Alice clapping

Alice just started clapping her hands today, then there was no stopping her.

She is also reaching for everything at the moment, however, has no fear. She doesn't realise that if she's on the chair and mummy's laces are on the floor, you can't just reach down for them without some sort of consequence, e.g hurting yourself. But mummy is always there to keep a hold of her. Well, nearly always.

UCB in the North East

Found out by rescanning our digital radio this weekend that United Christian Broadcasters are now broadcasting via DAB in the north east.
http://www.ucb.co.uk/index.cfm?itemid=4857
A bit twee and cheesy in places, but still real Christian radio in the north east!

St James' Park

St. James' Park in all it's glory this afternoon. Not hugely interesting; except the white things on the pitch. These were delivering artificial sunlight to the pitch! Simply, not enough sunlight gets to the pitch in the autumn/winter. What they need is to get rid of all these seats....

Smile at the camera!!

Alice has learned that if you turn on the camera and point it in her general direction, she just smiles and you will take copious pictures and laugh a lot. So that's now what she does. She will stop what you're trying to take a picture of her doing and just sit and some might say pose, but of course we just say smile. With each passing day she feels less and less like a baby. Today when the doorbell rang, she stopped what she was doing, starting waving her arms with excitement, smiled and as I got up with her to go to the door, she giggled. She even waved off the parcel delivery bloke as he left.


This one is just a funny picture of her on the swing.

Alice and Petit Filous

As you know we are doing the baby-led weaning. We had to stop for three weeks as Alice had a tummy bug and was pooing for Britain for about two weeks afterwards. Anyway, started back a couple of weeks ago and had to start from square one. Her favourite food seems to be petit filous. I put a dollop on her tray and as you can see she just either licks the tray or scoops it up with her fingers and licks it off. I think she was holding off on the other food I was giving her until she had her petit filous. So I've stopped giving it to her until she is more established with other foods.

It does take a long time for babies to learn to mush the food and then swallow it. There is a lot of gagging (not choking) and spitting stuff out. She likes courgette and today has had avocado for the first time and it seemed to be a hit. She had mash and peas last week and that seemed to go down well too. She's not too keen on bananas or sweet potatoes. When she does eat, it is very small amounts, but she is getting there. This form of weaning does take a lot of patience. But it is very enjoyable because I get to eat my lunch and breakfast at the same time as Alice and I'm not having a bite of mine and then spooning food into her and so on.

Chilli and Chocolate

Found this in the supermarket yesterday. I have been known to purchase odd food before (I do go shopping whilst hungry; always a mistake). A particularly memorable purchase was beetroot juice (http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/cgi-local/frameset/detail/546801.html). According to that website, "A glass of beetroot juice is a delicious way towards your daily portion of fruit and vegetables.". Delicious, it is not; healthy maybe. It did make me gag, I must say. I poured most of the bottle away.

Back to the chocolate then. This was a good impulse purchase. You can't smell the chilli; neither can you taste it initially. After a while though, you notice a distinct and delicious difference to the taste. The experience ends with a hot chilli tang. I would thoroughly recommend! Find it at http://www.lindt.com/1610/3429/3497/3852/4510.asp and a supermarket near you.