29th and 30th December - Furniture is the thing!

Yesterday and today have been interesting post-Christmas days (the Christmas days I will get round to posting about later - too much to type too little time to do it in!). They have mainly been concerned with Furniture. Specifically, the aquisition and repositioning of.

Basically, the influx of new items kindly provided by Father Christmas, friends and relatives have left us with a space problem. We hadn't got any, so needed to make some. We had resolved, after dumping everything in the middle of the living room floor on the evening of the 28th, to make the 29th our 'Tidy-up day', finding homes for everything. We woke up, ready for action. At least, daddy and I forced ourselves to get ready for action. Sylvie lay on our bed with her hands over her ears, refusing to listen to the hated word 'Tidying'.

This led to a bit of a battle of wills, where I gave her the choice of helping to put things away or having a 'One toy only out at a time' rule strictly imposed from now on. She refused to remove her hands from her ears and/or answer me, so I chose for her (One toy only) and she flounced off to her room where she fell asleep. When she got up, she was much more amenable and was persuaded to apologise by daddy. Since she offered to tidy up her room of her own accord, I allowed her the choice again and she picked 'Home Economics - Tidying' over 'One toy only'.

While debating what to do with her new TV (a present from my parents) we looked on the web for wall-mounted TV shelves. This led to our first ever visit to IKEA after lunch. It took us a while to get used to the store layout and the way the system worked (it also took us a long time to find the item we were looking for). We had decided to check out a few other items while we were there - we wanted a coffee table as the small table currently in use in our living room is the table base of the high chair, and will shortly be needed for Davy's first forays into real food, and the bookcase in Sylvie's bedroom is no longer adequate for the task with no space for any more books.

We ate at IKEA as what we had thought would be an hours job at most took a good three hours in the end thanks to our unfamiliarity with the store. We came home with two TV shelves, one for Sylvie's room and one for ours (we have a TV we have been meaning to put in there since we moved in), and a coffee table. We also spotted a bookcase and a DVD rack that we decided to think about (and take measurements for).

I erected the table while daddy and Sylvie went to buy her Dr. Who magazine (a futile effort as we hadn't realised the next one won't be out until next week thanks to Christmas until they got there). Sylvie exercised some 'Fiscal Management' and came back with a packet of chocolate cake instead. I managed to multi-task, breastfeeding Davy while wielding a screwdriver, so the coffee table was ready to receive the cakes when they got home.

We watched the recording of the Christmas Dr. Who episode while eating the cakes, and Sylvie went to bed with very little tidying having occured but with a slightly different layout in the living room.

This morning we measured and talked about the bookcase and the DVD rack. We decided they would be a good investment for Christmas money, so we headed up to Sylvie's room to look at space. This led to a major rearrangement of furniture that meant everything got shifted around to make space for Christmas presents, a new bookcase to be purchased soon and, with any luck, the cardboard teepee she got from the Play Rangers for being the 500th attendee.

In order to move the wardrode, we took all the clothes out which afforded the perfect opportunity to go through them and remove the ones that don't fit (at least, the ones Sylvie would let us remove. One or two items she refused to put in the 'discard' pile!) Things got a bit stressful - the furniture was difficult to manover, it was a very cramped working environment and Sylvie was determined to watch and/or help, so I snapped a few times when I shouldn't have, leading to apologies and having to tell Sylvie a number of times why we were doing this furniture moving. We were all exhausted afterwards.

Her TV ended up on top of a cupboard where she can reach the inbuilt DVD player, so we may take one of the TV shelves back. We realised once we had rearranged everything that the place the shelf would have to go would be far too high for her to put in and remove DVDs, while the top of the cupboard was just about ok with a stepstool.

The efforts have paid off - the floor space is used much better now, Sylvie really likes the new layout (though she complained she can't reach to open the window to 'let the fresh air in' now her bed has moved, a plus as far as I'm concerned!) and we will be able to fit the bookcase in, though I'm not too sure about the teepee. I did ask her if I could put her Fisher-Price little people castle in the loft now she has her new Playmobil one to make more space. As far as I know she hasn't used the old one for ages. She refused though - it seems she is collecting castles!

19th December - Getting ready to leave.

Not much to post today as Sylvie spent the day at my parents so I could get some packing and wrapping done without a nosey little girl around! She had gone to bed fairly late last night and didn't want to get up, so we told her she could go in her pajamas ( new ones I bought her on Monday as her others are either too small or too summery. They are pretty, but slightly odd, floatyish Disney Princess ones - see piccy.)

I sent her with some clean clothes, including a pair of trousers she hasn't worn before and which turned out to be just a bit too big - she came home with tales of trousers falling down and needing a belt to keep them up. They shall be going back in the cupboard for another 12 months!

