Fun in the garden

Our garden - which I secretly want to be beautiful (and weeded) - is a very child friendly place. We have lots of garden toys in our garden (which at least helps distract from the weeds).

We have this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

We even have a rather beautiful paddling pool, with straddling ladybird arch ( not shown today, as it was getting late when we went out to play).

But of course the very very best thing is this....

resulting in a very happy Ellie...

(of course the real challenge was getting her from the garden to the upstairs shower!)

Merry Christmas

I'm having a lovely time- eating chocolate, playing board/card games and generally feeling content and happy (aided of course, by having a happily sleeping child!).

Hoping you are all having an equally lovely time!

A good day!

Today has been a good day! Our cat, Kitty, who has been missing since Friday has returned - a very lovely couple took her in when she was looking scared out near the main road on Sunday evening, and rang us when they saw the posters we'd put up. Also, a nice plumber has come and made our central heating work downstairs (since we'd turned on the heating, it had only been working upstairs!) . And I managed to make the deadline of end of today, (set Monday) to write a new job description, put together a business case for recruiting to said job, and complete an advertising form for it too - which should hopefully mean that I get a team of 3 instead of 2 which will make a huge difference to my workload. (until someone realises that and gives me considerably more projects to work on... )

I'm applying for the job I've been doing for the last 11 months on a permanent basis - application form (as yet not finished) to be in by Friday so fingers crossed that my good luck holds!

Little mermaid

We rejoined the rather expensive, but rather nice, and very nearby gym recently. In a determined effort to 'get our monies worth' (well we do live in Yorkshire!) we've been swimming at least twice a week with Ellie. She's always been very confident in water, and has been happily swimming (with her own variation of legs and arms) for nearly 2 years now. But in the last couple of weeks she's been determined to swim without armbands. She's not very keen on fighting to stay above water though. She's more of a put your head in, and get on with it kind of swimmer (whereas I'm a 'stiff neck' head out of water type).

Anyway, this style clearly works for her. If Paul and I stand about 10 - 12 feet apart in the pool, she can now happily swim between us. All in one big breath. I'm reluctant to encourage her try much further, until she has learnt to come up for air!

It really reminds me of when she first started walking - watching her toddle between us. I held my breath then, waiting until she made if safely into our arms. And I hold it now whilst she is swimming - even though it's not me under the water! So wierd!

posting

I was going to post properly tonight. I'd half composed the post - but it relied on photos. I've tried 3 times and my computer, Blogger and Photobucket are jointly and separately conspiring in various ways to prevent me...

I will post it soon. But for now, I just wanted to let you know that the thought was there. Now, I'm off to bed with a glass of wine and a book. Technology - hah!

Lost in the Real World

Oh - it's been a long time since I posted. Some of that was due to going away to the Lake District and having so much to post about that I didn't know where to start (Ellie fed giraffes and penguins and lemurs by hand - will post the pictures some time soon!). And then by freak of nature, about 3 weeks ago, we had the most amazing thunderstorm. Incredible - lasting 2 hours with the mid afternoon sky turning black, then illuminated by several simultaneous streaks of lighting in different sections of the sky (only I missed it because I was at work in Wakefield, where it just drizzled a bit). However, apparently the thunderstorm made a surge come down our telephone line and 'fried' (talktalk technical term) our modem. They sent us another one, but the Royal Mail managed to lose it, and the replacement only turned up today.

It's not that I've been completely removed from the internet - I use it daily at work (but at work I struggle to make time to eat my sandwich, I can't imagine finding time to write a post - although I've stolen a couple of minutes to read other blogs whilst munching my lunch).

It's made me realise though, how much I take for granted access to friends through blogs and email, how often I use the 'net to look up a phone number or address for a business, or to find out more about something.

I'd to reflect on my netless time and realise that I have rediscovered face to face social contact, opportunties and time to take up new crafts - but actually, I already did that, and being netless hasn't really altered it....

But anyway, I'm back now. And I realised that I missed posting. So often, I thought I want to post about that (partly to share with you all, and partly just to record and capture something for my own benefit). So maybe my posts will be a little more regular from now on.

Illogical Language

Ellie has started to learn to straighten her duvet when she gets out of bed in the morning. She call this 'making her bed pretty'. In a 'perfect parent' attempt at gentle, non-corrective, instruction, everytime she told me this I said would say "well done Ellie - you've made your bed'.

The conversation would run thus;
"Ellie, are you coming downstairs"
"One minute Mummy, I'm just making my bed pretty"
"Well done Ellie, you've made you bed"
"Yes I've made it pretty, haven't I?"
"Yes you've made it very well Ellie"
"Very pretty, Mummy"

You know - she's right. She's not made the bed - some carpenter employed by Mothercare did that and Daddy assembled it. She's transformed it from being covered with rumbled duvet and made it pretty.