Friday 5 September 2008

A new dawn



Having noticed Lara's "patterns" in the morning, Olga decided it was time to try out a potty, and Lara duely obliged today, the first morning we've tried it. I wouldn't say it's the start of potty training as such, but Lara sat on it with no problems or tears, and was happy to watch the BBC Breakfast News rather than read her book. There are a couple of other photos in the New Photos section to the left.
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Wednesday 3 September 2008

Photos from Camping

Here are some of the photos from camping in Norfolk this weekend. For reference, we stayed at the Bureside Holiday Park, 7 miles inland from Great Yarmouth, and it was fantastic.

Lara 8 Month Check Up

Lara's had her 8 month routine check up today. It included being weighed, she's 17lbs 14oz (8.120kg), an increase of only 4 ounces in 2 and a half weeks, but still the health visitors are saying this is fine, and it puts her only just below the 50th percentile. We're not going to change the routine (mum's milk first thing, then porridge and yoghurt at 8.30, a jar each of mains and dessert with tomato and / or other fresh veggies for lunch, a mid-afternoon snack like fruit and a yoghurt, a jar of mains and dessert for tea at 5pm and mum's milk before bed at 7.30), we'll just increase the quantities slowly.
Other than that, everything seems tickety-boo. Her hips are OK, they tried testing her grip, seeing if she could pick up a scrap of paper. She did it fine with her right hand, but lost interest in it straightaway and refused to use her left hand. We'll try her out at home with something more interesting than a scrap of paper (a fiver note probably!).
Her tooth is still coming through, but you can clearly see the top 3 or 4 mm of it now, and you can definitely feel it when she bites you. It's the front left one, so we're hoping the front right one isn't far behind or she'll have an asymmetrical smile, and no-one wants that.

This afternoon is a big moment, it's the first settling-in session at the nursery in Marlow. We're taking her there for an hour, and we sit in the room with her while she plays. Tomorrow we leave her alone for half an hour, then join her for the other half hour, and on Friday this is increased to something more like 50 minutes without us.
Her first full day is Monday, when Olga starts back at work!

Monday 1 September 2008

Camping Update

It's Monday morning, the sun is shining. It did rain overnight but the tent seems to have done it's job. Mishka slipped off his anchor point in the night, so was wandering around in his half of the tent, but fortunately he couldn't get to anything important. It's nowhere near as warm today as yesterday, so we're not planning to do anything today, it's a day just to lounge about in the tent, we'll take it in turns to have naps!
So, what have we been upto so far? We arrived at 3pm on Saturday, it took an hour and a half to get unpacked and get the tent up, it's a big tent, needing lots of pegs, and with the forecast for Sunday including thunderstorms, I wanted to be sure I had everything pegged out properly. Dinner was sausages and burgers done on a throwaway bbq, with a nice bottle of wine. Considering our plan was to have early nights, what with no tv to watch and knowing lara will want to get up early, it was still well after 11 when we went to bed. Getting into sleeping bags is not a quiet job, and Lara woke up and had a minor paddy, but after some cuddling and sshing we went back to sleep. She woke again at 3.30am, and this time we didn't waste much time and administered a little calpol and after more sshing she went back to sleep in the travel cot until 6.30, when we brought her down between our sleeping bags. She was so lovely and warm and cosy in her kiddies sleeping bag. I'm going to pause there and send this as the PDA battey is about to give up!

Sunday 31 August 2008

Camping in Norfolk

Just a real quick post to say what a lovely time we're having. We've been really lucky with the weather, no rain at all, just some thunder this afternoon. We're having dinner outside the closest pub, a nice mile walk away. We went out in the boat this morning, lara enjoyed most of it, but slept on the way back.