Snow and Spoons

We've all been ill up here in the frozen north for the past couple of weeks. Stuart, who never gets ill, was in bed for two days and is still not over his cold nearly three weeks later. Alice has had this horrible cough which is going around for about two weeks now. Plus I spent about 4 days in bed feeling pretty rough. All on the mend now and just waiting for the next one to hit, oh, right around Christmas. Anyway, the first day I was really ill, I got up about 9am and it was raining, then it started snowing and about 11.30am the garden looked like this.


So Stuart got Alice all hopped up and ready to go into the garden to play in the snow. There was enough to build a snowman, but as I was indoors (got out of my sick bed to take some photos) and it was just before lunch, Stuart decided against it. I think Alice quite enjoyed walking around in the snow. No point putting gloves on her, as she doesn't keep them on.


We also decided it was about time she started using a spoon for her yoghurt. As we did the baby-led weaning (no purees and straight onto finger foods) she doesn't really eat anything to need a spoon, except yoghurt. We've only recently started giving her a yoghurt every day as she's decided to stop drinking milk. She has milk in her cereal and she gets lots of cheese too. We'd feed her the yoghurt and then give her the spoon and pot at the end. Yesterday I decided to leave a little bit in the bottom and she did really well at getting it out. So each day I'll leave a little bit more in the pot, so she can get used to eating out of it. As you can see though, she is doing really well and there's barely any round her face.

Advent

This is Alice's new Advent Calendar. We normally use a fairly traded chocolate Advent Calendar from TearFund. Stuart and I would normally take it in turns to open the window and have the piece of chocolate. If you forgot that day it went to the other person the next day. I went to a Christmas Fair in Newcastle a few weeks ago and bought this for Alice to do. We put it up yesterday and she kept going up on the sofa and reaching over for it. So today when it was brought down for her to do, she went straight for the end one (number 12) and started pulling at it. We pointed at number one and so she did that one and started her nativity scene. Each piece has velcro on the back to stick it to the picture. We told her she does one each day and she can do another one tomorrow. Looking forward to Christmas Eve to see what it looks like all filled. Yes, I will put up some pics of the finished nativity scene.

First snow and Grandparents visit

Last Sunday morning we woke up to a small dusting of snow in the garden. Thankfully we weren't going to church in the morning as we were going at 4pm to our Advent Carol service. Which you can catch on www.clayton.tv and click on New Programmes and it's in there. A wonderful choir this year. Stuart unfortunately was really ill with a horrible cold. No, that isn't man flu, he was genuinely ill, he never gets ill and I haven't seen him look that bad in 10 years.


Then on Monday we had Nana and Grandpa (Stuart's parents) visiting. Stuart was ill for the first few days and spent a lot of it in bed, but he perked up towards the end of the week and we had another trip out to Plessey Woods and Alice had to hold Nana and Grandpa's hand the whole way round. It was the first time Alice really knew who they were. It took her about 10 minutes to warm up and then was showing them all her toys. Every time we went anywhere Alice kept saying "Nana, and" Which meant she wanted Nana to hold her hand (and).


This is just a funny photo of Alice wearing her hat with Iggle Piggle (from In the Night Garden, the only TV programme she will watch) in her pyjamas.

I was going to post a video, but will do it later, as we're now using Picasa 3 which means you can do something new fangled with video, but I'm not sure where they're saved and how to upload them. Waiting to see if there's a quick and helpful wee tip Stuart can impart. If you don't use Picasa it really is worthwhile, it's brilliant. It's free from Google.

Alice Baking

This is Alice's first foray into baking. We were making banana muffins. She loves them. No salt and very low sugar, made with wholemeal flour and bananas and seeds in them, very healthy. This is Alice mushing the bananas.


Once the butter was melted, Alice stirred the sugar and eggs together.

Then stir in the flour, round and round; only a little help from Daddy.


She was also very good at putting the muffin cases into the muffin tin. I showed her how to do the first one, the next one she pushed down too hard and squashed it quite a bit. Then after that she just gently placed them into the available spaces.

Mummy put them in the oven and when they were ready Alice took Mummy's hand and sat on my knee whilst we watched Daddy take them out of the very hot oven. She really enjoyed baking the muffins and she enjoyed eating one after dinner too. Then I just put them into freezer bags and freeze them. When she's having one I get it out of the freezer and defrost in the microwave. They are a firm favourite in our house. I think Daddy quite enjoyed it too.

