The Move

For completeness, as we say back at the office, I feel we should touch on our house move, which went really quite smoothly for Our Young Heroine. She had a couple of extra days away from the parentals, hanging out with Little Friend Cora and an extra day at daycare, but coped well with all that and the upheaval of a new home. She took to her new bedroom straight away, "Look at that, Alice!", the additional of lots more space, "Look at that, Alice!" and the garden, "Look at that Alice!". We couldn't get a word in edgeways.

There were a couple of days with a few more tears and strops than usual, but she has been sleeping well and enjoying quite literally having the run of the place. We've had to institute a "shoes off" policy so as to maintain some semblance of good relations with the neighbours as she thunders up and down the wooden floors from end to end of the hallway.

I'm pretty sure that there will be tears when the Christmas tree comes down, though. I put it up on Day Two, so Alice most likely thinks it is just part of the furniture.

Christmas Day - Part 2

We went to our dear chums, the Satchwells' house, for Christmas dinner. Little friends Amba and Jack always have all the latest mod cons and this Christmas was no exception. Santa had brought them a Wendy House, which provided hours of amusement for young and old...

Everyone had lovely fun and a yummy lunch/dinner. I had a great Christmas pudding, if I do say so myself...

The weather turned out to be pretty Boltonian, give or take 20 degrees or so, so we huddled around the tree for festive frolics and photos...

Thankfully, Alice consented to change out of the Upsy Daisy top for a few hours, on the condition that she could wear it as pajamas. I'm writing this at 7pm on Boxing Day and she is, in fact, still wearing it. We're still going strong on opening the presents under the tree, but the most recent parcel contained some Iggle Piggle socks. They are several sizes too big as yet, but the likelihood of prizing them off her feet...???

Happy Chrissie everyone!

Christmas Day - Part 1

I completely didn't get around to blogging about the move. Maybe next week, when Mrs Doubtfire, ahem, Stu is around.

In the meantime, just some shots of Christmas morning, to keep the grandparentals entertained while Auntie Deba makes their lunch/ something for the Aunties to peruse through their hangovers in sunny Leigh-on-Sea.


Leaving something out for Santa and his reindeer:






Christmas morning - there had been rustling from the cot at 1am, as Alice found her stocking, but thankfully, the wrapping defeated her in the darkness. At 6am, we were woken by the familiar cry of, "Daddy...Daddy...Daddy...Daddy...Daddy...Daddy [silence, where you hope she might go back to sleep]...Mummy...Mummy...Mummy...Mummy [rustle, rustle, rustle]. Ooh! Upsy Daisy...[silence - surely she will play for a bit. No...] ...Daddy...Daddy...Daddy...Daddy...Daddy...Daddy". We were all up by 6.30am.


Presents were duly opened. Well, some. Alice has so many that we could be going for a few months yet.



We bought her a toy kitchen, which was greeted with raptures. The utensils had already been in her stocking and frankly if she had only received the IKEA saucepans, she would have been happy for hours.



Making Upsy Daisy's dinner...

Running around the kitchen to check whether the scrambled eggs were ready...

Busy, busy...

Loving her present from Daddy and insisting on trying out her Piggle 'brella straight away...

We skyped Leigh-on-Sea and opened Nanna and Grandad's present "live"...

And thank you to Auntie Deborah for the Upsy Daisy outfit...we love it. Chances of me getting Alice into a pretty dress for Christmas dinner later are slim to none...

Alice was the only Yardley who was volunteering to put the Simpsons Christmas socks on...

Merry Christmas from all at Botany Street!

Kangawoo

And I felt bad about sending her to daycare for an extra day while we moved house...


"In the dress up corner, Alice made her own choice of what tail she wanted to wear by verbally express herself and by physically selecting it.

Alice pointed to the Kangaroo tail and said “Kangawoo" then stood in front of the mirror looking at her own reflection. After doing this Alice found a small kangaroo finger puppet and put it in the pouch and walked up to Tabatha and said "baby woo"

Ask Santa...

