Reduce, reuse, recycle!

"A book that is shut is but a block." ~Thomas Fuller

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There was me thinking I'd never have any use for my university texts again. Emma has a cold at the moment, so I'm using my old chemistry books to elevate the head end of her Moses basket. Probably the most use I've ever had for old P.W. Atkins!

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Who's a clever girl then...?

Emma took hold of her own bottle today and had a go at feeding herself.
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(Apologies for the blurry picture. I think the Podlings have had their greasy mitts all over the camera lens again!)

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4 months old

Emma turned four months old today. I don't know what she weighs at the moment as I haven't taken her to clinic for a couple of weeks, but she still fits her 0-3 month clothes comfortably. This has unfortunately put her out of sync with our stash of baby girl's clothes. Lily was a May baby and grew quicker, so all of our 0-3 months girl's clothes are for the summer. Oh well, that's why cardigans were invented I suppose! Also gives me a good excuse to buy a few extra little outfits...
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Emma is a very vocal baby and has a very hilarious (and loud) line of baby talk. She will sometimes lie in her moses basket at bedtime, babbling loudly as she drifts off to sleep. It's all I can do not to laugh out loud when she does that. Sadly, she never went back to sleeping through the night when she got over her colds, but at least I only have one night feed. She wakes between 3.30am and 4.30am, feeds very quickly and goes straight back to sleep, so I can't complain.
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She has now well and truly found her hands and likes to grasp at objects when they come into view. These objects include, but are not limited to, my clothes, my hair and, just recently, my lips (ouch!). She has a small wooden rattle that she delights in shaking, though I am in constant fear she is going to clock herself on the nose with it!
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Emma remains a happy and contented baby and continues to delight us all with her smiles. She is growing up much too quickly, but other than that I can't fault her!
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Sisters

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This sweet picture of Lily and Emma might have been sweeter had I managed to wipe all of Lily's breakfast off her face first! It's still a nice photo though. I can't believe how quickly Emma is growing. I keep telling her to slow down, but she just ignores me!

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Please release me...

...let me go!!

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This photo cracks me up!

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Baking today

Front to back, Millionaire's Shortbread (gorgeous, but about 1000 Calories a bite!), a jar of homemade caramel (for on ice-cream, toast, etc.), chocolate crispy cakes and fairy cakes (decorated by Tom and Lily). Not bad for a day's work.

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I had something of a baking day today. I suspect at least some of the day's efforts will be going straight to my hips. Oh well!

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A Very Grand Thing

Some of my old Winnie the Pooh toys on Tom's chest of drawers. They don't look twenty years old do they!

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Okay, so I spoke too soon about Tom not liking change. Tom saw the new pictures in Lily's room and decided he wanted something done to his room too. First of all, he requested that I put pictures of his "school family" (his friends) on his wall. Once I explained that I couldn't very well go around snapping photos of children I don't know, he settled on a Winnie the Pooh theme. Unfortunately, he prefers the soulless Disney version to the charming E.H Shepard illustrations, but that did at least make it easy to achieve. I was also fond of Winnie the Pooh as a girl and I still have all my stuffed toys from that time. He now has a charming Winnie the Pooh room and I have so far spent nothing. I will buy some frames so I can put some pictures on his walls and I may or may not treat him to cheap duvet cover, but for now I hope he likes the new look. Despite the change being at his urging, I fully expect him to come home from school and ask me to change everything back the way it was. I thought I would share some photos of how the room looks now, just in case it is business as usual again tonight!
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We took the Podlings to the Disney Store as a treat a couple of weeks ago. They were allowed to choose one toy and Tom chose this cushion. He also has a large stuffed Tigger on his bed that was given to him as a baby.
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Winnie the Pooh is now hitching a ride with the cats in Tom's hot air balloon mobile
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I managed to sneak some E.H Shepard illustrations high up on Tom's biplane shelf! His original bedroom theme was transport, so he has a cars and trucks duvet cover, aeroplane and hot air balloon mobiles, this shelf and toy cars and trucks everywhere. In our old house he had transport motifs on his walls too, but we never got around to doing the same thing in this house.

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Pottering about

Clockwise from top left: Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddleduck, Benjamin Bunny and Hunca Munca

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We've finally made a start on sorting out the spare room in an attempt to turn it into Emma's bedroom by Christmas. As I will be acquiring bits and pieces to decorate Emma's room, I wanted to do a few things in Lily's room too so she doesn't feel left out (Tom resists change in all its forms and doesn't like me to change his bedroom). Lily told me recently that she wanted pictures of animals in her room, so I have decided to 'Potterise' her bedroom with some Beatrix Potter pictures and accessories. I love the works of Beatrix Potter and the colours she used in her illustrations match Lily's pastel pink room beautifully.
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I bought these square pine frames from Hobbycraft a few weeks ago. To make the set of pictures, I simply browsed the Internet until I found some Beatrix Potter pictures of suitable resolution, printed them off and put them in the frames. If you get too close, you can see they were digital images, but they are good enough for our purposes. The advantage of doing it this way is that if Lily wants different pictures on her walls in six months time, I haven't wasted any money on prints. I'll simply print off something different and put them in the frames instead.
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What Lily sees when she's sat in bed.