It took me most of the day to get my wrapping done in between doing laundry so we will have clothes for our trip and dealing with Davy. He kindly had two good sleeps during the day but was horrible in the evening and just wouldn't settle. I think his teeth are planning to erupt soon - he's chewing on everything, the Calpol seems to barely take the edge off for him and when he bites my finger I can feel distinct nobbles near the surface of his jaw now. He slept badly last night too, so both I and his daddy were shattered all day today. Having to deal with him meant that while I managed the wrapping, the packing was no where near done. It's a good thing we don't need to leave until lunchtime tomorrow!

When she came home, I gave Sylvie the felt and sparkly card I had picked up for her on Monday - I had wanted to get her more glue from Woolworths as it is by far the best I have tried for her so far and the shop won't exist after Christmas, but it seems other people think the same and there was none left so I got these bits instead. After getting them all out, she picked the purple card and black felt. She said she wanted to cut out some fishes from the felt and asked how to do it. I suggested drawing the fish in chalk so we hunted some down. In the end, she found the felt too hard to cut with the scissors she chose (her old ones - her new ones might have been more effective) but she liked the effect of the chalk on the black felt, so drew a picture on it and mounted it on the card with sellotape.

After dinner, she used some more felt but this time as a backing for a paper picture. We stopped her from using any more then as we could see her getting into 'use it for the sake of it' mode, the mental lock that leads her to scribble on every page of a notebook as soon as she gets it or waste reams of paper by putting a single dot in the centre of each sheet until she runs out. She then wonders where all the fresh paper etc is the next day.

She ate a chocolate she had from Granny anouncing that she gets her superhero strength from chocolate. We decided she must be 'Super Chocolate Girl'. Davy was very interested in the chocolate and tried to swipe it. When Sylvie took it away he got interested in his daddy's watch, throwing a definite baby strop whenever daddy tried to move his arm away and calming down each time the watch came back into reach again. This fun game of pull and press it to see what it does was stopped when he decided to see what daddy's watch tasted like.

I took Sylvie to bed. Her 'Personal Care' is getting better - she brushes her teeth without reminder or insistance now and actually does a reasonable job of it. Tonight she asked for assistance with her back teeth - she does have trouble with these, her brush seems slightly too big to be comfortable at the back of her jaw.

She did not get to bed until 10pm - she was very busy with her new 'Art' materials and her glitter glues. The living room floor is currently covered with cardboard tubes from the recycling box that have glitter drying on them. Unfortunately they roll, so my floor also has nice shiny spots on it too. I am so glad we have laminate!

18th December - Another book!

Sylvie was not happy this morning when I told her we were going to the Breastfeeding Cafe. She spent half-an-hour sulking on our bed because I insisted we were going. Apparently the toys there are "too below me" - her way of saying baby toys. Explaining that we go there for Davy and I not her, that we go to plenty of other places on her behalf and that there was nothing stopping her taking some of her own toys to play with only seemed to make it worse, so I left her alone after telling her if she hadn't eaten her breakfast before we left she would be hungry until lunchtime. She came down and ate it at the last minute and was happy enough to go once I reminded her we could pick up the pine cones she wanted on the way and look at the trees we helped plant. I packed her Leapster and some drawing materials at her request and we left on time for once.

As we left the house, she exclaimed "A whole new world!" This is nothing new at present - she has taken to sometimes pretending we live in a 'TARDIS house' and every time we leave through the front door we are stepping out onto a new planet. This time it was 'Rose's world' apparently and Rose accompanied us to the Early Years Centre. We looked at the trees as we went past and tried to remember which ones we had planted. Sylvie asked if the bulbs would have sprouted yet, so I explained they wouldn't appear until spring when there would be a large arc of daffodils where they had been planted.

At the Breastfeeding cafe, Sylvie used the paper and pens I had packed to start making a new book. She stopped when she spotted a couple of Stickle-bricks though - she had played with those last time we were there. One of the Health visitors saw her with them and offered to find the box for her so she spent the rest of the morning there building with those. Another little girl played with them too, which led to a slight incident when we were leaving and Sylvie packed up the bricks so they could be put away again - she noticed the little girl was still holding some and tried to take them off her. I stopped her, but then had to reassure her that someone would make sure the bricks got put back safely as she was getting quite anxious over it.

We left a little early - Sylvie noticed I had had Davy weighed (he is now a hefty 18lbs! There are 9 month olds at the cafe that weigh less than my monster baby! His weight is finally catching up with his height.) and she wanted to leave "because everyone leaves after the baby ids weighed." I pointed out that everyone in the room had had their baby weighed and hadn't yet left so that wasn't entirely true, but since we would have to leave in 15 mins anyway I decided to let her have this one today!

