Wednesday 26 August 2009

Oh, yes, Lara! how could I forget!?

What with me enjoying myself last weekend, I've not been able to update followers with Lara's latest news. She's settled back in at home; if anything she still seems a bit more clingy than when she went away, getting upset if one of us leaves the room without her. She is definitely saying more things more, her favourite words are "Misha" and "NO!". Misha, of course, refers to Mishka, and No is almost exclusively directed at Jackson, who loves to jump up at all of us, and this can bother Lara when he's persistent. We do step in to stop him, but also we're very happy to let Lara tell him, in no uncertain terms, "NO!". I think she gets it off her Mama...

Lara's sleeping has been almost as good as ever. She does take longer to go off to sleep now, and cries a little when whomever puts her bed leaves the room, but once she's asleep, that's it. She might wake for a drink of water just as we go to bed, but since I came back on Monday, we've not had to attend to her at all during the night. In fact, on Monday morning she slept until 8.20am, making us late for work, and this morning it was a more normal 7.30am.

Her speech is getting very interesting. She "babbles" an awful lot around us, although she gets shy and quiet around anyone else, but there are definite attempts from her to mimic what we say. Besides Mama and Papa, she's very good with facial features, she's been able to say (and point correctly to) nose, eye, cheek and "hooo-ahh" (I'll let Olga correct my transliteration! It's the Russian for ear, and seems to be much easier for Lara to say) for a couple of months now. I'm encouraging Olga to speak to Lara in Russian as much as possible, seeing as Lara will get all the English she needs at nursery, and yesterday in the car, we were trying to teach Lara to say "machina", the Russian for car, and we definitely got a 3-syllable word back, that was very close to machina. It might have been a coincidence, but we'll keep trying.
She understands much more than she can express in words. She knows the hand actions to the "Wheels on the Bus" song, she knows to say "shhhhh" and puts a finger to her lips when they are coming to the end of the programmes on the Bedtime Hour on Cbeebies and the characters are going to sleep.

Just to balance things, and so I'm not only ever posting the cutest photos of her on here, here are a couple that show her other character traits, or show that there are moments when she's merely normal, like the rest of us!
Here she can pout with the style of Kate Moss in her prime..



Here she is with Luke, who is the spitting image of his father, Terry; neither of them will be pleased if I keep this photo for the next 16 years or so. They were in the pub at the time in Limassol, so we'll forgive them!



And just to show that those photos are rarities, here is a more normal photo of Lara, seconds after the previous one was taken, probably when she realised Mama was taking her photo!



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I survived, as Gloria Gaynor promised

Can you tell which is me? The answer will follow...



The Rewind Festival was great. The weather was almost perfect, just a little rain on the first afternoon, but all gone by the evening, then lovely and warm for Saturday and Sunday - causing me a bit of Panda-Eyes problems with wearing sunglasses all day and no sun cream. The facilities was really good, and whilst the food and drink in the concert area was predictably over-priced, things like the Comedy Store Tent and Silent Disco were free. The Silent Disco was one of the major highlights - a tent of 500 people all wearing wireless headphones, listening to one of two channels, with different songs on each channel. It was relatively silent, all you could hear if you were outside the tent were 500 people singing badly to one song or another at the same time.

There were lots of people dressed up in 80s gear, our particular theme was Only Fools and Horses, and if you couldn't guess who I was from the first photo, this will give it away..


Yep, Rodney the Plonker. That suitcase went everywhere with me that night (and I mean everywhere, I got some funny looks in the gents, and in the disco).

Even the music was good, which for most people was the whole reason to attend, but for us was just a bonus on top of everything else. Gloria Gaynor closed the concert out on Sunday evening, with a rendition of I Will Survive, I'll post a snippet up here once I get a copy off Chris.

Well done to Chris R for arranging it, it was a brilliant weekend, helped along by an Ashes win (we listened on the radio before going out on the Sunday evening) and a sneaky couple of hours with Olga and Lara in Henley on Sunday morning! Not traditional Stag Do etiquette, but OK given that I'd hardly seen them for 2 weeks before then!

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