Is not, as you might expect, the last verse of Hey Jude. It is the sound of my offspring being a fire engine.

Or rather, the typed version of my version of Doozer being a fire engine. However, it is very new, and very adorable, so I thought I should attempt to share it with you, no matter how poor the written word turned out to be as a medium for the impression.

He is not, I should note, ACTUALLY a fire engine. He is just pretending to be one. Which is lucky, because if he was actually a fire engine, he’d be a very bad fire engine. He has no wheels, for a start. No capacity for carrying hoses, and is absolutely terrible at taking 80-foot ladders from place to place.

The siren thing he pretty much has down pat, though.
Apart from a) the inflection in the siren noise (while I definitely have been playing with his fire engine toy with a ‘nee-naw nee-naw’ noise, his version goes ‘na na na na na na na’, which is incorrect, or at least I think it is apart from the fact that…) b) I’m pretty sure that fire engines don’t actually make that noise any more. I’m not sure what noise they do make, mind, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t that one. I think they may make some kind of ‘weee-oooo-weeee-oooo’ noise. No idea.

This is not the only new thing, however. The far more exciting new thing is that he’s using the ‘na’ sound to say no.

I had no idea it was going to like this. Watching them learn things day on day, going from not understanding to understanding to trying out to doing to mastering. It is something I need to note down somewhere. Oh look! Blogging!

‘No’ means that the conversation I had yesterday while reading a book with large exciting flaps (hey now…) that went:

Anna reads: “Is Maisy in the boat?”
(Doozer lifts a flap)
Anna reads: “Oops! Not here!”
(Doozer turns the page)
Anna reads: “Is Maisy in the barn?”
(Doozer lifts a flap)
Anna reads: “Oops! Not here!”

(Yes. My life is that repetitive. Honestly, the days just fly…)

The conversation today runs:

Anna reads: “Is Maisy in the boat?”
Doozer solemnly shakes his head. Makes no move to lift the flap. “Nuh” he says.
Anna stops. “Oh. Well, no, you’re right there.”
*turns page*
“Is Maisy in the…”
*shakes head*. “Nuh.”
“Well alrighty then. Shall we read Snaily Whale instead?”

And so we do.
Snaily Whale (alright, alright, The Snail and the Whale) is a book that was given to us when he was born, and which has such a catchy rhyme scheme and is so lovely to read out loud that we’ve read it most days, and occasionally I’ll get a couple stuck in my head like a non-musical earworm, and it’ll lodge there all day, rocking back and forth like a little rhyming torture device. Occasionally I worry that I’ll sit down to do some work, and all that will come pouring from my fingers is that couplet, over and over again, filing the page with snaily whaley madness.

Anyway. We used to read it all the time. This evening he wouldn’t let me get past the page with a fire engine on because he wanted to talk to it in stilted, lilting, accented Fireenginese. ‘Na na na na na na na!” he said. “Na na na na na!”

So it goes.