On the way home, she started making odd noises and movements. I joined in, and the random nature of the exercise gradually morphed into a game of 'What am I?'. One that stood out was when Sylvie started to walk very slowly, shuffling her feet. I guessed a penguin, an old person and then an elephant before asking for a clue. She said "I'm not one with a trunk, I'm one with a shell." from which I immediately got tortoise.

We were heading over to the pine trees when we saw a cardboard recycling bag in the hedge. These bags are issued by the council and have a place for the house number so the recycling men can return them to the right house. They often don't. We checked the number and found it wasn't too far away so we engaged in a spot of 'Community Service' and returned it, taking in some 'Maths' as we checked the house numbers to find the right one. Then it was back to the park to get some pine cones. At first I thought we were going to be out of luck, but we found around 8 or so. We might have found more had some unthinking persons not lit a fire between the trunks of two of the trees, burning up any that lay there. It was a stupid place for a fire - the tree bark was very charred and had it been drier both trees could have been destroyed.

Once home, Sylvie had a nutritious lunch of Scotch eggs and cheese (apparently a sandwich or toast would "take away my superhero energy.") with 'Media Studies' - the video of Beauty and the Beast we bought yesterday. After lunch, she wanted to clean her pine cones ready for painting so I told her to use the bathroom sink. I later found out she had taken this to mean she could dry them on the bathroom towels too!

Sylvie then got down to the serious business of turning the pictures she had drawn at the Breastfeeding cafe into a book. I helped her bind the pages together by tying the string and took dictation as I did yesterday. The following pictures show the finished product (and I must point out that on one page, the word 'handing' should read 'hanging' - I made a spelling error that I didn't notice until called up on it by my husband when he read it. It was a freudian slip - I thought the 'rollerskates' were hands!)

After the book was complete, while Sylvie was engaged in 'Free Play', I rang my parents to see if Sylvie could spend tomorrow at their house while I wrapped presents and packed ready for our trip to the Isle of Wight on Saturday. My mum rang me at the same moment - she wanted to let me know that they have booked a date for a caravan holiday on the island. The plan is that next year they will take Sylvie with them so she can stay with her Isle of Wight granny and grandad. They have wanted her to stay with them for a while now and she reciprocates the sentiment, but the logistics of getting a 4 year old from the Midlands to the ferry then over to the island on her own and then back again are difficult.

I had picked out an activity book for Sylvie to do with her daddy when he got home - she tends to mob him and try to involve him in her games when he just wants a quiet sit down before dinner, so I had offered to pick out some calmer activities for them to do together during that time. daddy however was struck with the urge to make 'Music' tonight, so the activity book was set aside in favour of daddy on the saxaphone, Sylvie on the recorder (she insists on keeping it in his saxaphone case and playing alongside him whenever he plays, though in her case, 'playing' the instrument is stretching the definition! ).

Davy joined in with some hearty shrieks and I got the dinner to a cacophany that I think was supposed to be 'Good King Wenslaslas'. Daddy has tried to teach Sylvie to use the finger holes in the past, but a lack of interest coupled with fairly small hands means she prefers to ust blow down the mouthpiece as hard as possible rather than actually going for creating different notes. Daddy stuck it out for as long as he could, then packed up to watch 'Beauty and the Beast'.

17th December - Witing and a Christmas fair

Today began with something of a Wow!

While I was feeding Davy and checking e-mails, Sylvie was busy 'Writing' her name from memory. The first I knew of it was when she brought me this piece of paper asking me to check to see "if the letters are right." I was very impressed that she got so close! She missed out the 'L' but all the other letters of her name are there in the right order (though not necessarily the right way up!). Not bad for a child who doesn't read yet, has up till now only copied or joined the dots when writing and still confuses similar-looking words for her name occasionally.

She said she remembered it from the last time she wrote it which must have been a couple of days ago now. After e-mailing it to her daddy (yep, I was that impressed!) she decided she had to try to write 'mummy', 'daddy' and 'Davy' in the interests of completeness. She tried to write mummy while I verbally spelt it for her, but quickly decided it was easier if I wrote them for her to copy. Her copying was very good, though the two 'm's in the middle of mummy did come out as a continuous wavy line!

After this, she suddenly remembered and asked after a pine cone she had picked up and painted last winter, not a bad feat of memory since it has been sitting forgotten on a windowsill for nearly a year. Sylvie was fascinated by the way it had opened up - she remembered it had been closed up tight when she painted it - so we delved into some 'Botany' as I explained that the pine cone opens up when the temperature rises to allow the seeds out at a time when the weather is good for growing things. She asked if we could collect some more so I said we would see if there was time before the library to walk through the park and pick some up.

