Planet Airedale

So Mishka doesn't feel left out, we've joined the Planet Airedale website. It has a good forum for swapping stories, ideas, photos etc with other airedale owners, and when I posted this photo

up there in the "Hello, I'm New" forum, we received many compliments on it, and have been encouraged to submit it for potential publication in the Planet Airedale 2009 calendar. So I'll send that one (and a few others) in and see if the little fella becomes Mr September or whatever!
We'll also hope to find him other local airedales to play with, as he doesn't get the chance to socialise much with other dogs, and maybe we'll find him a girlfriend... if I am enjoying being a father, I'm sure he will too!

Lara Finds First Gear

Yep, Lara can now definitely crawl forwards. She'd mastered reversing some weeks ago, but had been reluctant to move into first gear. She has taken a healthy interest in the contents of the bottom drawer of her chest of drawers in the nursery, and after her bath each night this week she has made a charge for it on all fours. She's only going a couple of feet at the moment, but it does mean it's time to buy another baby-gate for the doorway of the nursery!

Quick Lara Update

Olga took Lara to be weighed today, and as we suspected, she's actually lost 2 ounces in the last 4 weeks, putting her down to just above the 25th percentile. Still no alarms bells going off with the Health Visitor, well, not loudly anyway. If she drops below the 25th percentile line then we'll need to take some restorative action. Given that she's been ill for 3 of the last 4 weeks, we're not surprised that she's lost some weight, so we think the best thing to try now is giving her more of Mum's milk as well as her usual jar & fresh food, as she used to be a little fatty on the 75th percentile when she was on a 100% milk diet. We'd only plan to do this for as long as it takes to get her weight back up so we don't spoil the weaning process too much.
She was quite perky last night before bed, with only a little bit of a runny nose and not much coughing, but after sleeping well till nearly 3am she had a coughing fit and woke herself up which upset her (and us!), so she's not had a full night's sleep for weeks either, which isn't helping any of us. She's fine in the mornings and we didn't have any complaints from the nursery yesterday about her runny nose or cough, so it's just something that affects her badly at night, which doesn't help when Olga takes her to see the GP during the day, as at that time Lara seems fine. Speaking of which, her next appointment is Thursday morning, so we'll see what the GP comes up with as a course of treatment then.
I'm sure I saw Lara making forward progress with her crawling last night too, which is a first! So far she's very good at going backwards but was having trouble finding first gear, but maybe she's heading in the right direction now, literally!
Olga also reported that Lara, when put on her playmat in the dining room today, found her own toybox and got the lid off it without any help from Olga... she'll be cooking her own meals next.

Ice cream van?!

I solved a mystery today.
I've been hearing an ice-cream van in the mornings when I've been walking Mishka, and in the heat of summer I didn't think too much of it, but it's been going on recently and I've wondered who wants a 99 at 8.45am?
It turns out it's not an ice-cream van in the Deeds Grove estate serving kids, it's a sandwich van serving the offices in the trading estate behind Deeds Grove. I was almost tempted to go and get a bacon butty myself.

Wow, a week's past, what's happened?!

It's been a long old week! Firstly, the weather was lovely last weekend, and we enjoyed an impromtu curry and beers and Chris & Cara's last Friday night, trying out their gas heater on the patio, and playing a quiz on their Xbox-thingy.

On Saturday we had a nice lazy day, we went to see Cara sing with her Descant Housewives group in the park in Marlow, then popped into a nice pub on the way home for a drink with Lara (and had a giggle at some of the photos we'd just had developed from those throwaway cameras that we had on the tables at our wedding, only 2 years ago!).

On Sunday morning we went for a lovely walk along the Thames from Marlow to Bourne End and back with Mishka, which made a nice change for him, as we've not had time to take him out for a long walk for some time. It had been his 2nd birthday on Saturday so it seemed only fair to pamper him a little today.

Everyone seemed to be recovering from recent ailments, although Olga was suffering more than the rest of us with a sore throat and being generally bunged up.
Monday was, of course, Olga's XX(st/nd/rd/th) birthday. I could tell when we woke (OK, when Lara woke us) at 6am that she wasn't on top of the world as she turned down the offer of a glass of Bucks Fizz in favour of a cup of tea. I went down to make it, to be greeted by Mishka, who seemed OK, but it became clear soon enough that he'd been sick in the night, probably from the exotic food treat I'd given him on Sunday night (I could say what it was but I won't in case there are people of a sensitive disposition reading this!). So Olga's Birthday cup of tea was delayed while I cleared that up, and it just seemed a shame that Olga and Mishka were both ill on this big day.
Olga was well enough to buy some lovely cakes for her workmates in the office though :-) Yum.

Her main birthday present arrived at lunchtime, just as I popped home to check on Mishka... here it is (not the most normal of presents!):

Yup, a full-size table tennis table! Of course it didn't arrive assembled, that took some time on Tuesday to get it put together. I'd noticed when we were camping in Norfolk how keen Olga was on "TT" and she's pretty good at it too, so it seemed like it would be something that would really make her happy, and as she'd been ill in the run-up to her birthday I'd hoped it would put a smile on her face.
We had hoped to go out on Monday evening for a meal to celebrate, but Olga had worked out that her bad cold had now become a case of sinusitis, and she wouldn't enjoy a nice meal in a restaurant, so we've not gone out officially yet to celebrate her birthday.
Even the weather conspired against us, it rained most of the middle of the week so we couldn't use the TT table.

Olga went to see her GP on Tuesday to confirm she had sinusitis, and had Wednesday off work sick, so I had the pleasure of taking Lara into nursery on my own, which I enjoyed, it seemed nice to be an independent Dad!
Thursday wasn't such a good day, Lara has started to return to having a runny nose, and Olga had started a course of antibiotics for her sinusitis on Wednesday. However, whether this was a coincidence or not, we're not sure, but Lara started being sick again on Thursday. She's only been sick when she's been ill, and it wasn't a pleasant experience after she'd seemed to enjoy a big tea.
Nursery rules state she needs to stay away for 48 hours after being sick, so Olga and Lara were "off sick" on Friday. It was such a lovely morning, I couldn't help but feel lifted when I took Mishka for his morning walk. Olga has decided to postpone taking any more antibiotics for the time being (there's no evidence they help with sinusitis anyway!) so we can see if they are causing Lara problems or not. Lara's not been sick on Friday, but we're not jumping to conclusions yet.
What was nice today was the weather - I made sure I got home by 5.30 so we could actually use the TTtable:

Lara was an interested spectator, for a while at least.
The sleeping arrangments are interesting at the moment, last night and tonight Lara has not wanted to go to sleep in her bed at 7.30-8pm as usual - last night because she'd been sick and tonight because she was just happy, so we're happy to let her sleep in her pram downstairs with us in the evening. Mishka must be confused, we only let him sleep in the lounge on the nights when the milkman's not due the next morning, and now the baby is sleeping in his "bedroom" in the evening!
Anyway she needs to work on her TT technique, although we'll not trust her with a real TT ball yet!