As faithful bloggerpudlians will remember from previous posts, Alice has been showing little enthusiasm for the cheerful fat man in red. Screaming whenever the WBJ one came within a half mile radius*, I had resigned myself to missing the requisite Alice and Santa photo for Christmas 2. I was feeling quite smug - after all, seeing Santa is not really supposed to be about Alice being hysterical with fear. Plus am not born Australian, so am not quite fully immersed into the photo requirement (although the podiatrist telling me that her mother had 10 in a row from each year of her childhood made me a little wistful...)

However, we had a really good day on Tuesday - we went to the new pad to get the keys and she was friendly and sociable. She went to the creche at the nail bar and was friendly and sociable. We had to pop to the docs for her cough and she was friendly and sociable. Even at the local corner shop, where they have known her since she was born, but yet she always cried and hid when they looked at her, she was friendly and sociable. So I thought, what the hell. We're not exhausted enough from our busy day. Let's go and see Santa. And what do you know?! Friendly and sociable. I had the "Dora Bag" that she was planning to ask Santa for on hand, in case I needed Santa to produce it on cue as a bribe, ahem, I mean a present, but in the end, they just had a nice chat reindeers etc and smiled beautifully for the photo.

So there I am, all smug and happy, choosing which photo package I want, when Santa pipes up, "So, what do you want for Christmas, Alice?"

Imagine my surprise when the answer was, "A cat". I certainly didn't have one of them in my nappy bag.



* Alice, not me

Row row row your boat

The maternal grandparents will claim credit for this - they taught Alice to "row row" when they were last over. Today's report from nursery:

" This morning some of the children engaged in some one on one interactions with their fellow peers. This spontaneous game first started with Tabatha singing some songs and the children following along with the actions. To further the children’s interest in singing we started singing ‘row, row, row your boat”.

Alice sat next to Tabatha and she held her hand out indicating to Savannah she wanted to play with her. Both girls then started to rock back and forth while Tabatha assisted them by singing the song. Soon after a new friend came over and joined in on the fun.

Angus and Kobe observed the girls for about a couple of minutes before sitting next to Tabatha. Angus then reached out to Tabatha indicating that he too wanted to play. Tabatha then paired both Angus and Kobe up.

After about 5 minutes of singing and dancing we all changed partners giving the children the opportunity to interact with different peers creating many different positive relationships between the children. "

Another choice moment

We told Alice in advance that we was going to a concert at the Opera House and she asked if they would sing Baa Baa Black Sheep. She asked about 300 times, so in the end, I just said, "Probably".

In the middle of a "very long" tale from the Ghanaian lead singer about dah black man, Alice piped up, "Baa Baa?". So proud.

Bad mother moments this week

1. Alice left daycare in the evening wearing 2 extra layers over the outfit that she arrived in. We'd had a cold change, but our appartment was retaining the heat of the scorching weekend, so I didn't notice. Poor thing must have been freezing.

2. Alice informed me that one of the toys she had brought out on the shopping expedition (Swiper the Fox) "wants a coffee". Lead by example? Moi?

3. She pilfered a pack of sweets from a shop this afternoon - they looked enticing and were just at little hand level. We took them straight back, but without thinking my first words of admonishment were, "You wouldn't have liked those ones, anyway".

Alice at The House

Alice and Little Friend Cora are cultured young things and so they set off to the last in the Baby Proms series at the Opera House this morning. I really wanted to take her to the Christmas concert again, but since our celebrity opera singing friend has inconsiderately taken herself off to have another baby, we decided to see "Afro Moses" and his band instead. Plus these concerts are designed for children - 40 minutes in length. Perfect.

