Fruit and more fruit!!

Darling Baby Kay - today you seem to have eaten an awful lot of fruit the way things have worked out! You had your usual pear puree with your porridge for breakfast, and then when we were out with L and Baby I for coffee you had share of Baby I's mandarin orange - I just bit the little segments in two and gave you half at a time. Once you got over the initial sharp taste you had a blast with it. It is very funny watching you try to chew a piece of orange as it scoots about in your mouth, squashing it between your wee pink gums!!

After your lunch you had half a mashed banana for pudding, and then after dinner this evening you had some chopped up pears and blueberries. Instead of blitzing the blueberries up over the pear I left them whole since you did such a great job with the orange, and you polished them all off. Another step on the road to regular food instead of baby mush!!

I am preparing myself for some funky nappies tomorrow!!

Sleep tight, my darling!!

Who's that happy little fellow!!!

Today has been another busy day, little one. Jo Jingles started back after the Christmas break, and after having been the baby of the group since September, you are now the 'big girl' of the team. There are some new Mummies and Babies - but you immediately recognised where we were and what was going on. You were very excited to see Olly, and when the music started, just like in church you decided you were going to sing along too!

There was quite a lot of of 'Dadadadada' to the music. The biggest challenge now is that as you know how to balance and stand up straight you are not content to sit on my knee. You were ok when the musical instruments appeared and were very happy to sit and bash your drum and sing along, but any attempt to get you to sit on the mat and clap hands was a non-runner! By the end of the 45 minutes though you were tiring out and a bit happier sitting down for 'This is the way the Babies ride...'

You still have no interest in trying to crawl - you'll sit quite happily on the floor at home, or in your chair if you have something to occupy you; and your favourite thing is sitting on someone's knee with a book. But given the choice you seem to prefer to stand up with someone supporting you under the arms. Everyone tells me we'll have our hands full when you are mobile, and something tells me from the twinkle in your eye they might be right!

Caught napping!

You so seldom do this, little darling, that I had to take a picture while I had the chance. On our busy morning out and about you decided to have 40 winks in your carseat. Not even the excitement of the car wash roused you from this one!

Aspirations

As promised yesterday, I have committed my aspirations for the coming year to my blog. I hope that having them here will be a reminder to me throughout the year of the things that meant enough to me at the start of 2009 to commit them to the great ideas repository of the www. And the picture is one I saw and loved - cherry blossom is so beautiful and fragrant, and a real sign of promise and springtime - so very apt for the start of a new year and some new hopes and aspirations.

• I aspire to cook and eat in a more healthy way in 2009 and lose some of the weight that has been bugging me for longer than I care to remember. I want to be a Yummy Mummy, not a Tummy Mummy!
• I aspire to spend my freetime more creatively, and not let it get sucked away by the nonsense on the TV. I want to read, write and stitch more in 2009 and make the most of the evenings.
• I aspire to take some exercise. Any exercise is an improvement on the current situation - and since you love being out and about in your pram, my darling, there is no reason not to wrap you up like toast, put the raincover on and hit the road for a tootle about.
• I aspire to learn to bake (!!) so that when you are looking for treats I know what went into them as far as I can. There will always be snacks and things I will not be able to make, but there is no reason to not try to learn something new!
• I aspire to try to be more patient and tolerant when life does not go how I planned, and to learn to breathe deeply and accept the changes that happen along the way.
• I aspire to try to understand why my faith is so challenged at the moment, and why I feel so detached from something which has been such a key part of my life for as long as I can remember.
• I aspire to be the best wife and mother I can be to my Darling daughter, and my beloved husband.

I am sure there are other things that will come to me over the next few weeks. I seem to have a very long 'to-do' list this January - so perhaps as things calm down I will revisit this my darling and update you on how things have progressed. All my love x x

New Year, clean sweep!

Baby Kay, today I took down the Christmas decorations and tree in good time for Twelfth Night. It seems such a shame when they made the house look so festive; so in the spirit of keeping a little decoration in the house for the month of January I am bringing our beautiful Christmas wreath into the kitchen to hang indoors for a while. I saw that Lorri on Cute as Pie Cottage has a wonderful fragrant garland up on her blog, so I figure it has to be a sign of excellent taste!