The rest of the morning was taken up with 'Media Studies' as she took the opportunity to watch her library DVD's for the last time before they went back. She hasn't had much chance to watch them lately, what with spending so much time at my parents the last two weeks. I sat and watched 'The Fairy Kingdom of Ar' with her but left her to watch 'Spookley the Square Pumpkin' on her own over lunch. It ended just in time for us to head off to the library. We didn't go through the park - it turned out that we had three heavy bags full of books to return as well as a couple of parcels to post and I didn't fancy doing anything but going straight there loaded down with all that! We agreed to go another day, hopefully tommorrow.

When we arrived at the building we found they were setting up a Christmas Fair in the sports hall. We had expected to attend the Play Rangers there (this month they are doing crafts indoors rather than 'Outdoor Activities' in the park.) so I asked where they would be. They covered well by saying they would probably be in the sports hall too along with the Christmas Fair crafts, but suspicions were confirmed that my enquiry had reminded them of something they hadn't thought of yet when we actually met the Play Rangers at the fair and learnt they had been accomodated at the last minute because the staff had forgotten they were coming in the preparations.

Up in the library, I limited Sylvie's book selection and would not let her take out any DVD's as we won't be around to return them next week or be likely to get much use out of them over Christmas. It also made things a little easier when we went into the Christmas fair, though that wasn't an initial consideration.

After an initial shyness brought on by loud music and a lot of people, Sylvie really enjoyed the fair. It helped that she spotted a few familiar faces - as well as the Play Rangers, her favourite members of the centre staff were there and our librarian was running a stall which was the first we stopped at. I bought her a video of Beauty and the Beast and the librarian gave her a little book to go with it as a free gift.

We bought a puzzle (she insisted on it being a fairy one, though the chances of her doing a 1000 piece foil-embossed puzzle are nil - we bought it for daddy!) and she had a go on the lucky dip, winning a key holder from Alicante (she thought it was a photo frame and was a bit disappointed for a few minutes when she realised it wasn't) before we headed over to the Play Rangers where Sylvie made a Christmas cracker and Davy tried to eat it.

We moved on to the craft table where bauble decorating was going on and she had fun sticking glittery bits to a shiny red one. We hung it up to dry then, after a quick trip to change Davy, she joined the queue for face painting. However, the magician was about to start so we left the queue and watched the performance instead. Sylvie got to help spin a plate and was given a balloon teddy bear. Davy fell asleep. I took her away to get her face painted during the balloon animals as I realised the stalls were preparing to pack up and I didn't want her to miss out. She chose to have a butterfly face and while she was getting made up, I nipped over to the Scouts stall to get her a ribbon on a stick before they left - I had spotted it earlier and thought she would love it as the ribbons are her favourite part of her 'Gym' classes. The last thing we did was visit Santa's Grotto, where a Christmas chocolate selection pack was a very welcome gift from Father Christmas!

We headed home, with a quick detour back when we realised we hadn't picked up her bauble, and were in the middle of a tussle over tidying (I wanted to see the floor again, she didn't) when daddy got home. He added his weight to the argument and she finally stopped crying and moved her art and dinosaurs before showing all her new treasures to daddy while I made dinner. There was another teary blip when she decided to open her cracker and found that the toy she had carefully picked out to go in it was missing - it must have fallen out when we were trying to stop Davy enjoying it for tea. I quickly redid the cracker with a choccy biscuit inside which stopped the tears but could do nothing about the now very smeary butterfly make-up!

Sylvie wanted to do some more 'Writing' while I cooked and asked me to write the words 'good' and 'naughty' for her to copy(apparently she wanted to describe her dolly!). We watched 'Dr. Who' together and she shared her chocolates with us. She needed a little persuasion to go to bed as she was a bit wired after the exciting afternoon. I took her and read her her new book for 'Storytime', a nice little Shirley Hughes book that she really enjoyed. I must remember to thank the librarian for a great choice next time we see him.

16th December - Making books.

Well, once again it has been a few days since I last posted on the blog. This has been down to a frantic few days of present-buying on the Internet, leaving very little time for much else! There wasn't a huge amount to post really anyway - Saturday the car turned out to have been a victim of the local 'lets get drunk enough to think stabbing people's tyres is a really fun thing to do' mob so the things we planned to do then were put on hold as we spent the afternoon after 'Dance' attempting to get a reluctant wheel off in the freezing rain and Sunday and Monday Sylvie spent at granny's to give me a chance to catch up on Christmassy-type things like pressie wrapping. The only things I am sure she did on these days were 'Gym' on Sunday and discovering a reply to her letter to Father Christmas had 'come down' granny's chimney which prompted an excited phonecall to tell me about it.

Today however has had a bit more going on. Having realised that Sylvie is struggling with some aspects of the phonics areas of 'Reading Eggs' I asked some friends who know a little about reading and young children how someone who spoke so early and so well can apparently not hear the individual sounds that make up words. They kindly pointed out that hearing a whole word and hearing the individual sounds within it are two different things and with Sylvie showing large tendencies towards being a visual-spatial learner (her preference for 3D art over drawing, needing to watch before joining in, trying to take in everything that is happening at once etc) she will probably get along better with learning whole words rather than phonics. Some very useful articles and ideas were passed on, and I decided to try one - making a lift-the-flap book with words she wants to learn under the relevant pictures which are hidden under flaps.

