Amy and the word “No”

I heard somewhere that most children learn the word no before the word yes because they hear it a lot more often, but with Amy, it was the other way around.

She’s said amà (which meant yes) or oka (okay) for quite a while, but has only started saying no (in English) or nee (in German) in the past couple of weeks (or so it seems to me). Previously, when she didn’t want something, she might push it away with her hand, but she never had a word for that.

This may also be because she’s becoming more aware of her will and her own desires—that previously she’d say “okay” not because she particularly liked what was being suggested but because she wanted to please Mummy and Daddy, whereas now, she’s more apt to voice her disapproval.

Braille on the outside of the changing table at church

At church, in the mens’ room, there’s a changing table, where you can change your child’s nappies.

Recently, I noticed that there was some Braille on the outside. I made a handwritten note of what it said, in case I never got around to photographing it:

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though a short while later, I got around to photographing it:

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Click on either link to go to that picture’s page on Flickr, from where you can access other sizes if you want to see either picture larger. The second picture page also has a transcription of the Braille.

Amy and Harry Potter

I wonder whether Amy’s secretly been reading Harry Potter—at any rate, she seems to like letting her Fisher Price Little People live in the closet under the stairs.

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Payback = W

Whenever I see the PAYBACK logo , I have to think of the letter W.

Why this is so will probably be immediately obvious to only a few people.

(PAYBACK is a loyalty card scheme in Germany.)

Philip’s doodles

(With apologies for today’s spamminess; I wanted to separate the different thoughts into separate journal entries.)

During meetings, I often doodle on a piece of paper—anything from geometric figures to Chinese/Japanese characters. I like to think it helps me concentrate, especially if the topic does not require immediate input from me.

Here’s an example of such a doodle page (with a little bit redacted; the blurring at the bottom and near the top is due to a bad picture, though):

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I particularly liked the way my handwriting turned out in the word Pflichtenheft; here’s a closeup:

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I hadn’t set out to make it especially legible or pretty or anything, but after I had written it, it struck me that I didn’t think I’d mind reading text set in a font made out of that. It seemed to have a kind of loose, readable sans-serif quality, a kind of je ne sais quoi that I can’t quite articulate.