinese words!

Her conversations so far have been mainly in English – we do seem to speak it as the main form of communication but not intentionally or planned in any way. We do however try to speak in our own ‘Rojak’ or melting pot of language. So I’ve been wondering when Georgia would come up with something from the other languages we speak and what those words would be.

‘Jiu’ as in pang-jiu (English: pee-pee) is her first, clearly focussed on my obsession with trying to get her out of her nappies.

Next came…. ‘bak’ as in chiak bak (literal English : eat meat).

I wonder what’s next?

The huge hullabaloo about the MMR vaccine continues to plague the decision making process of most parents with toddlers and I am no exception. Tony Blair has refused to comment on whether his youngest child, Leo was given the vaccine, while current Tory leader David Cameron told the press that all his children had been given the MMR.

What of all the evidence that points to the fact that MMR is linked to autism and the mountain of evidence scientists have attempted to put forth disclaiming the link? Lucky for me, I have easy access to all those journal articles, including the original Wakefield study that many later claim was exceedingly flawed.

Based on science, it does seem that there is little to suggest a direct link between MMR and autism. That is not to say the vaccine is safe. As with all vaccines, combined or separate, each contains either the dead or weakened live form of the disease. Apparently, for the MMR, the individual jabs are not necessarily any safer than the combined one.

The anecdotal evidence however is much, much more scary. How can you not feel fear grip it’s icy fingers about your heart when you read of parents convinced that their children were perfectly healthy and reaching all developmental milestones until their MMR jabs. Worse still, of the child who was accidentally given the second dose of this triple dose vaccine instead of the first…..apparently he never recovered.

Tabloid fodder or not, it does not make a parent any more confident of the MMR when the former Chief Scientific Officer claims that the UK Government has not evaluated properly the risks posed by the vaccine. One does wonder why he did not do more to stop the use of the vaccine during his time in the Government.

The notion that either measles, mumps or ruebella is fatal, seems rather difficult to swallow in it’s entirety when we live in urban communities with almost instant access to health-care if necessary. It is a completely different story, in the rural outback if one had to travel miles and miles on foot or for days to see a doctor.

The long and short of it all, I am not convinced the MMR is a complete safe bet. So Georgia will not be getting it for now.

Would you believe that one day short of turning 17 …. months – that is, Georgia has decided, (rightly so, I might add) that I do not have a fashion sense.

There’s something about being a Physical Science Academic that throws fashion out the window. What’s the point when you’re always in a white lab coat or worse, awe-inspiring grubs might be forever stained with UV-reacting silver chloride or potassium permanganate! And so my little one has twigged early on, that my dress sense is not the best or worst still, non-existent!

So yesterday, when I tried convincing her, off-gray long-sleeved t-shirts were necessary, in this mad central-heating induced summer. She shook her head NO! NO! NO! so violently i could not get the t-shirt on. And what did she want??

Her pretty pink, Minnie-Mouse-lounging-in-the-sun t-shirt! (Aunty Mei and Uncle Brendan would be oh!-so proud!)

Well, I gave in, clearly the girl knows how to dress up, more than I can say for me!

Georgous is G’s nickname from her dad.

The story is, he refers to her frequently as Georgia-Gorgeous, and Georgous is a somewhat accidentally shortened version which seems to have stuck.