I have actually done this before, ages ago before I realised she didn't get the purpose of words. That one, a book with names and pictures of family members, disappeared and I haven't found it despite looking. For the new one, I decided to capitalise on her love of all things Dr. Who and printed off a lot of pictures of various characters lifted from the image search in Google. Sylvie came to see what I was up to and enthusiastically gave me names of characters she wanted in her book. I spent the morning gluing pictures and flaps while Sylvie helped by handing me what I needed.

The front cover has a drawing of a planet between the words Dr. and Who. This was not an intended design feature - I found myself writing 'who' as woh' and had to quickly improvise as I was using non-erasable felt-tip. I really shouldn't do things like this when I'm tired! Sylvie was quite impressed with it however, and asked me if it was "the planet Vesupiter" - she was combining Venus and Jupiter together! I pointed out that I had given it rings so it was probably Saturn.

Our morning book-making session sparked an interest in her, and after a nutritious lunch of chocolate spread sandwiches Sylvie decided to make a book of her own. She made a lot of fish by drawing round a plastic fish from a fishing game and colouring them in (first time for a very long time I have known her attempt to color in properly as opposed to just scribbling - she did a nice job too, making a shoal of rainbow fish). She got me to colour in a few for her when I insisted a spot of 'Home Economics - Tidying' was necessary before someone killed themselves walking across the floor.

She made her book, getting me to use the hole punch to make holes for the string to bind it together (she didn't have the strength to push it through all the pages) and writing the words in the book she dictated to me. She initially tried to glue the string to the back of the book - she hasn't learnt to tie a knot yet - but she took me up on my offer to tie it when it became obvious the glue wasn't going to work. She stuck a fish on each page. When she realised she was one short for the back page, she drew freehand and cut a fish out of the back page itself to stick on! Later, she also drew a couple more fish freehand as while writing the words I had found a pair of pages she had missed initially which she was quite annoyed about.

I've included a few pictures of the book here as an idea of what it is like - it has 16 pages and it's very much the same all the way through! It is written back to front, Sylvie wanted it that way round, so the front is actually the back. The text is as follows;

DR. WHO Fish what we all like.

The Doctor is about to kill.

The Doctor has killed the first fish

and now he is about to kill the next fish.

The Doctor has killed every fish and turned them into dodgy fish.

Then he waved a magic wand and turned the rest of the fish into dodgy fish.

This fish is a magic fish that can't be turned into a dodgy fish.

The fish turned the Doctor and Donna into TARDISes, one each.

The end.

Sylvie also got out her old toy piano and played some 'Music'. Daddy came home to her banging away on it while dictating the last few pages of the fish book to me, so he decided to have a lie-down before dinner. Sylvie kept popping up to see him until I told her to stop disturbing him as he would be a much nicer daddy after a short rest. She started to cry, saying that she missed him. He came down not long after and watched Davy and Sylvie while I cooked dinner - once again it was virulent-looking pasta. I experimented with the blue food colouring this time.

Sylvie took about 2 hours to eat her dinner. She played with her food, literally, making squares (or 'pasta windows' as she called them') out of the pasta and separating out the bacon and sweetcorn from the sauce into individual piles before eating them (slowly) pasta, followed by bacon followed by sweetcorn. Before she had finished Davy was in bed and I was falling asleep on the sofa, so I headed up to bed leaving daddy to do 'Storytime' with her though technically it was my turn - I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Apparently she was quite pleased to get daddy all to herself for a bit.

12th December - A creative day.

Today began fairly inauspiciously with Sylvie acting like a child greatly in need of more sleep. She wanted to watch the last episode we recorded of Dr. Who over and over again, but after a couple of viewings, she spotted me reading an e-mail from Reading Eggs and decided she wanted to switch from 'Media Studies' to 'Reading' on the Reading Eggs site instead.

It began well but went rapidly downhill as she hit a game that required her to actually listen to the sounds in the words (pick out the ones containing the sound 'k' at the beginning). For a child who has such good speech and vocabulary she is remarkably dense when it comes to these games (or reluctant. Either way, she does really badly at them.) One would have thought she should have a good ear for the sounds in the English language in order to learn to use them verbally so well but apparently not. The game is 'shut your eyes and click' proof too - it resets back to the start every time a mistake is made, so she got in a real huff with it and threw a strop when I refused to do it for her.

After a short argument in which Sylvie wanted me to navigate the CBeebies website for her and I refused on the grounds that she has been successfully doing that on her own for nearly 2 years now, she then lay on the floor and refused to move until she got CBeebies on TV instead. She finally realised I was not going to do it for her and got up to change the channel herself before asking after lunch - cheese by itself and a petit filou was her preferred menu.

