A blog by James: Gamer, Father, Geek.

I have recently discovered that my daughter’s mind is like a sponge. Of course logically I know this is true of children, but it’s still taken me by surprise. We started putting on In the Night Garden on a regular basis for her a month ago. She loves it. So I got her an In the Night Garden book after about a week of her watching it. I read through it with her, and just decided to ask her where a certain character was. To my surprise she pointed to them. To see if it was a fluke, I asked her where another one was and again she pointed to the right one. I went through all the characters (5 in all) and she got them all right, time after time. My mind was literally blown. This little 16 month old girl who can’t speak a word had learned the names of all these characters without any intervention from us.

It didn’t take long to realise that she obviously understands much more that we think. So I got her a ‘My first words’ book. It must have over 100 things in it, pictures of animals, people and objects with the words underneath. She’s had it about a week and she can identify probably 20 of those consistently. That’s with probably less than 10 mins per day reading through it. Although she has started forming some words, on the whole she’s not speaking but I do love that for most of the animals she recognises she can do the noises for them if I ask her (again, bright enough to know when I’m asking her to point and when I’m asking her to make the noise).

I’ve no idea where this puts her on average compared to other kids her age, but even if it’s not true I think she’s a little genius. Added to that she’s gorgeous, funny, active and affectionate, I really do count myself the luckiest Dad in the world.

Two notable things for October. Firstly, the WoW addiction has really took hold. I love the game more than ever. Me and Rob started characters together in September, Tauren Druid for myself and Blood Elf Paladin for him. For quite a while Rob was ahead of me, but recently he’s taken a break so I’ve managed to soar ahead to lvl 72 while he’s at 65. This past week I’ve also joined a guild, Feel Good Inc. Seem like a nice bunch.

A little bit of druid love then. I love this class. You can do pretty much all the main play types with one character (with dual/re-spec anyway). Want to be a ranged DPS/mage? Normal or Moonkin form. A warrior/tank? Bear form. Rouge/melee DPS? Cat form. Healer? Tree form. Added to that the greatness that is instant cast travel, flight and aquatic form and you have what is pretty much the most versatile class in the game. I spend most of my time in Cat Form doing PvE, and have dual talent specced as a restoration druid that I use mostly in instances.

So the second notable thing, and of course the best, is the fact that Hannah can now walk! Nursery phoned one day to say Hannah was projectile vomiting and needed picking up. I was off work with the same illness so was the one that went to pick her up. When I got there they asked if she was walking at home, to which I said no of course. She had taken 6 unaided steps at nursery that day! Then at home she did it again, all the while being ill. As opposed to me who was a useless lump on the sofa most of the day. She usually walks for at least a little bit every day now and she’s building up confidence. It was brilliant that first time we saw her do it, both myself and Kat got very misty eyed when she did it! It’s amazing how proud you feel at each milestone they meet.

So that was October then. We’re now just a month away from Hannah’s 1st birthday which is unbelievable. That year has gone REALLY fast and she has changed so much. It’s been a fantastic year because of her, and the first of many.