I'd like to think that it was the enormous feathered headress that the lead singer was wearing that had Alice and Cora wrapped around our necks in fear, at the start of the show, rather than the fact that they only ever see white faces in the Eastern suburbs. However, once the band considerately started performing African themed songs, (Lion King numbers, "A-Wimba-Way", and the tune to "Free, Nelson Mandela") they both relaxed. They got quite into the more authentic stuff later on - loving the drums, clapping to the beats and trying to play a very odd instrument made from nails, which bore no resemblance to the musical items they usually see at the Early Learning Centre. Alice had just about settled in sufficiently, to start dancing when it came to an end.

We're thinking of going to a few of the Proms series next year now - they are getting to be just the right age. Can't wait for the one with the dancers from the national ballet, where all the children are encouraged to dress up in their own tutus.



Alice has fun before and after the show



It was a really great morning out all in all.

Crafty

I know it's cheating to copy and paste these e-mails in, but as I see it, if you are still reading, then you don't have a leg to stand on for lodging complaints!

"Today Alice had the opportunity to extend her fine motor skills through art and craft as she collaged her very own Christmas stockings.

Alice was eager to participate in this activity choosing which coloured stocking she wished to use as the base for her collage. Alice displayed a palmer grasp on the paint brush as she made small strokes to spread the glue around the paper before picking up feathers, pom poms and coloured match sticks one at a time using a pincer grip.Alice sat and watched as Savannah painted with the glue and stuck down a variety of collage items, before sticking down some feathers and pom poms on her own."

Festive spirit

We've written our Christmas cards, the presents have been wrapped and the Christmas pudding is steaming on the hob.

But at 26 degrees at 9pm at night and with Alice screaming and crying in fright when she saw Father Christmas from a distance of about 20 metres, it doesn't feel that festive!

I had such high hopes for the trip to see Santa this year. She has been saying, "Dora bag, ask Santat for Kiss-mass" for weeks. We're going to write a letter instead!

No sign of Wallace

We finally made it to the ENT specialist and he has decided that Alice should have grommets. He has no doubt that it was all the trouble with her ears which delayed her walking for so long and that we should "pop them in" so that she has a chance "to develop normally".

We're pretty relaxed about the whole thing, except that the poor little thing has to have a general anaesthetic to get them in there. She seems very small for that. Anyway - it'll only be day surgery so nice and simple. 15th January is the big day.

Cora comes to play

Little friend Cora came to play on Saturday afternoon, while her Mammy went to a wedding. A wedding up on the cliffs at Watsons Bay in 40 degree heat and you don't want to take a 21 month old? Fair enough.

The rest of us decided that we would escape the scorching temperatures by going to the Aquarium. Veteran blog readers will remember that Alice is a veteran of the Aquarium - she visits it most weekends when the weather is too rainy/too cold/too hot/too not to her Mum or Dad's taste for whatever reason. It was quite nice to go with Cora and to see the amazement of an Aquarium first timer.

The girls generally want to do everything together and the same, but bicker constantly while they are doing it. Last Wednesday, they were found under the slide at the park having a very funny tug-of-war over a cool bag. But they always kiss and make up - walking towards each other with arms out like zombies, to exchange hugs. Cora Mummy and I thought that we had it all sorted by having everything the same. Cora's toy buggy, Upsy Daisy toy and Iggle Piggle toy all came to play for the afternoon too. They (Alice and Cora, not Upsy Daisy and Iggle Piggle) ate the same, drank the same, bathed together and dressed in the same pajamas. There were a couple of stand-offs following buggy collisions and Alice insisted that Cora take a turn at all her toys, even if she didn't want to play with them, but generally it was a fairly harmonious afternoon and a chance to see what is was like for our friends who have two toddlers/having an older child (Cora is only one day older than Alice, but since she has been walking for oh, 11 months longer, she was able to threaten to get into many more scrapes as we walked along Darling Harbour quayside and was more interested in things like opening the car door when we were moving, than our little princess).

Some nice moments

The Terrible Twosome cook up some more schemes...

...and say goodbye at bedtime. I drove Cora home and she said "Alice" repeatedly for the entire journey. BFFs.

