Pig tails and a BBQ

Although it doesn't look like it from the front, Alice's hair is growing, as you can see from her wee pigtails. Not the neatest pigtails ever, but when she's trying to escape her mummy's clutches, you have to make do with what you can get. About two minutes after I took the pics, she pulled them out. Typical!!!

We had our Home Group Bible study lot round yesterday for a BBQ. Thankfully it didn't rain, although was very cloudy, but warm. So we were all able to sit outdoors. There haven't been too many opportunities to enjoy the garden this year, but yesterday was certainly one of them. It's been an odd summer and we haven't seen too much of everyone, so it was great to see everyone yesterday and catch up before the start of a new Bible study year. We're going to be studying 1 John and Stuart is quite excited about it. I'm sure we'll all learn why in due course. I think I over catered on the dessert a bit though and thought I had the whole street coming rather than just the Home Group. So quite a few people took quite a lot home and we've still been left with loads. I would rather have too much than too little though.


To entertain Alice and Oliver (and probably most of the adults too) we got out the bubble machine. Anne did a great job of waving it around so that the bubbles changed direction a lot. They had a great time trying to "atch", as Alice says for catch, the bubbles.


Alice does occasionally give us beautiful wee smiles like this. That is in between the ever increasing tantrums she seems to be developing. We're using the tactic of ignoring the bad and praising the good which was drummed into Pauline during her teacher training. It does seem to be working and the tantrums seem to last a few minutes. We'll see if this technique is successful in holding off the tantrums as she gets older. We can't quite believe she's nearly a year and a half already. We just don't know where the time is going at all.

Our holiday Aug 08

We just spent a week in Somerset/Wiltshire. We travelled down for Stuart's cousin's wedding and Stuart's parents 40th Wedding Anniversary. The wedding was on Saturday and the Anniversary on Sunday. We were staying in a cottage with Stuart's parents, Stuart's sister (Catherine) , her boyfriend (Simon) and his two children (Lily and Jasmine). Instead of doing the journey in one go we spent the night in a B&B near Gloucester. We went to the Ricoco Gardens the next morning and did this maze. The garden was amazing, really beautiful. In fact is was the sunniest day of the holiday. Well worth a visit if in this area. Just outside Painswick.



At the wedding Alice met a whole load of new relatives. This is her great, great uncle Bob. She really enjoyed putting her hat on his head, over and over again.

She behaved soooo well at the wedding. Ate the majority of her yummy dinner and was quiet when she needed to be. Silly mummy and daddy forgot to bring anything to entertain her though. Thankfully Daddy found some books in the conservatory of the hotel which kept her amused for quite a while.


The next day was the Anniversary celebration. Ian and Marion (Stuart's parents) hired a marquee and caterers at the cottage. This is Lily and Jasmine (Alice is sitting on Lily's knee). They all got on really well and seemed to enjoy playing with each other.


Ian and Marion. 40 years of marriage. Aaaaawwwwww!!!!!


Stuart, Pauline, Alice, Ian, Marion, Lily, Simon, Catherine and Jasmine.

The sun was shining in our faces, hence the squinted faces.


We drove an hour and half to the south coast to visit The Sutcliffes. Stuart was at Uni with Jon and Maggi. Polly, Joash, Barney and Nia really enjoyed playing with Alice and telling us all lots of stories of poo. It was really great to catch up with them, the visit felt too brief.


We also took a trip to Longleat. Yes the one from BBC's Animal Park. No we didn't see Kate Humble or Ben Fogle (more's the pity). It was sooooo packed with people. We didn't do the safari as we thought it would be a waste of money as Alice probably wouldn't be that bothered by it. We went into Pet's Corner instead. They were doing a bird demonstration. We weren't quite sure who was watching who at this point.


Just a funny wee pic of Alice to finish.



We had a good time away, but it is always good to be home too.