Kelso 08

Hi all, never fear, we have just been away for a week in Kelso, in the Scottish Borders. The cottage was beautiful and we needed the holiday. We've been back nearly a week, now but it has been fairly hectic. There wasn't a great deal to do in November with a toddler, but the point was to get away and relax, which we certainly did. It was also our 8th wedding anniversary whilst we were away. A local caterer provides meals for people in their cottages. So we did that and had a cosy meal for two after Alice went to bed. This is the view from the back of the cottage.


We bought a new back pack for Alice, as she really enjoys walking around now when we're out, we rarely take the pram any more. However, in order to walk a bit further we bought this so that when she wants up she can be in this. However, she only really liked being in it for about 15 mins. It was really cold when this picture was taken and she cried the whole way because she wouldn't keep her gloves on and her hands were freezing.


The cottage was in a row of three. Ours was the furthest, but this was just a beautiful picture with the sun going down and glowing on the cottages.


Every time we got into the car Alice would say "ome", home. We would say "no, we're going ..." or, "we're going back to the cottage". She would always say home. Then when we were actually going home, we got to a round about fairly near our house and she said "ome" and then again when we got to the end of our street. So we think she was glad to be home. This is her trying to get into the cottage in her new wellie boots. There was a wee children's shoe shop in Kelso and so we were able to buy her these. They are green with leaves and snails on them. A walker commented on how gorgeous they were on one walk as she passed by.


Just a cute picture of Alice. Shortly after this she wanted out of the back pack and cried the whole way back!!!!

Alice counting

This is a wee video of Alice counting. She did it for the first time this week, whilst playing with her blocks. She just started counting out of no-where and got to six. Then at dinner that night counted to seven; twice. Then tonight (after trying all week to catch it on video) she counted to nine. On this piece of video she is counting to eight though.

Christmas Cake

Here is how to bake a Christmas cake the Nigella Lawson/Pauline Grant way.

1. Soak 875g sultanas, 138g currents, 275g mixed peel in 150ml Earl Grey tea over night. Cover with clingfilm.

2. This takes 9inch/24cm spring form tin. Oven at 130C for fan assisted ovens. Line with a double thickness of brown paper and single thickness of baking parchment. I use the peg to hold it in place, quite ingenious I think. The paper must stand 10cm above the rim of the tin.

3. Soften 281g butter.
4. Cream together 244g brown sugar.

5. Grate the rind of one orange and one lemon.


6. Add one egg at a time making sure you mix well after each one.



7. Then add 2 and a half tbspn marmalade.
8. Add1 1/4 tspn mixed spice.


1/4 tspn cinnamon1/4 tspn nutmeg

1 tspn almond extract.9. Add and thoroughly mix fruit and flour alternately. Towards the end it will take a lot of mixing to make sure it's all incorporated.

10. Put into prepared tin and bake for 3 hours on 130 C (for fan ovens). Obviously take the peg off before you put it in the oven!!!


11. It is ready when the skewer comes out clean.
12. When cake is cooked immediately brush with earl grey tea and wrap it in the tin with double thickness of tin foil. This is the trick to it being really moist.


13. When cake is completely cold (which it isn't yet and it was baked last night), remove from tin and wrap in foil and baking parchment for 3 weeks ready for the marzipan.

So tempting to want to eat it right away, the smells all over the house last night and today are amazing.

Love it when it gets colder

We had a really great walk in Plessey Woods on Sunday afternoon, which is nearish us. I love this time of year when it starts to get colder and you get all hopped up (as we say in Northern Ireland) in your coat, gloves, scarf and hat. We've only been once before about 4 years ago and yesterday we were reminded how much we liked it then.




Alice really enjoyed standing on this bridge looking at the river (dauter, as calls water). We then introduced her to Pooh sticks. Stuart and I got a stick each, he was helping Alice. He gave his to Alice, stood at the edge of the bridge and started to explain the rules. When he said "you throw your stick in the river", she did. So she had a good 5 second head start on my stick. Cheating already. That's just not on and she won!!!!

She had a lot of fun crunching on the leaves, unfortunately we can't get welly boots small enough for her yet, so she had to make do with her shoes and Daddy carrying her over the muddy bits. She also has a thing about collecting stones. Not sure where that comes from, but she carried one round in her hand the whole time.