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I hung the pictures while Lily was at playgroup this morning in order to surprise her when she got home. I told her I had done something nice in her bedroom and when she saw the pictures she exclaimed "I can't aleeve (believe) my eyes!". I plan to get a few more Beatrix Potter things to carry the theme further. I will get most of it on eBay as I don't think it is a good idea to spend too much on children's rooms since they change their minds about what they like so often. I absolutely love decorating the children's rooms though, so sometimes I have a hard job reining myself in!

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Toodle-pip

The Pip Jar..

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Tom loves apples. Given the choice between an apple and sweets, he will almost always choose the apple. His love of the fruit is fuelling his latest obsession...collecting apple pips. Every time he eats an apple, he now gathers the pips from the core and adds them to his 'pip jar'. He even came out of school one day this week with three pips in his hand that he had saved from his lunchtime apple. The pip jar, an old Avent baby bottle, currently resides next to his pillow, so all his pips are transported up to his bedroom immediately following their harvest. I think he plans to fill up the pip jar and then plant them all in the back garden. I'm pretty sure he doesn't realise how long it would take to grow an orchard, but he's having a lot of fun planning it! He's a very patient little boy!
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Snug as a bug

Baby sleeping bags are a fantastic invention. They can't be kicked off like blankets and prevent your baby from waking in the night from cold. As they get older, they also prevent your child from climbing out of their cot! I used sleeping bags for both Tom and Lily, both of whom slept in them until they were around three years old. I didn't put either of them in one until they were in a big cot though. Emma, on the other hand, is such a little fidget that I've had to put her in a sleeping bag at night even though she is still in the Moses basket. I'd put her to bed in the 'feet to foot' position and find her later in the night with her head touching the top of the basket and the blankets way down at the bottom. Thanks to her new pink sleeping bag, she now stays warm and cozy all night long, no matter how much she fidgets. Not to mention that she looks absolutely adorable in it!
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Remembering the traitor Fawkes!

Lily bundled up against the cold

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On Saturday evening, we bundled Tom and Lily up in their winter gear and Mark took them out to a local bonfire and fireworks display. At least that was the plan! When they got there, Lily was too frightened by the noise and the Podlings both decided they didn't want to be there. Lily has been frightened by fireworks the last couple of years, but she seemed so excited about going this year. Sadly it wasn't to be. Mark drove about a mile away from the display and the three of them watched the fireworks from the front seat of the car. This modification to the plan was apparently a great success and they really enjoyed it.

Tom in his winter gear. It is really hard to get an in-focus picture of Tom as he is chronically incapable of sitting still long enough for the camera to focus in low light! ..

Meanwhile, poor Cinders got to stay home and cook! Emma is obviously much too young to enjoy the fireworks, so I put her to bed at seven as usual and then prepared soup, crackers, hot dogs and chocolate covered apples to greet the rest of the family when they got home. The Podlings weren't as chilled as they might have been had they watched the display outdoors, but we all still enjoyed the warming food. Tom and Lily went to bed around nine o'clock having had a lovely evening, though not quite the one Mark and I had originally planned for them!

I made chocolate covered apples and dipped them in sugar strands to decorate. Tom doesn't like chocolate, but he was thrilled with his apple on a stick!
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My cozy autumn centrepiece - a scented candle surrounded by pine cones.
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Art by Lily

Daddy. Those large things at the side of his head are hands, not ears.

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Lily has always had excellent pencil control. At ten months old, she knew how to hold a crayon and which end she had to draw with and she now holds a pencil correctly without ever having been taught. I have really enjoyed watching her drawings develop and just recently she has started doing some lovely drawings of her family. Tom was never remotely interested in drawing anything other than squiggles (still isn't), so these childish drawings are quite new to me and I find them delightful. I particularly like her attention to detail. When she draws herself, Emma or me, we get a straight line for hair. Tom and Mark, on the other hand, get wavy lines because they have curly hair. These drawings have developed entirely without intervention and I think they are so cute.

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Tom. Note the curly hair.

Emma. For some reason the baby gets eyebrows!

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A portrait of the artist as a young girl. Apparently she doesn't have any legs!

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A Duck. This one is my favourite, but it was hard to get a photo of it as she drew it in pencil.

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Consequences

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Note to self: Don't get distracted whilst Lily is painting!

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You'd think I'd have learnt by now wouldn't you! Even after a long soak in the bath, she still went to bed with her arms tinged faintly red.

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