After lunch, she perked up and got into a creative streak. She made a pouch out of paper and asked me for some 'noisy stuff' to go in it, so I gave her a handful of dry rice and pasta and she sealed the end to make a rattle/shaker which she entertained her brother with for a while. (He loved it and kept trying to grab it off her. Luckily, since I don't think the paper would stand up to his brand of chewy affection, she wouldn't let him have it for longer than a couple of seconds.)

She then decided to make a hobby horse from a cardboard tube. She drew on the features (mane, very horse-like, smiley face, less obviously equine) and then asked me to help her put some holes in the side for 'reins' to go through. I tried the hole punch, but it didn't fit well so resorted to rough pokes with the scissors. She fixed the (very short!) reins with sellotape at first, but I got her to cut a bigger bit of string after offering to tie them on for her when I realised the tape kept coming away.

A little later, I caught her giving herself a nice nail job with the brown felt tip and accused her of boredom - we have asked her not to decorate herself any more after it got to be something of a messy obsession for a while and she only breaks that rule now if she can't think of anything else to do. Sure enough she admitted she wanted something to do and when I suggested Lego or pirates she specified 'Something new' rather than something 'I keep doing.'

The pasta and rice from earlier sparked an idea, so I set her up in the kitchen with some bowls of water, some food colouring and the cereal bits from the bottom of the packet as well as the aforementioned pasta and rice and left her to have fun. She was excited to see the fruits of her labour - the dried goods changed colour in the dyed water - and asked if she could eat it. I suggested that her concoctions might be a bit inedible (it was cold water so the dry goods remained uncooked) but after a short discussion I agreed to try and make red pasta with dinner.

She asked for more rice and continued her happy experimentation and I said I would sieve and dry out the results when she finished and she can then use them in her 'Art' if she wants.

Afterwards she asked again for something 'new' but 'not messy this time' so I fished out her large collection of old toilet rolls and other cardboard bits and set her the challenge of making them into a house while I took a shower (Davy having FINALLY decided to sleep). I left the room to a cry of "Look! A arch!" (her exact words - she didn't say an arch) and returned to find her busy on her project. She left it while the glue dried and didn't return to it today, moving on to 'Information Technology' with her Leapster.

The red pasta was duly cooked for dinner once daddy came home. I got some bolognese sauce out of the freezer to go with it and while Sylvie was very pleased with her red pasta and ate it quickly, she declared a lack of intention to eat the sauce (I didn't mix them as on past experience she would have refused to try any of it if I had) but later returned to her abandoned plate saying she had "decided to eat it today to check if it is nice at the moment." This 'Decision-making' occurred as not much of a coincidence when she saw her daddy and I eating a choccy biccy. Sylvie discovered she actually quite liked the taste, but got annoyed with it when it proved to be difficult to get onto her spoon (nothing we say or do can persuade her to use another utensil to push her food onto a spoon or fork!) so daddy helped her a little and she ate enough for a biscuit of her own.

She engaged in some 'Childcare' with her dolly Anabelle after dinner and 'Media Studies' - she copied everything I did with Davy, pretending to feed her, play with her, exclaim over how great it was she is sitting alone now etc. She got upset when I removed Anabelle from Davy's 'Round-and-round' so he could use it!

And speaking of Davy, I'm sticking in a couple of pictures of him. He is sitting really well now and is able to use the 'Round-and-round'. He has also got the hang of rolling over again after losing the ability during his last growth spurt and managed to roll right off his mattress onto the floor taking all his covers with him this afternoon (It's not as bad as it sounds, the mattress is on the floor of our room. He would be in the cot proper if I could only remember where the 'safe place' we put the screws for it was! As it is, it's quite convenient for those night feeds).

Just for fun, I'm sticking in a pic of Sylvie in the 'round-and-round' next to the one of Day in the same toy - they look similar enough to be the same child! Guess which one is which!!!

A week undocumented due to illness (mine)

It may have been noticed I haven't posted in a while. This is for two reasons - one, I haven't uploaded the photos I want to use for a couple have in draft form from last week so they are still sitting waiting to be published. With any luck, I will do something about this tomorrow. Two, I have been laid low with something unpleasant from Friday to yesterday with blogging way down the list of things to do.

I spent most of the last 7 days sleeping and sitting around feeling sorry for myself at my parents who babysat Sylvie and Davy for me, so I don't know exactly what Sylvie was up to, though I know the following;
She did some 'Writing' - she got her daddy to do dots for her to follow so she could send me a note saying she loved me
She showed 'Generosity' - she lent one of her Catty's to her older cousin and, unbelievably, she twice gave away her advent calendar chocolate to her younger cousin.
She had 'Childcare' - she tried to help me with Davy.
She had 'Free Play' and 'Tidying' - she always has this at granny's!
She had 'Maths' - she did her advent calendar every morning and tried to read the clock when expecting her cousin and daddy to arrive.
She had 'Nature Studies' - grandad's bird table has been well-visited over the cold period by all sorts of small birds which he points out to everyone especially his grandchildren.

