To sleep, perchance to dream

Thanks to Pickfords losing half the parts to Tom's cot during the move, our little man is now sleeping in a 'big boy' bed. Luckily, we had a spare single bed that my mum had given us when she turned my sister's bedroom into a sewing room (don't worry, she did wait until she moved out!). It is an orthopaedic bed, so it is quite high and Tom can't actually get in it on his own. However, since he still wears his sleeping bag to bed and doesn't climb out, this hasn't been a problem. Until yesterday. He has been favouring 'rest time' over nap time recently, but after a busy weekend he has been sleepy the last two lunchtimes. Yesterday, he seemed to be making more noise than usual, but seemed happy until all went quiet, signifying that he had gone to sleep. I went to wake him a bit later and found him curled up asleep on the floor in his sleeping bag. He had obviously climbed out of bed to play and then been unable to get back in again. The poor thing couldn't have slept well because he woke up very cranky. He had the imprint from the carpet on his little cheek and wasn't at all happy. Needless to say, I felt very guilty for not rescuing my poor boy from his uncomfortable slumber sooner. I found chocolate buttons to be a suitable remedy for both his crankiness and my guilt!

"Sleeping baby" by Grant

Ten random facts about Tom

1. He can recite the alphabet and can recognise all its letters.
2. He can count to 50 and read numbers up to 30.
3. He can count backwards from ten.
3. He calls milk 'cuddy', a word he made up himself and we have no idea where it came from.
4. He loves vegetables and will eat half a cucumber in one sitting if given the chance.
5. He can read about 20 words, and is rapidly learning more.
6. He knows all the colours, including gold and silver.
7. He knows the order of the colours of the rainbow.
8. He will try to send me out of the room if he knows he is about to do something he shouldn't ("Mummy in the kitchen!")
9. He loves cars and is always trying to get us to take him for a drive.
10. He is very hard to tell off because he thinks it's funny when you get cross with him!

Art for art's sake

Last Sunday was rather wet and miserable, so we set the Podlings up at their little table with some painting. Tom hasn't done any painting in quite some time, and this was Lily's first ever painting session. They both had a wonderful time and Lily quickly picked up what she was supposed to do with the brushes and paint pots. She took to painting like a duck to water and was thoroughly engrossed for about half an hour. At this point I thought I'd be clever and make a start on their tea while they were painting. Let me give you a piece of advice...never leave a one year old with paints alone, even for a second! I turned my back long enough to take something out of a packet and turned around to see Lily happily painting the walls. Well, her paper was full so you can see her point! Luckily I had the foresight to buy washable paints, so it cleaned off very easily, but I decided to call an end to the painting for one day. She was most upset...I think she would have happily sat their for hours. Tom, being the careful and precise boy that he is, stayed remarkably clean throughout the painting session (even when he was pretending to be Jackson Pollock and splattering paint everywhere), but Lily managed to get herself well and truly coated. You should have seen the colour of my sink after I cleaned them up!

At the end of the painting session, Lily looking a little worse for wear!

Clean again! Having supper and colouring time after their bath

Brotherly love

Despite being chronically incapable of sharing his toys with Lily, Tom does seem very fond of his baby sister. In this picture, they had both just woken up from their naps, so were both still in their sleeping bags and not quite ready to get down and play. In a rare quiet moment, the two of them sat cuddled up on my lap, with Tom holding Lily's hand. They can be so sweet to one another, as long as Lily doesn't want to play with anything that Tom might consider to be his! We're working on that!

Ice cream on a hot day

I'll save the flake for later

Mark's mum and dad came round last week to help us with some more unpacking and to make a start on taming the wild, wild garden. My father-in-law was working on the front lawn when an ice cream van went past, so he treated us all to an ice cream. Although the Podlings have had ice cream before, this was the first time they had had it in a cornet from the ice cream man. As you can see from the pictures, it was a big hit!

Serious business this ice cream thing.

Bother!

It's alright, the dirt wipes off the ice cream. Mummy says she hopes it wipes off my dress too!

Mmmm, ice cream!

(As a matter of interest, a neighbour stopped to chat while we were all in the garden and apparently the lawn hadn't been mowed in over a year! You can imagine what it looked like! I'm happy to report that my father-in-law has done a wonderful job on the lawn and it now looks fantastic. We were all thrilled with how well the lawn has come up despite being neglected for so long.)

Random Podling picture

For those of you missing the photos of the Podlings, here is one I took of them enjoying their first snack time in the garden in the first week we moved in. I'm hoping to be able to post more soon.

On cake decoration...

Have you ever used those little silver balls to decorate cakes, buns, biscuits, etc.? Well, I have a little tub of them in my baking cupboard ready for when I want to decorate my baking. The thing I noticed today about these silver balls is just how spherical they are. 'Well, obviously!', you might say! However, my point is that spherical objects have a tendency to roll, particularly when dropped from about, say, shoulder height of a one year old! This afternoon. my darling little lady got into my baking cupboard without me seeing (we have yet to fit the cupboard locks to the doors) and stole this little tub of silver balls. I was cooking their tea at the time and I just heard a 'shake, shake' and thought 'Oh, she must have found one of her rattles'. Until the 'shake, shake' was followed up with a 'clatter, clatter' and a 'someone broke my toy' wail from Lily. I looked around to find a very sad face staring at the hundreds of silver balls that were slowly rolling across my kitchen floor.

I can't emphasize enough how hard those little balls are to clear up from a hard floor. They just rolled away from the hoover and the dustpan and brush approach just served to spread them further. They were everywhere! They had even rolled into the dining room and the hallway. In the end, I had to just pick the horrible little things up by hand, one by one! Think I'll just use icing next time I have the urge to beautify my baking!

Service announcement

We are having a bit of trouble getting a decent Internet connection set up at our new home, hence the paucity of posts lately. It is really frustrating because I have SO much to blog about! We are all fine and slowly unpacking and settling in. The Podlings love the new house, which has made the transition easy for them. Hopefully we can get the Internet sorted out soon and it will be business as usual on the blog again. Please check back occasionally to see if I've got things up and running again.