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.