"When's December?"

It's properly chilly now, and Lara's new hat and gloves have come out, which doubles the time it takes to get her out of the house in the mornings, while we get each finger into its own "house" in each glove.Other than a runny nose, she's fine now, all over whatever was bothering her last week. At the moment she's obsessing about her birthday party - fortunately Olga and I are invited, but she's asking the awkward question of "When's December?" - answers on a postcard to me about how to respond to that! It'll only get worse after Saturday, when we're going to the 3rd birthday party of one of the boys in her nursery class (her former beau, James).

Last Saturday was her first trip to the cinema. Olga took her to the Kiddies session in the morning, where she could play with toys (I believe she drove a ferrari) before watching Space Chimps 2. It didn't seem to matter that she'd not seen Space Chimps 1, and it was only 75 minutes long, which was just about long enough for her to concentrate on a film at the moment. Whilst she still loves Peppa Pig, she has graduated up into watching Toy Story 1 and 2, although she's seen them both a few times now and it'll occupy her for half an hour before she gets bored. We've taken to putting The Simpsons on while we eat tea now, and she loves that, so the makers can feel vindicated that they've created a cartoon that appeals to all ages!

Mishka didn't escape attention last weekend, it was time for his quarterly strip. It's a pain (for us and him) but everyone feels better after it, although he might not be so grateful at the moment when it's zero degrees outside in the morning when he goes for his walk:

It'll be Jackson's turn next, but at least his strip won't take all day.  Mishka did provide enough fur to stuff a large pillow, or make a medium sized jumper, but we just threw it out.  Perhaps I should save it and use it to lag the loft? It'll keep a lot of heat in.

Finally, here's a photo I took from my office window on Tuesday afternoon, before this cold, clear snap hit. It' a good sign for Waitrose - those portacabins at the end of the rainbows house the workmen building a new Watirose next to our office:

Under the weather

Obviously that's not Lara, but it represents how she was on Monday morning. She's had a bit of a cough over the weekend, and on Monday wasn't quite herself, but she went to nursery anyway. Olga got a call before lunch that Lara had been sick, and she dashed there to collect her. The poor luv was sitting on the floor on her own in her room , still wearing her sick-stained clothes, hugging a bucket the staff had given her. She just burst into tears when she saw Olga and went for a big hug. At the time Olga didn't question why the staff hadn't cleaned her up and given her some comforting, but we'll be asking that tomorrow. Anyway, it seems to be nothing serious at all, and Lara was her normal self by Monday afternoon, but has had to stay out of nursery until tomorrow afternoon.
Olga herself isn't on tip-top form after having some back teeth out on Friday, so it's TLC all round on Deeds Grove at the moment.

Sleepyhead

Lara had a restless night, interrupted by an annoying cough, although Tixylix helped. She woke at 6.30 but didn't do enough over the monitor to convince me that she was ready to get up - if she's ready, she'll shout "It's morning! I want to get up!", but this was more of a mournful, tired "Paaaaappaaaaaaa", so I left her alone and indeed she went back to sleep. After letting the boys run about in the garden I went in to wake her up at 8am, opening the curtains and window, and turning on the TV, and this was the result:



Sorry about the brevity but my ancient phone only allows me to shoot 15 seconds of video at a time.

Postponed cricket, so shopping instead

My cricket match at Lords was postponed because of the weather, and should be rearranged for next summer, so this gave us a family weekend to enjoy. On Saturday we went shopping in Uxbridge, just missing the chance to see Peter Andre selling his new fragrance in The Perfume Shop there by 10 minutes, oh dear never mind. Olga had promised to buy Lara a trumpet to go along with her guitar, drums and keyboard, and we've found that Jackson responds to a couple of the notes with howling and barking, it's quite funny. Bizarrely Mishka doesn't react at all, I guess all dogs are different.
Then yesterday, to give Olga some time to get ready for her trip to Norway, I took Lara to PlayTrain, close to our house. It's an indoor kiddies play centre, and it was nice to be able to sit down and drink a coffee and watch her play without hovering over her, like we had to the last time we were there, when she hadn't been walking for long. She ran around in there for 90 minutes, working up quite a sweat and an appetite; she demolished a roast lamb dinner and a strawberry cornetto for tea.

Single Parent this week

Olga's away working in Oslo this until Thursday, so I'm in charge on my own. The boys will have to cope with shorter walks and playing in the back garden, although they will be spoilt with the pigs trotters I bought from Morrisons yesterday. Tomorrow morning might be rather hectic, what with 4 breakfasts to get ready. The boys might only be dogs, but they still need feeding!

Lara's latest passion is to ask "Why?" in response to anything she's asked to do or told about, it can get quite annoying after the 6th "Why?" in a row; she didn't like it when I did it to her in the car on the way home from nursery today - "No, Papa, be quiet. Don't ask why!"
Toilet training is going well still, she's been able to tell us in advance when she needs to go for some months now, but she can also hold it when she has to, like this morning in the car on the way to nursery, she was quite desperate but held it until I could find a place to pull over - she's not shy about tinkling on the grass verge if necessary!