I'm sure she did other things too, but these are the ones I know about.

Thursday we also made some Christmas photo frames for family members, using metallic corugated card to frame photos of Davy and Sylvie to send out to everyone. Sylvie has earmarked the scrap for a collage and stuck stamps on the envelopes so we could post them.

Today was a quiet day, I didn't want to do too much and as I have started a cold as I recovered from whatever wiped me out initially we stayed in instead of going to the breastfeeding cafe and had marathon 'Media Studies', cuddled up on the sofa watching an entire series of Dr. Who. Sylvie had missed me while I was ill and was a little jealous that Davy had had the majority of my attention at the time - I was waking to feed him then going back to sleep. The one time she tried to join us I had got rid of her as soon as possible as nothing I said seemed to stop her bouncing on the bed and talking constantly. She was just happy to be with us but I wasn't up to coping with it, so a morning of cuddles was what she seemed to need today.

Later, she did a spot of 'Art', sellotaping bits of bubble wrap onto a felt tip pen drawing. She said it was a submarine and the bubble wrap was fishes swimming past. She also had some 'Free Play' which consisted of her yelling something like 'No, stop, don't do it! I'm just a kid!' at some imaginary baddy before making a dash for the safety of the TARDIS/kitchen - 'Media Studies' always has a big influence on her imaginary games!

She also got out her domino cards and played some game whose rules were beyond me with an imaginary friend. It seemed to be a form of snap, but had elements of a Tarot reading the way she laid out and picked up the cards. As far as I know she has never come across fortune telling before so this is undoubtedly a coincidence, but it made me think she would probably find the idea of Tarot highly attractive if/when she does hear about it, it's just the kind of thing that would capture her imagination.

Hopefully I can get back into the swing of blogging until the 20th, when we travel to the Isle of Wight where access to the blog will be non-existant. I do plan to type it out in Word documents for publication on our return if I'm not too busy enjoying myself though!

5th December - Cat games and castles.

Sylvie slept in this morning, waking closer to 9 than 8 - I haven't yet decided if she is tired because she is growing or because she has a cold. I would have taken advantage and enjoyed a lie-in, except a certain little boy had other ideas! Sylvie came into our bed and engaged in some 'Childcare' while I cleared up after changing Davy. I was roundly scolded for getting in the way and stopping him from rolling over (a feat he still hasn't managed from back to front - there seems to be a little to much of him for his muscles to move easily!)

After breakfast and advent calendars, Sylvie had 'Information Technology' courtesy of CBeebies and gave Davy a 'Maths' lesson while I got some washing done - I don't think he learned much, Sylvie was filling in his side of the conversation ("What is one bit and two bits? A bigger bit. No, that isn't how it's done, Davy!") and he seemed far more interested in his fingers.

Sylvie came and got me to let me know the postman was at the door (a step up from answering it to him in her underwear!) and I took delivery of some parcels, one of which she nearly caught me opening. Luckily, I hadn't exposed anything important. I told her she wasn't allowed to see it as it is a present for someone (I'm hoping she will think 'birthday' not 'Christmas!') and she always tells people what their presents are if she knows beforehand. she sulked a bit, but had nothing to come back with as it is totally true!

I gave her some junk mail and she happily started an 'Art' session, gluing things from her bits and bobs box to it, then left it to dry while enjoying some 'Free Play' with some cardboard and her abacus (they were standing in for letters and post box). Her Catty also 'gave birth' to some smaller cats - I haven't seen her play this game since I was pregnant, but it's back with refinements! Catty slides back slowly to reveal the 'kitten' then lies down and the kitten suckles. (See the photos!)

I wasn't feeling too great, so when Davy went to sleep, Sylvie took up 'media Studies' while I tried to have a lie down (Davy had other ideas!) It took her around 2 hours to eat her sandwiches for lunch, after which she wanted to bake cakes. The cake tins needed washing, so while I washed up Sylvie showed me some cat postcards, telling me all about their ages and country of origin ("This one was born in the 1920's, so it's dead. It is an England cat. This one was born last year, it is the first one's kitten. This one is 10 years old, it lives in 'Etam', which is a long way away. This one is 9 days old.") It led to a discussion on the time line to work out which was the oldest and youngest.

