Marie's Web Log

My mum arrived today. Amelia and I went to pick her up from the bus station. No, she didn't take the bus all the way from New Brunswick. She flew to Heathrow via Halifax and got the bus from there. She went to bed a little while ago, at 9 p.m. She'd been up for 24 hours or maybe more.

Amelia seemed excited to see Granny, and all the little gifts she brought. She even suggested that Granny might need to "buy some more books," for her of course! Amelia's stuttering is still there, though mostly evident when she's tired.

I haven't said anything about toilet training for a while, and I bet you're glad! She's still not completely toilet trained, though she does wear a special type of underwear during the day. According to the current crop of parenting books, most children are potty trained between the ages of 2 and 4. Four! Before I became a parent, I laboured under the illusion that most, if not all, kids were trained by 2, if not earlier. So why does this myth exist? A friend whose son was trained at 3 years and 3 months explained it nicely: all those parents whose kids are trained early brag about it, and those whose kids aren't, don't say anything. And so the myth goes on...

I'm still doing some editing work on the autobiography, the job I got through my friend Linden. I'm almost two-thirds of the way through. I got an e-mail the other day in response to some freelance work I had applied for some time ago, with an e-learning subsidiary of The Guardian newspaper. They had had 300 applications, but they said they would like to use me and were adding me to their database. So maybe something will come of that.

That's all for now.