Wednesday 20 May 2009

How's Lara?

Lara's struggling this week with a bit of a cold, on Sunday night she was coughing a lot, but some cough medicine before bed seems to have got that under control these past few nights, and she's slept quite well.
She was funny yesterday at nursery, we arrived there at the same time as one of the other children who Lara knows, a boy called James. James is a little older than Lara, and recently moved up to the next room at nursery for the toddlers. It had been noted before he moved that Lara and he were good friends who played together, and Lara was very affectionate towards him. Well, yesterday morning she recognised him as soon as she saw him being taken out of his Dad's car, and waved at him, then as they were going into the nursery, she ran up to him, and gave him such a kiss that I was worried for their teeth! Poor lad looked rather shocked... If that wasn't enough, she gave him another kiss as he went into his room before she set off toddling down the corridor to her room! Awwww, it was sweet!
She's clearly copying us more, and one of the things she likes to do is to walk around with a handbag (she got that off Olga, not me!), and after camping this weekend she loves her wellies, so much so that I couldn't resist creating a photo opportunity:

Don't worry, when we're out and about we do let her wear trousers!

We'll go and see Grandma and Grandad for the Bank Holiday weekend, so Lara will get spoilt rotten I'm sure... I hope she won't miss James (or her best girlfriend from nursery, Chloe!) too much :-)

One night camping

We'd been planning to go camping last weekend with our friends the Fullers, but the weather was rather iffy all week, with sunshine and showers, and it became a rather last minute thing. Simon and Michelle took their boys, Freddie, 4, and Charlie, 2, on Friday night, and we went to join them on Saturday afternoon. As it turned out, the boys were sooo excited about camping that they wouldn't settle down on Friday evening, and the whole family went home at 10pm and slept there, leaving the tent up at the campsite! This was one of the benefits of camping in Henley on Thames, only a 20 minute drive home for them, and us! Simon and Michelle were testing out a big, new family tent, and it was the first time the four of them had been away camping together, so it made sense to stay local.
The campsite was lovely, just a ten minute walk into the centre of Henley, and for this particular weekend they allow dogs as it's "low season" - the cost was only £13 for the pitch, and because it was quiet at the campsite (only 5 or 6 other tents in the field) we could have had a pitch with electricity if we had anything with us that needed it!
Lara enjoyed playing with Freddie and Charlie, and clearly she charmed Freddie, whose previously had shown the usual toddler feelings towards the opposite gender, something like "girls are stupid", as he actually admitted on Sunday morning that Lara was "cute".
Lara took some time to calm down enough to go to sleep, but she'd had a nice day and was tired, and after a few minutes of Olga singing to her, she went off to sleep around 9pm and only woke once in the night for some water to calm a coughing fit. It was actually Mishka who woke us first, before 6am, he was crying and sniffing around, so I got up to take him for a walk, and by the time we came back at 6.30 Lara was starting to stir.

It was a nice morning, and so we all got up and made breakfast - the Fullers were up and moving by now too. By 9am the clouds started to gather, and after a stroll round Henley, by 10am the rain started to fall heavily, but the tent was up to the job and we all stayed dry, and the rain had given way to sun by 11am.
The benefit of the early start was that we were all packed up and ready to leave by 12.30, home by 1pm, and down in Wycombe town centre for a pub lunch by 2.30!

Here's our "little" tent, when compared the Taj Mahal of tents that Simon and Michelle had, and the familles playing before bedtime:

Quite Interesting


A week flies by again! Last Thursday we rushed off into London on the 4pm train, and joined the queue for QI at 5.15, a full 90 minutes before the doors opened. The show is recorded at ITV's studios, funnily enough, on the South Bank. Have I Got News For You was being recorded too, and I must say the queue for QI was longer...
Once we were in the studio and seated, things moved quicker than I thought it would. There was a warm-up comedian who was actually pretty funny, and he was on for 15 minutes or so, then Stephen Fry came out, and things got started around 7.30. We were lucky with the guests - Jimmy Carr, Sue Perkins and Jack Dee, as well as Alan Davies, of course.
They recorded two hours of material - the theme was all things Gothic - so it'll be quite an editing job to get it down to 30 minutes. For the record, the audience scored the most points!
We left soon after 9.30, after trying unsuccessfully to get Stephen Fry to sign a Russian-language copy of his QI book, given to Olga by her mum.
We had a beer at Marylebone station on the way home, and were back at the house before midnight. Lara had been fine, we'd had no calls or texts from Lucy. In fact Lara had been so quiet that Lucy went into her room at one point to check on her!
It was a lovely evening out, especially as the tickets were free. We might do it again sometime, it's fine so long as you don't mind queuing for a while.