A quieter time (apart from the fireworks)

Bonfire weekend passed uneventfully, apart from one of our neighbours having a visit from Fireman Sam and his cronies - his fire had got a little larger than he intended, and I think a neighbour whose garden backs onto his phoned the fire brigade, to protect his fence. Lara thought it was wonderful.
We had a nice visit from Auntie Cath & Uncle Nick, with cousins William and Elizabeth on Saturday morning, Lara was soooo excited. After that I took her to Littlewick Green for a Dad's & Kids afternoon - a pub lunch followed by a GeoCaching walk - you use your GPS on your smart phone to find "treasure" hidden by other GeoCachers. It was only a mile and a half's walk, but it was good fun for the kids, although I probably carried Lara at least a third of the way:

On Sunday we played a bit on our new (second hand) Nintendo Wii, then took the dogs for a good walk, this time Lara walked the whole way, probably another mile and a half. Lara modelled for some photos of herself holding photos of herself:

Olga is "showing" more and more now, as her body recovers from the pneumonia, to the point where I suggested she should use her bump to ensure she got a seat on the bus yesterday, when she went to Reading to see Lucy.  Lara has become very accostomed to the idea of a baby brother, and the hugs for him have multiplied. We've started buying odd bits and pieces for him that we reckon we'll need, first on the list was a very portable Samsonite pop-up travel cot, identical to one we borrowed off Anton and Becca when we took Lara to Russia when she was 6 months old. It was perfect for that trip, and Olga won one on eBay for a fiver, with the seller living only 2 miles away, we couldn't say no!

Junior Update - 20 week scan

Olga had her 20-week scan this morning, and even after all the trouble and illness over the past 5 weeks, Junior was given a clean bill of health by the sonographer, he was happy with everything he saw, and Junior is on the line or above in the 4 graphs that were put into Olga's notes for whatever measurements were taken. What size would Junior be if Olga had been fit and healthy for that time!! :-)
As I say, the sonographer was able to see everything he needed to see, and something he didn't need to see, but asked if we wanted to see it - a little dingle-dangle! Junior is a he :-)
Still all on course for March 27th then. Tonight we break it to Lara that she's going to have a brother, and not the sister that she's been seeing when she looks into Mama's bellybutton...
Here he is:

Mama & Papa - a study in pencil

Lara brought this home from nursery earlier this week. It's not their policy to teach the kids to draw, more to encourage them to learn on their own. Lara seems to have learnt how to draw people, and faces in particular, over the last month or so, and this has been her best effort to date. She even got our hair right!

Walking Jackson

Just a quick one from a few weeks ago when the weather was nice enough to walk the dogs to and from Lara's nursery. Lara didn't walk Jacky for long, but she enjoyed it for a few minutes.

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Halloween, Logic and Languages

We're not into trick-or-treating, but we don't mind if other kids want to do it, and Lara looked forward to dressing up as a wicked witch when she got home from nursery. I'd stocked up on a load of sweets, but we only had one group of visitors, which means someone's got to eat those sweets over the next few days, oh well... :-)
Here she is with the pumpkins she helped Olga to carve on Sunday (Lara designed her pumpkin, the one on the left, with only minimal help):

 

Her logical mind continues to amuse me. On Monday, while eating tea, I asked her what she would be doing the next day (Tuesday is her gymnastics day, and she knows this very well). She claimed not to know, so this is how the exchange progressed:

Papa: What are you going to do tomorrow, Lara?
Lara: What day is it tomorrow?
Papa: Well, it's Monday today, so what comes after Monday?
Lara: Tomorrow.

Genius. I couldn't argue with her.

In her own quiet way she's increasing her Russian vocabulary too. Last week I bought some children's books that help with English to Russian vocabulary (I can use them too!) and some flashcards in Russian, and she has enjoyed trying to learn some of the words, but I was astounded how many she knew of the flashcards after only one or two evenings of practise when it's Olga's turn to take her to bed. Without trying to be too pushy, we're encouraging her to use Russian words for simple things like colours, and numbers, and hopefully as she uses it more, the even more interested she'll become, and hopefully it will snowball into her using full sentences in the future.