Welcome to the new look blog

I (that is Pauline) thought our blog looked a bit boring and lacking in personality. So I decided to give it a bit of a make-over. However, I soon realised that all the ones I wanted were already taken by my friends. Particularly "scribe" Laura!!! Anyway, this was the least offensive, or at least the one that didn't make me feel dizzy and sick when I clicked and scrolled through it. So here is the new look blog. For the time being anyway.




Today we went to Whitley Bay's annual Kite Festival. It is a lot of fun and Alice seemed to enjoy looking at all the kites. She was pointing and saying "ite" a lot. Just a 10 min walk from the house. The festival normally has a teddy bear parachute jump. You bring along your favourite teddy and it goes into the amateur parachute jump, it is hoisted up in the air and then it let go to float gracefully to the ground. Unlike the one we saw a couple of years ago when it plummeted to the ground and they brought on the paramedics to give it mouth to mouth resuscitation!! Honest. Today we missed that part of the proceedings.



Whitley Bay is going through a massive regeneration. They've already built a skate park on the front, which was well used today when we passed it. Whitley Bay swimming pool is also undergoing a massive re-build. The most famous landmark in WB is Spanish City (I think Chris Rea mentions it in one of his songs, can't remember which one and can't be bothered to look it up) and it is undergoing a clean up and refurb, not quite sure what will be happening in there yet, but hopefully it will look spendid when complete. They're also rebuilding the Whitley Bay Playhouse, in some senses I think it only needed a bit of refurb rather than a total make-over, it is losing some of it's original charm and character. I guess that's progress!!!

This is Stuart trying to stop Alice eating sand. She's very determined though and we had to end up putting her in the pram with sand all over her hands and all over her face. Oh well she was having fun!!

Fork and certficates

Alice started using a fork for the first time this week. She seemed to quite enjoy using it. She can't quite puncture the food with the fork yet, but if we put the food on the fork she puts it in her mouth. It also gets her eating a wee bit extra as it's a novelty at the moment. She could put the food on the fork a couple of times but it took so long for her to eat we would end up putting the food on as well. Very clever girl.

On that note, she got her first certificate this week too. Not sure if this scheme exists in Northern Ireland, but in England they're trying to encourage people to join libraries and read more. So they have a scheme called book start. You get free books and when you join the library you get a sticker for the first four visits and then get a free book and this certificate. Stuart wanted to put it up in her bedroom. We didn't!!!! First of many we hope.


In the past couple of weeks she has had an explosion of language. She tries to copy everything we say these days. She is learning a new word every day. The latest are: "aggie" for hankie, "adow" for shadow, "go go" for babygrow, "ammy" for mummy, "giga" for Iggle Piggle (a character from In the Night Garden), "wazzee" for washing, "addee" for Amen, "annie" for Nanny and "papa" for Grandpa. There are loads more, but wanted to pick the highlights. She's even starting to try and put words together too. Her sense of humour keeps us very entertained. She plays wee games with us to try and make us laugh and will just laugh raucously for what seems like no reason and keep doing it. Today she did it in Marksies and people kept laughing at her as they walked past.

We were also playing around with the camera today, before we both watched the Olympics Opening Ceremony. OK, Pauline watched it, Alice played with all her toys. So just a funny pic to finish.

Hiya Daddy

We bought this wee phone so that when we're on the phone Alice can have her own. That way she doesn't want to keep pressing the buttons on ours and has her own buttons to play with. That's the theory anyway. After about 5 mins she gets a bit bored and throws it away and wants up on our knee to press the buttons on our phone. She has just started putting the phone to her ear and saying Hiya though. She also puts it to our ears too and says Hiya. Before now Alice got off the sofa by going backwards, but now she is brave enough to get down forwards. Also just a funny piece of video of her laughing.

Alice has started trying to put our shoes on and walk around in them. As soon as Stuart gets home from work, she goes straight over to his shoes and undoes the laces, much to his annoyance. It's OK when you get home from work, not OK when you're rushing out in the morning to catch the metro.



Just a couple of wee funny pictures to finish.