Breakfast girl

I like breakfast.  Weetabix and fruit.  Mmmm.

Making biscuits

Marisca made Christmas biscuits at toddler group.  Being the consummate chef, she made sure it tasted acceptable before presenting it to Mummy.

Visiting

We visited Mary and Stewart last weekend, and their cats.  It was lots of fun: we had pies for lunch on both days, a visit to a park, and lots of running around their house.  Their cats really liked me, but somehow Daddy could not manage to get a photo of them in the same room as me.  Miaow!

Out in the woods

Daddy and I went for a nice walk in the woods this afternoon.  Although it was very windy outside, it wasn't once we got into the woods.  As we were walking, I learned a lot about how seasons work, why some trees lose their leaves, and all about nests.  I also saw lots of dogs and learned that they come in different breeds: big dogs and little dogs.

Marisca's first blog post

 b
z




rtvg edstg


00000










00000 nh0, mm,\xxxxzZ
         

Being away. Again

Almost a whole year ago, I posted this, about being away from my family.

Since then, well I've been 'away' for 9 months of the past 13.  Or 9 of Marisca's 18-and-a-half.  "Away" doesn't always mean 5 days and 4 nights a week, but it tends to mean that at the moment.

Marisca is a totally different proposition now than she was before, and reflecting on that post, it was all about grabbing the time when she woke in the night as a tiny bit of connection.  Now, if I'm at home after bedtime, she sleeps until morning - and always after I've left if I'm going to Dublin or London.  The move North has made it possible, when I'm in the Leeds office, to have both breakfast and bedtime at home, so I do miss out on that when I'm not there.

That said, I do miss her a lot, and it's becoming clearer that she misses me too: the smile that I get on a Saturday morning, or how she runs over to me and launches into a cuddle, are different than the ones I get at the end of a weekend when she's used to having me around.  We try and make Saturday a day with lots of opportunity for the two of us, which also give Elspeth some time off - it's not exactly ideal for her to be a single mum during the week.  Elspeth does send me occasional photos which send me a little wibbly, like this one from today.  Marisca in classic pose, having (I am sure) climbed up there with her book, and being in the middle of burbling her way through it.  That's one leopard, with spots to point out, by the way.

My time in Dublin should be coming to an end soon, so.  Fingers crossed the next project is closer to home.

Blogging

I noted the other day to Elspeth that Marisca's blog, i.e. this one, has had twice as many hits from half as many posts, as Tim and Elspeth's old blog.

Fair enough, my daughter's much prettier than me and is more willing to pose for photographs than Elspeth.

Eighteen months

Eighteen months: one and a half.  Or as someone put it the other day when making small talk, 'oh, so coming up on two then?'  Er - no.  When you are eighteen months you are still six months off being two, and that's a long time when you're this little!

I could title this post 'my daughter is a genius'.  Of course she isn't really, she's a perfectly normal 18-month old, but she is learning so many new things and surprises us so often with what she does know that we think she's pretty intelligent.  The biggest thing (to us) this month is probably letters.  To Marisca they are just different shapes that she can recognise, but she can now spot and say A, B, M, S and E.  As bookworms ourselves we're rather proud of this.  Reading books and spotting letters really is one of her favourite things to do, so it's just as well we like books too! And we have an excellent library nearby which we visit regularly before we get too bored of reading the same stories over and over (and over) again.

Marisca is also getting the hang of the order things happen in.  Whether or not we like it, we've fallen into several routines in the day and over the week: nap always happens after lunch, toddler groups are all in the morning, teeth are cleaned after bath etc.  And Marisca likes to know what is happening next, and show us she knows.  Shoes and coat on, and she's hanging off the door waiting to go out.  After her bath she's straight over to the sink to get her toothbrush.  I guess for her it is a nice way to have a little bit of control over what happens next: so much of a toddler's life is defined by what we as parents want to do that it's nice to have some certainties in your day.

Being the little girl that Tim mentioned in the last post, she's no where near fitting into most of the 18 month clothes, but we have cracked out the wintery dresses.  It's getting cold up here!