I also asked her what she thought a castle should have in it (sending out feelers for what 'lots of things in it' for the castle on her Christmas list actually meant.) and she surprised me with her ideas, they were actually in keeping with a medieval castle setting, unlike the TV for it she mentioned in her letter to Santa! She specified torches, a fire "to cook on and keep them warm", food and instruments "like an itar" (after questioning an 'itar' turned out to be a guitar).

We didn't get round to making cakes as Davy became very insistant about feeding and daddy came home. I had an hours lie-down while daddy and Sylvie had dinner then we all watched Dr. Who. Sylvie wanted daddy to take her to bed, but he refused because of her performance last night. A compromise was reached where he came up to help her with her teeth while I put Davy to bed then I read the bedtime story (A quilt for baby). She complained that it was too short, so I read her another book and left her 'rereading' it to herself.

2nd and 3rd December. Well, the morning of the 2nd anyway!

Tuesday was a stay at home and veg day again - Sylvie said she didn't want to go to the Play and Stay so we had a morning of doing very little other than 'Media studies'. In the afternoon, Sylvie wanted to play in her wendy house but we found the door has swollen shut again - I didn't get round to repainting the door before the bad weather set in -and I didn't want to force it in case I damaged it, so she came inside in disgust not wanting to do anything else. We did a spot of 'Home Economics - Tidying' then we got out her 'fun with sums' game for a while - she whizzed through the counting cards, went through the simple addition ones easily once I explained what she needed to do (she asked for help saying she was "scared" when she reached the ones with maths symbols) but stopped when they changed to subtraction cards.

Note - forgot to finish this, now can't remember what else I intended to write!

1st December - letters to Father Christmas

Today was Letters to Father Christmas day, when Grandad lights a fire specially to send the children's letters up the chimney to Santa.

We went to my parents in the morning - Sylvie had to be woken up but got out of bed more easily than usual thanks to the exciting knowledge that she was going to write her letter today.

We started it after breakfast - she has been determined to write her own letter to Father Christmas in legible English since last year when she wrote her letter in Scribble but was very concerned that Santa wouldn't be able to read it, especially after her cousin told her so, despite us telling her it was ok because Father Christmas knows how to read anything. I wrote down what she wanted to say on one piece of paper so that she could copy it onto another, then the 'Writing' began.

It was a real feat for her to complete this letter - it was the first time she has ever copied from a separate piece of paper rather than directly underneath the word or going over the dots and it is the longest bit of writing she has ever attempted. I was impressed by the way she tackled it, taking breaks after every couple of lines for a rest, but always coming back to it of her own accord. I don't think it even occured to her to ask if someone else could finish it for her.

I sat with Sylvie while she wrote, helping her keep her place by folding the original so she only saw one line at a time and using my finger to show her where she had got to on the line. It took her a few hours and she was tired towards the end, but she finally achieved her goal, a letter that granny, grandad and daddy could all read at least part of without reading the original first. Father Christmas should have no trouble!

We also wrote one for Davy between us, with me writing and Sylvie suggesting things he might like - I don't know where I shall find 'something that changes into a different shape whenever you play with it' but the more specific 'shiny giraffe' I think Santa can manage!

In between writing, Sylvie engaged in 'Free Play' and 'Childcare' with her cousin and Davy. Davy is the object of affection for both of them, and on at least one occasion was the subject of a tussle between them. One particular tussle I captured in photos, as Sylvie sat down by Davy to 'read' him a story (Nativity, starting "Once upon a time I was riding on this horse" apparently!) and their cousin was so determined to get to Davy he climbed over Sylvie to reach him. I altered the seating arrangements so that Davy was between them, and they sat there, Sylvie holding his hand and telling him a story and their cousin hugging and kissing him while Davy showed rather more interest in the book than in either of them.

Sylvie's letter was finished not long before her older cousin got off the bus, and she sat with him while he wrote his. He looked at hers and pronounced it 'Rubbish!' (His own was very well done and he wasn't about to make allowances for inexperience) but it didn't seem to bother Sylvie as it had last year, probably because she knew Father Christmas would have no problem reading this years - after all, granny had managed it!

Grandad lit the fire while 'Free Play' followed by 'Home Economics - 'Tidying' happened in the conservatory and when daddy arrived, 'Ancient Customs' took place, with Grandad sharply flicking the letters up the chimney to be carried up on the heat convection one after the other to fly off to Father Christmas. We left immediately afterwards for home where the dinner was Sylvie's choice of burgers, chips and beans. She also got to open the first window on the chocolate advent calendar granny had sent from the Isle of Wight. I like advent calendars - they stop Sylvie constantly asking "Is it Christmas tomorrow?", she knows it won't be Christmas until the last door is open! Davy also got a suck of his advent calendar chocolate too (and I finished it for him.)

Daddy took her to bed and for 'Storytime' he read her 'How do birds fly?' again - he was unaware I had read it to her from where he had left off last time until he stopped and Sylvie told him "That's where mummy stopped, too."