Thursday 13 March 2008

Mishka: The Before and After

Here are his before photos.......


... and the after ones:


Oh, and I checked the Crufts records and his Dad won the "Reserve Dog Challenge Certificate" in 2002 for the Airedale Terrier breed, which is about equivalent to coming third, if I read the webpage correctly.
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Big News on the Lara Front

I think it's official - Lara slept through the night last night! Since we gave her her cot bed in her own room, the number of hours she'd been sleeping between feeds has increased, apart from Sunday night. However, last night was a definite breakthrough, she finished her evening feed at 9pm, and went to bed. I was due to get up in the night to feed her, and had the baby monitor next to me when we went to bed at 12.30 (another early night!). I was a bit confused when I woke up (from my dream where I was James Bond!!!) and checked the time and saw it was 5.05. I thought I'd not turned the monitor back on when I came back to bed after feeding Lara in the night, and I looked over to check, but it was on... then slowly I realised I'd not got up in the night to feed her! Just as I was working this out, I could hear she was beginning to stir, and I gave it a few minutes to see if she was just gurgling in her sleep, but it was clear she was waking up. I went to get her and she was all happy and smiley, until I got her out of her sleeping bag, when she then decided it was time for breakfast, but given that Olga had been all night without expressing or feeding, she was very ready to do the honours.
So, hopefully this pattern will continue - we'll try putting her to bed at 10pm tonight and see if she can sleep through till 6am, but it's no big deal if she wakes at 4am again, it seems we're all heading in the right direction for uninterrupted sleep soon enough!

The Eden Centre - Open At Last

The value of our house just went up 1 minute ago, when the Eden Centre opened in Wycombe. Olga will pop down there this afternoon and see if she can't get herself a glass of bubbly on offer from M&S or House of Fraser or one of the other big stores. Rumour has it the M&S is the biggest in Europe...
Other than the shops there are numerous restaurants, a bowling alley and a Cineworld cinema. Hopefully they'll have learnt from Vue cinemas and put decent seats in rather than the old fashioned cinema seats, which leave me with numb legs by the time the adverts are over. That said, I'm off to such a cinema tonight to watch the Rambo film before it disappears.
We'll check out the Cineworld soon enough and report back. If we like it we'll make use of their £12 a month "any time, any film" offer, seeing as an adult ticket for one film is £8.

Wednesday 12 March 2008

The New Nursery

Here's a little video of how Lara's nursery looks now. I know she's dozing on the floor and not in her nice cot bed, but it's the morning and she's only supposed to have a brief nap!
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Tuesday 11 March 2008

All change at home

The weekend signified a big change at home, as Lara got her own room. Olga & I dismantled our bed and moved up to our old room. We built Lara's new cotbed in the nursery, and in theory this should last her for up to five years. We've decorated the walls with some kiddies posters, and put the rug down that we bought a few weeks ago. All her cuddly toys are on show too, we'd not appreciated how many she had! She'll be spoiled for choice.
It's really nice to have one room at least with some space in it now, and Lara seems to like her new bed. She can spread her arms out now without touching the sides, with her old cot she could get her hands stuck and this would wake her up. After three nights she's had two good ones, where she's gone five or six hours without needing a feed, although on Sunday night she was more restless and I was up at 3am to feed her. It's good for Olga, as she's not sleeping right next to Lara now, so she doesn't feel obliged to check on Lara whenever there's a gurgle or a moan. Most of the time is just Lara making noises in her sleep, and Olga can ignore them now and get more sleep. Lara's still coming to bed with us after 6am, and we've noticed she's started to roll on to her side to sleep without any help from us. Next stop will be rolling right over, so we'd better be sure she doesn't do that in bed.

England cricket? Pah

A few days ago I made a mental note to blog something about the England cricket team, but they don't deserve it. They can have a post to themselves (apart from this one) when they do something right. OK, I admit it, their catching was good in the First Test, apparently, but something had to be.
The next Test starts on Thursday, I'll not be staying up late to listen to it!

Sunday 9 March 2008

Barnsley Roll On!

Barnsley continue their run in the cup, and cousin Ryan got yet more coverage on TV, I saw him at least three times and his name was mentioned twice. Here's a still from Match of the Day:
They've got Cardiff in the Semi Final on April 5th or 6th.

Mishka - Best In House

As I'm sure you're all aware, and avidly watching, it's been Crufts weekend. We're just watching the final now. Of course we'll cheer on the terrier (the Airedales didn't make it near the final, which is why I've appointed Mishka as Best In House so the Airedales win something!), but we like the Beagle and the Giant Schnautzer too.
Mishka is feeling much better, I've just taken him for a walk and he seems like his old self, so he'll be going for his marathon grooming session on Tuesday. It's probably three to four hours to get him finished, he'll look totally different, so we'll put before and after photos up.


Oh, and the result is....the Giant Schnauzer.