Blogging again

I'm sure most of you reading this will already know that I haven't been all that well since the end of January. It seems that my sinuses are the culprits and so have been working along with osteopaths to help get them better. In the meantime I've had another sinus infection and a four day sinus headache. I have started to pick up a few times, only for something else to knock me back down again. Last week started to really pick up and it felt like my body was trying to recover. However, it's been a busy-ish weekend and so have been rather tired, but able to interact with everyone, which I couldn't do two weeks' ago. So am really hoping this is the start of a genuine recovery.

Stuart had three and a half weeks off work and we had his mum up for two weeks too. Then we needed to make a decision about who would care for Alice until I'm back on my feet. So we needed to find a child minder. We found a really great one round the corner and Alice has settled really well with her. So Alice is with Barbara every day and Stuart has gone part-time in the meantime.

I've put a few posts on to cover the past two months. It's mostly pictures and not a great deal of writing, so shouldn't take too long to go through.

Please continue to pray for a full recovery without any more set backs and thank you to all who are.

Alice's 2nd Birthday

Yesterday was Alice's 2nd birthday. Where have the past two years gone!!!!!??? This was Alice two years' ago yesterday, about half an hour after birth.
This was Alice on her first birthday.

What a difference a year makes.

Stuart's parents came up for the weekend and on Saturday morning we had a few friends round for about an hour. Alice really enjoyed tucking into her Daddy-baked carrot cake (which was really yummy, but under very close supervision by me).

So she opened her present from her friends.

Then on Monday we opened the rest of her presents. It took ages. We gave her the trike first, bad move, we should've let her open everything else first, as she just wanted to ride around on that. Eventually we got her to open them sitting on her trike. There's a parent pole that attaches to the back too.

The table is from Nanna and Grandpa and the chair from us. She thinks they're brilliant, just wants to sit at that as well. She can now do sticky pictures in the house rather than at her wee groups and hopefully not make as much mess. It's also a good place to have snacks now too.


We got her these cotton reels. She really enjoyed playing with that for ages making necklaces.

Stuart went to a local bakers (fantastic one round the corner from us) to get a cake, just a madeira cake, but so yummy. She really enjoyed tucking into that.

Nanny and Papa bought her this scribbler, which she really enjoyed drawing on too.

She was very excited to receive this new tea set from Nanna and Grandpa. She spent ages later on making us all cups of tea.

She also got a few books. One of her favourites from aunty Catherine, Simon, Lilly and Jasmine, which is "we're going on a bear hunt". She nearly knows it off by heart. We kept getting it out of the library and so thought she could have her own copy.

The video is Alice over the weekend. We gave her one of the boxes to play with before her birthday. She used it as a cot for Fraser bear. So she's putting Fraser to sleep and telling him she'll see him in the morning. Then when she takes him out she asks him if he wants calgel, which is her teething gel. At dinner time we asked her if she'd had a good birthday, she nodded and said yes. We asked her what she would like next year for her birthday and she said "cake" a small pause and then "candles". Easily pleased. Then she started singing Happy Birthday to Alice. We had a quiet, but good birthday weekend for Alice, thank you to all who helped make it special for her.

Fashion show

This is Alice middle of March when her summer clothes arrived from the Vertbaudet and Boden catalogues. She wanted to try the clothes on straight away and pose for us. This is telling Alice where to stand and she got Fraser bear and stood him with her and then we said smile.

These are a pair of Alice pyjamas for the summer. She wouldn't take them off afterwards.

So she put her summer coat on over her pyjamas and ran around the house like that.

Then sat and ate her snack wearing the pyjamas and coat. We asked if she wanted to take the hood down, a very vehement shake of the head and "no" was the response.

This is Alice posing in one of her summer dresses.

Then she had to try on her swimming costume, over her vest and tights. Then she ran and got her wellies and put them on too.

The next day we made the mistake of not putting the clothes away and so she wanted to wear the swimming costume again. This time no vest and no wellies and ran around the house for ages.

Alice, Daddy and the snow family

This photo was taken way back at the end of Jan. Alice and Stuart went round to visit the Cleases and Joe decided they would all make crowns. So Joe helped Alice make this crown, she still has it, not quite in this pristine state.

Then middle of Feb, the country was covered in snow and the only reason we got to hear about it was because London got snowed in that day too!!!

Alice and Stuart enjoyed their time together in the garden building a snow family. This was the most snow we've had here in about 5 years.

Alice very busy helping to build snow Daddy up.


They finished snow Daddy. They also built a snow Alice and a snow dog. Notice there was no snow Mummy, I was replaced by a dog!!! Alice enjoyed it so much she didn't want to come back in.


Alice and Stuart building the snow Daddy.