On honest scrap.

So way back when you were still sometimes writing blog entries, E of Whining at the World nominated me for an award.

There are conditions attached. There normally are, but thankfully this time it doesn’t involve a hefty donation to the right… sorry, correct political party.

No, this time you have to write ten honest factoids about yourself.

Now you pondered this, you really did, but there are very few things about yourself that you haven’t shared already. That you are willing to share, anyway. Unless everyone wants to hear about how the big mole on your left big toe which you always found a bizarre sort of comfort in thinking would be an excellent identifying mark if teeth and such were unavailable has now faded, and how this has caused you, in the face of all logic, a bit of existential angst. No? You didn’t think so.

Instead, you are going to tell the world ten things about the Star. Impossible though it seems there are still ten things the gentle reader out there might not know.

1. The  Star’s eyes are brown. This came as a complete surprise to you as up until the age of one you thought you had a grey eyed boy. A proper slate grey, mind, and one which in the right light looked positively green. Of course that in itself was a bit odd. Normal people, like the ones you see in the mirror, have brown eyes, despite the amount of time you spend gazing soulfully into B’s baby blues. Still, the Star seems to have seen the light now. Although there’s still that reddish tinge to his hair to sort out.
2. The Star is afraid of the noise of vacuum cleaners. No sooner do you start one up, than he comes and stands next to it, staring up at you in horror and with a palpable sense of betrayal, howling his little head off. It must be the noise, as he has much the same reaction to handblowers in public toilets, although the guilt inducing eye contact is much reduced by being on his back with his head stuffed between his knees as you wipe his bottom free of poo.
3. The Star has decided that sleeping in his cot is for mugs when he could be rolling around in the nice big double bed in the same room. This wouldn’t be a problem as it is nice and low and entirely unoccupied by parents, except that it is also where his Babushka has been sleeping. At the moment he is willing, nay, oblivious to sharing, but you are not sure what will happen when she goes home next month and he gets really established in the dead centre of the mattress, arms outstretched, legs akimbo.
4. The Star actually does stick his bottom lip out and let it wobble a bit before starting to cry properly. Or, sometimes, instead of crying properly, as he isn’t much of a crier. You don’t think this has quite the effect intended though as it is so unbearably cute that what happens is that all adults in the vicinity break into besotted cries of delight, which surpass, hard though it is to believe, even delighted cries of besotted he gets when he grins at them. Of course, this may be why he doesn’t cry that much.
5. The Star is cutting his seventh tooth. You know it’s his seventh tooth because when he bites things, which he does constantly at the moment, you can count the teeth marks. Who needs plaster casts of his darling little foot, when you can proudly sport scars of his mouth prints?
6. The Star infinitely prefers brightly coloured clothes with big pictures of lions, diggers or Mr Bump on them to tasteful shirt and tank top combinations. This actually came as something of a surprise to you, but has helped in the battle to get things on over his head.
7. The Star has discovered how to open the kitchen door and escape into the hallway outside. This is a shame as there are a number of things you have put there specifically to keep The Star’s sticky fingers away from. The rubbish bin, for example. And the basket of onions, which the Star takes great delight in rolling down the stairs from the kitchen hallway to the entranceway, which in your house is below with its own level all to itself. Of course, he only likes to do this when there’s someone there taking of their coat, making it harder to dodge the small, bouncing and really quite hard orange bomb hurtling their way. Still. There must be a way of wedging the door shut somehow.
8. The Star recently had not only his second MMR jab but also a swine flu shot too. You are going for the most number of vaccinations given to a small child prize, as previously you had also took the NHS up on its offer of a BCG injection against tuberculosis, which apparently they have discontinued for the population as a whole. Of course, the reason why he was offered the tuberculosis jab was because he is half Russian. This offended B so much that he went googling for statistics and discovered that, indeed, Russia does have rather more cases of TB than the UK, but the UK’s cases are by no means none and most of the people who have it in Russia are in prison. But you have a firm belief in the fact that inoculations are one of the greatest miracles of modern medicine so the Star is now safe from TB, Swine flu, measles, mumps and rubella, diphtheria, some forms of meningitis, polio, whooping-cough, tetanus, Hsemophilus influenza type B (whatever that is) and Pneumococal infection (whatever that is) and won’t be infecting anyone else’s kids with any of those diseases either.
9. The Star seems to understand the concept of counting. He certainly looks at both his hands, one after the other, when asked how many he has and will point obligingly a selection of animal biscuits, one by one, while someone else numbers them off. He does have a tendency to poke at some of them more than once and others not at all, but still, he does also tend to stop at the right sum if it has already been identified. He also recognises letters as letters, although he has a tendency to get them confused with numbers. Babushka has even got him recognising and pronouncing А, Б, Ф  and У in Russian. You find this a bit freaky though and are hoping it is some kind of trick brought about by hand feeding him bits of fish in response for a particularly nifty somersault through the hoops for the crowd.
10. The Star does not really like the lovely cold weather we have had this winter, and still prefers puddles to a layer of snow. This is mainly because he refuses to wear gloves for more than a few seconds and snow is surprisingly chilly when you pick it up and try to fling it at Mama and Papa. Of course, he doesn’t really know what is making him miserable, but he has realised that if he gets really stroppy you will pick him up and carry him. When you do this, he will fling out his arm in the direction he wants to go with all the arrogant assurance of a Victorian explorer heading for the source of the Nile. You certainly feel that you have been reduced to a combination of elephant and lowly native guide.

So that’s the Star up to date.

Of course, as with any meme, you are supposed to tag people.

You are tagging seven people who you got to know through Nablopomo and who you don’t know nearly enough about yet:

Johnny Pez

Rammi

Raising an Army

Witchhazel

One Tough Von Cookie

Purplume

Timnah