Reading between the lines

Another of Alice's favourite activities is keeping clean. It was a hot day on Monday and they played with some water/ice at daycare to keep cool. I'll let the report speak for itself....

"The starfish participated in some water play today. To foster the children’s sensory experience and to add to their creative development we added a large piece of ice with dye. Frozen in this ice cube were materials like pom poms, wool and feathers.

As the children explored the temperature of the icy water they soon recovered that the ice was slowly melting and starting to reveal the frozen objects.

Savannah could not wait to get started, she ran straight over to the water tray and splashed both hands in the water, she then looked at her hands to find that they had started to change colour. Alice and Isla were right behind Savannah and they too were noticing they had red hands after touching the ice. After Alice no longer cared about her red hand she picked up a paint brush and started to move the ice cube around the tub. As she was doing this she started saying "weee”. Isla joined in and the two girls ran up and down the tray chasing the ice waiting for it to melt completely."

I am pretty sure what really happened was that Alice said, "Grubby" for about 20 minutes and wandered off for a bit of a sulk at being dirty before agreeing to play with the water again. See Exhibit A, second picture below. If you look very carefully, there is a familiar figure who has snuck off and who is climbing up to the slide...

Nagging

The car journey home from the shops today consisted of the following conversation:

Me: Do you want to hold Turtle? (latest cudddly friend) Oh, no, you've thrown him on the floor. OK, well he can stay on the floor while we drive home for your dinner now.

[I pull away]

Alice: Turtle...turtle...turtle...(x 20)

Me: I can't reach him from where you threw him, sweetie. You'll have to wait until we get home.

Alice: Turtle...turtle...turtle...(x 20)

[I turn up music and eventually there is silence from the backseat]

Alice, requesting that the Night Garden CD be played: Pakka Mu-gic...Pakka Mu-gic...Pakka Mu-gic...Pakka Mu-gic...(x 20)

Me, somewhere in the midst of all this, seeking to distract her: No, we're having Mummy's music just for this trip. Have you decided what you want for dinner?

Alice: [Ris]otto?...'otto?...'otto?...'otto?(x 20)

Me: OK

Alice: Maisy telly?...Maisy telly?...Maisy telly?...Maisy telly?...(x 20)

Me, again trying to distract her: OK. You can watch some Maisy while you have your milk.

Alice: Milk?...milk?...milk?...milk? (x 20)

And then we had travelled the 20 minutes home.

Me (silently): G&T?...G&T?...G&T? (x many)

It was a really long day today!

The zoo

Daddy had a rare day off work on Sunday and we took Alice to the zoo to celebrate. This was definitely the best trip so far, since Alice could set off in the direction of animals of her choosing. And stay with animals to which she took a particular fancy. And stay. At one point she was so determined to remain near a tortoise that she got her head stuck in between two fence poles.

Chasing an Ibis...

Actions shots - racing down to see the meercats...

And to the elephants...



One big shiny nose....Alice finally gets to go on her own bear hunt...



On first sight of the giraffes - beside herself with excitement...

What a beautiful day!

Packing

On Saturday, I asked Alice to get everything together that she needed for the beach. She turned up with one shoe, a bottle of juice and a random straw. I was mentally transported back to my childhood, when my father used to proudly state that he had finished packing for a two week long family holiday, having placed a book and a flip flop into a suitcase. Two flip flops if my mother was lucky.

Taking Turns

Alice is obsessed with taking turns. Of course she is happiest when it is her turn ("Allie turn") but she is also extremely vocal in trying to get other children to take their turns at the playground, even if they don't really want to play on the slide/in the tunnel/in the little shop any more or indeed at all. "Boy turn?", "Girl turn" are shouts that echo bossily around the East when Alice is out to play.

It seems that this is also a theme at nursery. Yesterday's photos arrived with this commentary:

"This morning Alice, Archie and Jackson sat side by side as they explored the shape peg puzzle board. With encouragement from Gemma, Alice, Archie and Jackson showed that they were able to take turns while they used the trial and error approach to place the puzzle shapes onto the correct shaped pegs.