Busy couple of weeks

Alice hasn't quite got the concept of colours, we go through the colours in her rainbow book, but she can't remember the names of them. However, as you can see from the photo, she certainly knows that they are different and the same. This is how she plays with her blocks. Think that's a Daddy trait; being very ordered.

We all went to the dentist last week. We found a local dentist taking on NHS patients, so it meant we all weren't in different practices. So we all go together and Alice sits with Mummy whilst Daddy is with the dentist and vice versa. Then it was Alice's turn. She didn't really enjoy it too much, however she has 12 teeth and therefore 8 left to come through and the dentist told us they are all on their way. So that would explain the runny nose and excessive dribbling at the moment. She's coping quite well, just got her hand permanently in her mouth.

We now go to a toddler group and she really enjoys that. She loves playing with playdoh, a little too much as she also likes the taste of it. So we are now trying to encourage her not to eat it as you'll see from the video. She also really enjoys doing the sticky pictures and gets a little too enthusiastic with the glue. We've decided to keep all her pictures in a folder, until there are too many and then sift through them and choose our favourites for her in the future.

Last week we did some drawing, she can draw circles and was trying to draw triangles and squares, she did had the shapes right. Then Pauline drew a letter A and she said "gaggle" (triangle), drew a B and she said "bee", then C and she said "see", then drew a D and she said gurgle (circle) and it took us a while to figure out what she meant, but she recognised the shapes of the letters A and D. She is also starting to count and when we say 1, she says 2 and when we say 3 sometimes she'll say 4.

It was also cold enough the other day to put her new winter coat and hat and gloves on. The gloves didn't stay on very long though. Then when we actually got outside I realised it wasn't quite cold enough for the hat either.



Alice really enjoys listening to us reading. Today she wanted loads of her stuffed animals with her to listen too.

Here is the video of Alice pulling funny faces and talking about playdoh.

Birthday Weekend

Alice has this book that we got free from a group we went to in the summer. It's called "Not Now Bernard". It's a horrible story of neglect and murder by a terrifying monster. This has become Alice's favourite book. As soon as she gets up in the morning "Dadad" (Bernard) and she goes in search of the book. She then carries it around most of the day. Will want it read countless times and want the pictures explained too. When she wants to look at the pictures she will tend to have Jenny, the toy on her knee in the next pic, with her and will position Jenny's head so that she can see the book better. I'm wondering how we can destroy this book and blame her and then have to throw it out. Still plotting!!!



We had a very busy weekend. On Friday it was Pauline's birthday. Stuart went into work a bit late and we had a nice breakfast of croissants and pain au chocolats. At least we did because Pauline remembered to get them out of the freezer the night before to defrost and prove over night. Alice was very good at helping Pauline open her presents.


Must explain the giraffe. When we were dating, Stuart bought me an animal for my birthday, I didn't really understand why. Then for Christmas he bought me another one. Still I didn't really get it. Then we got engaged and for my next birthday I got another one. Then every birthday and Christmas ever since I have received an animal as a present. I still don't really get it, but it keeps him happy. A friend said that he should always buy me one and when we're married 40 years I will have this massive menagery of animals. I said "yeah, do you want to be the one to store them all?". Anyway, here are the animals.

Stuart then went to work, Alice and I went to Sainsbury's to do our weekly shop. Then after she woke up we had to go to Mothercare to get the security label from a wee top I'd bought her the day before removed. How I got out of the shop without the alarm ringing is beyond me. What a waste of time; thankfully I had the receipt.

Stuart and I got some friends to babysit and we went round to the pub for some dessert (pretty bog standard). We ate that and then after an hour we got the call to say she'd woken up and they couldn't get her back to sleep. So we came home and it then took us two hours to get her back to sleep. Isn't teething great!!? At least we got out for a short time.

Saturday we went to a family fun morning at church. Which was fun and especially as it was cold and wet. Saturday night we got take-away and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the Jonny Depp version). Highly recommend it, if you haven't seen it, brilliant. Sunday, church as normal, Alice first Sunday in toddler creche during the service. She really enjoyed it. Then home, lunch, I went back out to church for a pastoral talk about bereavement. Cheery!! It was really good actually, the speaker was brilliant, really practical. Went to the evening service and the pub with some friends. A very busy birthday weekend. But a good one.