6 more sleeps - till our holiday!

Olga and I are still beavering away at work, but Lara finished school for the Christmas holidays today. My last work day should be tomorrow (fingers crossed) and Olga will finish on Friday. However, exciting thoughts about our holiday are creeping in, such as thinking about what to pack when the predicted temperature in Calgary on Christmas day is a low of -27 deg C and a high of -7. On a warmer note, I've just been looking at the brochure for the events running at the hotel where we're staying for three nights over New Year: Christmas & New Year activities.
I daren't think about any more parts of the holiday yet, it's distracting me from finishing work that needs doing first!
More posts about what the us and kids have been up to before we leave, I promise!

Happy 5th Birthday Lara

 It was Lara's 5th birthday today, and to celebrate she invited some friends to our house after school. We organised an Entertainer - "Dozy Dave" - and had the usual party food and cake afterwards. It went very well, so much so that Lara wants to book Dozy Dave for her next birthday, and is working on who she should invite.

More about Lara - an Oscar, maybe?!

Lara's school nativity play will be Whoops a Daisy Angel; whether it's a coincidence or not, we haven't asked, but the kids will be performing it on Monday 10th December, Lara's 5th birthday, and she will be playing the lead character!
She's had to bring home a script, so we've been practising her 7 lines, although when I came over all Steven Speilberg last night and tried to go through some lines with her, Lara clearly knows them all already from rehearsals they are doing at school, and gave me the full-on Prima Donna, I-know-this-already, who-do-you-think-you-are? treatment.
Even before we knew she was going to have the main part in the play, we'd looked into what drama classes there were locally, as Olga had done drama when she was younger, and enjoyed it. So as a happy coincidence yesterday was Lara's first drama class, and she enjoyed so much that when asked if she would like to stay for another hour and do "musical theatre", she did that too!
I wasn't there, and parents weren't allowed in the room where the lessons were taking place, so we're relying on Lara telling us what she did, which she's reluctant to do, but she wants to go again, and it keeps her entertained for a couple of hours after school one day, so that's fine with us. She'll miss her next lessons because they'll fall on her birthday, but she will have been in a play that day anyway.

So, time to get down to Ladbrokes and put some money on a Winter Olympics Gold medal and an Oscar. But which one first?!

Lara & the 2022 Winter Olympics??

Lara is progressing steadily with her skiing, she passed Level 3 on Sunday, and starts Level 4 next Sunday.  It's at this level that things can start to get interesting, as she will be learning to turn - so far everything has been about controlling her speed and balance. She's not the fastest in her little group, but she rarely falls over and seems to be in control most of the time. The most important thing is she is still excited about going to lessons, and hopefully as she continues to improve and progress her desire to want to ski more and more will develop. A holiday in Canada in three weeks time can only help that, even if we don't go skiing ourselves we'll certainly go and visit some ski resorts.
Given that it's unlikely we'll be able to ski in Canada, we wanted to give Lara the chance to enjoy another Winter sport that will be easy to participate in, so she is also having ice skating lessons now! She started 3 weeks ago, with one-to-one lessons with an instructor called Kirsty at Altrincham Ice Rink. So far she's had two 30 minute lessons with Kirsty, and one session with Olga in between, just for fun. Much like the skiing, Lara seems to have really taken to it, and was all smiles during and after her first lesson, which was key to seeing if we booked any more lessons. It's all gone so well that she'll have 45 minute lessons from now on with Kirsty until we go on holiday, which should get her to a level where her and Olga can skate together while we're on holiday, which will be lovely.

Danny's Firsts: Antibiotics, Nursery Time and Teeth

Last week Danny had his first trip to the GP for an illness - he developed a high temperature, and was sick a couple of times, and whilst he showed no other symptons of being poorly, it was enough for the Doc to prescribe antibiotics. This started 3 days before he was due to have his first settling-in session at his new nursery, so we delayed that by 24 hours before we were sure he was on the mend. The antibiotics worked very quickly, bringing him back to his usual self within 48 hours.

So on Thursday last week he had his first settling-in session, an hour with Olga in the baby room with him, and he was a little clingy, which was to be expected. On Friday he had an hour in the room whilst Olga and I filled in a multitude of forms in another room, and he was fine then, and even had some tea and half a pot of yoghurt. This didn't work out quite as hoped, two hours later, back at home, he was covered in a rash. It didn't seem to bother him at all, so we decided to just monitor it, but by Saturday afternoon it seemed to be getting worse, and a blister had formed on his lower back, so Olga called NHS Direct. They reassured us that it didn't sound like it required any emergency treatment, that it was most likely a reaction to the yoghurt, or possibly it was chicken pox! Now we're a few days past that, it's not developed into chicken pox, and it's receded on its own, so we'll assume it was the yoghurt, so we'll keep him off that for a few more months.

On Monday we left him at nursery for an hour, and he was fine, so on Tuesday Lara came with us to drop him off in the morning, before school:

He could have stayed all day there, but we thought half a day would be best, so after his post-lunch nap Olga brought him home. Today he stayed until 4pm, and only slept for 15 minutes during the day, which is a lot less than he would normally have. It didn't appear to affect him, he was happy all day, and just had a 30 minute power-nap once he got home. We'll see what time he wakes up in the morning though!


His other news is his two lower front teeth have arrived!