More on Lara's Birthday

Phew, what an exhausting evening! Given that we weren't going to have a party, it turned into quite a party! First Lara opened her cards and presents, and in typical fashion was equally impressed with her balloons as much as she was with her lovely presents! Kids, eh!? Then she had a very big tea involving quiche, pizza and birthday cake, amongst other things. There was an "In the Night Garden" theme to the cake and one of the presents, and indeed you can see Igglepiggle eyeing up the cake in one of these photos.

Take a good look at Mishka in his fluffy coat, he's off to the salon tomorrow morning for a strip. Poor lad will be freezing for a few weeks!

We'll put some more videos up on YouTube later of Lara with her presents.

Lara & Mishka, best friends!

I've not seen Lara since I got back from the US, Olga had taken her to nursery already by the time I got home from the airport. One thing I've noticed is how much I want to see Lara, and want her to see me. It's a different feeling from how I miss Olga - I can, and do, talk to Olga regularly on the phone, so that feeling of separation isn't the same. So I bought a very cute little Reindeer doll on the plane (not that Lara's spoilt! The cheerleader dress and the tracksuit are practical things :-) ) and will give that to her when we go to collect her this afternoon.
Olga give me a little fix of Lara though today with these video clips she recorded of Lara playing with Mishka and his toys.

Did we speak too soon?

We came back down to earth with a slight bump last night when Lara showed signs of having a cold; the symptoms have come on rather quickly if she only picked up the bug at nursery, maybe she got something at the wedding over the weekend. Either way she was pretty snotty last night, and I spent the night in her room sshing her when she stirred, but she seemed brighter and less snotty this morning, and her temperature had gone down from 37.8 to 37.2 overnight, so we'll monitor her today and see if she's up to going to nursery tomorrow - they have rules on whether kiddies can attend if they're ill, of course.

On the Mishka front, he was of course happy to see us, but the kennels owner told us he'd not eaten a thing over the weekend. We took him home and prepared some food for him, and he tucked in and ate most of it, then in the evening and this morning he polished his food off again, so we're happy he's not ill, he just wasn't a happy doggy while he was in there. It does throw a question mark over leaving him in kennels for any longer than a weekend, but also we hope that now he knows that we're not leaving him there for good, and next time he might be more relaxed. We'll also tell the kennel owner about this when we next leave him so they can keep a close eye on him.

Lara's new Maclaren & life with Mishka

We've been very happy with the Quinny car seat / pram thingy so far, but we felt it would be too cumbersome to take with us on holiday, so Olga bought a Maclaren Quest buggy today from Mothercare. It's lightweight and folds down easily, and is suitable for babies from 3 months old, and it reclines so Lara will be able to sleep in it on Russian railway platforms while we wait for trains.
Lara is modelling it in the "New Photos" web album on the left, and it's here too in this video where she's teasing a newly-trimmed Mishka:


Oh, we'd also bought Lara her first high chair, she looks pretty small in it at the moment but by the time we're back from Russia she might well be starting on more solidy-type foods and we wanted to get her used to sitting in it. There are photos of her looking extra cute in it in the New Photos album too.