Our wreath was an unexpected gift from J next door, which she brought round for us after I admired the one she had hung up. I have been so lucky to have such a wonderful neighbour - we have only known each other a short while, and since I don't come from this part of the country I didn't know many people. J has become one of those lovely unexpected friends you make when you are older, and making friends can get harder as we grow older and more cynical about peoples intentions. She even overlooks the fact that I cannot bake to save my life and we have shop bought biscuits when she pops in for coffee with her 2 little girls. This is despite her managing to bake the most incredible cakes and pastries - she never judges or makes me feel bad about it.

You have had another busy day!! We went to Newry today to get you the next size of car-seat as you are too long in the leg for your existing one to be comfortable. This new one is front facing and much higher up, so not only can you see much more out of the window you can also see us in the front of the car. It was a complete revelation to you! You seemed stunned by the new world view as we drove home from the shop. And compared to how you were in your old car-seat you look so tiny in this new, 'big-girl' version! We are also packing up your baby recliner as your legs hang over the edge of that, and you would much rather be wriggling about in your Bumbo chair! When you are sitting there with your serious wee 'thinking face' on you look so like your Dear Granny Hannah - who died before you were born, but not before she knew you were on the way!

You have really got the hang of 'Dada' now, and have been practicing most of the day. I need to get you started on Mama now - you are a fast learner, sweetie-pie!! And when you have finished your dinner and we tell you 'All done' you hold your wee hands out to the sides and shrug your shoulders and say 'Aw Daw'. Every day is something new and amazing from you - you are an incredible ray of sunshine for everyone who knows you.

Tomorrow I am going to put my 2009 Aspirations into a post for you - at the minute my brain is a little tired and addled to concentrate, but I am treating Monday 5th as my starting point for the small things I want to change - hopefully to enrich all our loves, and make 2009 our best year ever as a wee family. Sweet dreams little darling x x

I so love this this idea - it gives me a great chance to tell my little girl things about me and ours lives that I might not otherwise think of putting down for her. And I love reading everyone elses Show & Tells - they are inspirational, funny, interesting and a great thing to read with a cup of tea!

My Show & Tell is a perhaps a strange one - it is my collection of blank, unused notebooks. I have to hold my hands up and say, 'I confess, I have a problem.' That problem is I cannot stop myself buying lovely notebooks, journals and jotters, and being determined to use them for something great when I get them home. And then I decide they are too good to spoil with random jottings - and I'll keep them safe for something special when the inspiration takes me. And then I don't use them for anything for fear of spoiling them, since they look so pretty and pristine. My husband thinks it is slightly insane (and also very funny, and much less expensive than shoes and handbags, so he doesn't interfere with my addiction!) The photo I am showing is only a small selection of the total - the collection is actually much more out of control than the picture suggests!!



It all sounds rather sad in a way, but strangely I have always loved my collection of unused notepads because they hold so much potential. They almost speak to me of what could be in them in the future - they are just waiting to be filled with ideas and recipes and quotes and poems and verses and all sorts of wonderful things. This year however I am determined to realise some of that potential - whatever that happens to be. I am going to start using one of them for things as they strike me - my darling husband for one will be glad to see them starting to be used; a real sign that I am starting to embrace life, enjoy the amazing things around me, and take a chance on the fact that while I might not produce anything as beautiful or inspirational as the covers of my notebooks, what ends up being inside will say more about me than leaving them empty!

Booking through Thursday

These questions are so appropriate at this time of the year, and since one of my New Year ASPIRATIONS (!!!) was to read more than I did in 2008 I am looking forward to answering the questions very much!!

I started a list of books I would love to get around to reading in 2009 on my blog so that it would remind me every time I logged in that I could be reading a book instead of other peoples blogs - but aren't they the same thing??

Two books I have owned for a number of years (shamefully too many to admit....) and always been too daunted by their size to start (because something was always coming down the tracks that would get in the way...) are the Gormenghast Trilogy (Mervyn Peake) and A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth) Perhaps this is the year that one or both of those books finds their way into my handbag. That would be very pleasing.

I should also read more historical books - to get a better understanding of the past that has brought me to where I am today - but I think sometimes reading historical books is tinged with a sadness for what has been lost rather than what could be coming!

Whatever I read will be shoe-horned into those few hours my darling daughter is asleep and I am not, and the endless visits to The Wheels of the Bus - which I suspect will be what I actually end up reading in 2009.