Alice was so good at sharing, that she gave Gemma a rectangle puzzle shape to place while she placed the square puzzle on the correct peg."

Bless her. So long as no one tries to take Makka Pakka, Turtle or Dora away from her, she's a very giving little girl.

A very keen little gardener

So coined by Nanna, green fingers skipped a generation in me and passed straight through to Young Alice, who can't get enough of plants and flowers. Here, she "helps out" in the

nursery garden....

"Running, Mummy"

She might even get to outgrow this pair of jeans!!

A lazy Sunday in pictures

Alice read the papers while chomping on the banana bread she had helped to make.



We went for Yum Cha (but Alice was too grumpy to be photographed). Looking round I was grateful to see that most of the other kids were also picking at/throwing around egg fried rice/raisins.

Then she and I headed for the park to feed the ducks and to take some of "The Gang" for a walk. Alice on her feet, a pram and a duck pond (lake) in close proximity to one another conspired to add at least 3 grey hairs to my head, but luckily she could see the eels and turtles under the water, so chose not to get too close/push Dora or Pakka into the water.



The poor old worker finished up around 4pm and came to join us. Here, the two are reunited in a touching action shot...aaahhh



And they had tonnes of fun together thereafter (this photo taken in a rare (and happy) moment where I am not supine on the blanket, exhausted from playing sole carer... )

Halloween frolics

We had two Halloween events on consecutive days; the first of them including a day at nursery, which always causes all kinds of unknown stains. Alice clearly needed two costumes to deal with the events, since no one outfit could be guaranteed to make it through the weekend/one day/one hour without showing some sign of some kind of foodstuff.

She had fun in her costumes, but wasn't overly keen on the initial photos...

Day 1




Day 2



Things got better as the day(s) went on - the witch/burglar costume proved very practical and my initial fears from being greeted in the nursery playground by mini Pumpkins, Spidergirl (with matching sparkly shoes), subsided when this photo of Alice and her classmates showed that she fitted right in.






The next day, we went to Baby Loves Disco again. We turned up after Alice's nap and the club was completely packed. There appeared to be a complete dearth of children and all the adults present were bedecked in witches capes and hats. It felt as though we had entered a Harry Potter book - one of the later, darker ones, rather than the innocent escapades of the earlier novels. Alice and I went and hid upstairs in the bar, which was better, but allowed perhaps too good a view of the big screen Night Garden movie length features which seemed to be showing. From then on, any time that she ventured out of sight of the screen, there was the threat of a meltdown and screeches of "Pakka!" and "Piggle!". It took Abba and a good few feather boas and shakers to distract her for - sometimes that worked for whole minutes at a time.


Shaking her maracas



If all else fails, climb into the instrument box to get really close to the action



...but Iggle Piggle always wins. Alice and Little Friend Marley peep through the balcony to see their favourites on the screen.

The dancefloor emptied out and Alice showed me some moves - she's a bit surprised here after an attempt at a sort of spin on her knees.

I thought that she looked cute, but Stu said she looked like a bogan fairy. Hurrumph.

"Poor Daddy"

Alice is very good at expressing sympathy and kissing things better. Even I feel a little sorry for the man of the house at the moment. Hot on the heels of a weekend that entailed leaving a wedding early to look after his vomiting child, scraping the car and needing to work both weekend days, "poor Daddy" went on to catch the gastro bug and to be required to work even harder over the gloriously sunny Saturday and Sunday which have just passsed.

He took a couple of hours off to watch us eat yum cha on Sunday and popped to the park to join Alice and I for the last hour of playtime on Sunday (of which more later), but otherwise things have been bad for him.

But don't feel too much pity. On the day before it all went wrong, this is how he spent a working Friday...

Second from left, back boat

It's for charidee, you know...