Ah peace...
Alex has taken Boo to the playground so I finally got to sleep in - first time in weeks! She has been going through quite a 'no daddy, I want mummy' phase which is a pain in the backside for all concerned. I get grumpy that she's hanging round my ankles all the time and have been very fed up over the lack of weekend lie-ins, and Alex gets dispirited when he comes home and asks for a kiss and is greeted with 'Nooooo, daddy!' and the duchess imperiously waving him away.

Anyway as this morning has shown it's all pretty much a bluff because bar some wailing for about five minutes she quickly quietened down, settled down to watch Mio and Mao on Milkshake and happily agreed to go on her tricycle with him to the playground. Just as well as this means I can blitz the remaining piles of laundry and crap lying round in time for the housing agent to come view the place.

The house
A hah yes for anyone who doesn't already know - we have found a place near work and WE ARE MOVING! Hurray! Hurray! It's on a road that feeds into a lot of housing estates, which is not ideal, but it's not very busy and it is about twice as big as our current place, has 3 bedrooms (OK more like 2.5) and a living room, dining room AND kitchen downstairs. And the rent is two-thirds of our current rent. Just as well because Alex is going to have to start shelling out GBP420 a month for the train fare. Ouch.

But this means we will be a 10-minute drive from work! And I am already thinking about getting a baby seat for the bike Bel so we can actually cycle through the back roads there and back. Probably won't start doing this until spring though as I want to revel for a while in the fact that it takes me 10 minutes to drive to work. Also there is quite a hill to tackle going up.

It'll probably take Alex and hour and a half door to door to get to his work now but I did offer to stay nearer the train station and he kept insisting he would rather have the extra space. We could have had a place a 7 minute walk from the train station, half again as big as our current place for GBP200 more a month than the rent of the new place. Maybe he also just needs to get on his bike. Then it would take him about five minutes to get to the train station instead of the 20 on foot.

This also means we now need to make some big decisions: buy nice furniture to keep that may not suit or fit a future home? Or make do with cheaper stuff that may be less of a pain to freecycle or give away when we leave?

I'll tell you one thing: It's darn difficult to resist buying Izzy some really nice stuff. I particularly like the stuff in Aspace - eg this Weatherboard one but how to justify when a not-beautiful-but-perfectly-functional Ikea bed can still come in about GBP200 cheaper? O well if nothing else I'm quite keen on this day bed for the living room (look! Drawers to stuff newspapers into!)

Anyway we can decide all that later (fun, fun!). But I think I definitely have my eye on this day bed from Ikea for the living room

A Pollock is worth how much?

Chocolate dummies?

Izz made her first joke this weekend. She was singing the alternative version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which goes:

Twinkle twinkle chocolate bar
My dad/mum drives a rusty car
Start the engine pull the choke
Off we go in a cloud of smoke
Twinkle twinkle chocolate bar
My dad/mum drives a rusty car

She sang the first line then paused at the end... and suddenly said, 'dummy' and starting choking on giggles. I raised my eyebrows.

'Twinkle twinkle chocolate dummy?'

Hysterics.

Then she sang on, 'My dad drives a rusty car/Start the engine pull the choke - dummy!'

More hysterics.

'OFF WE GO IN A CLOUD OF DUMMY!!! HAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA'

It was actually quite funny.

Boo loves Aunty Sophie

I don't know if it's the fact that Soph has cunningly plied Izzy with ice-cream nearly every time she's seen her, but since the weekend we met for Raya I've had to have extended phone conversations with 'Soph' at Izzy's behest. She'll make her toy phone ring, then hand it to me. 'It's Soph, mummy, it's Soph!' If I cut the conversation short or hand the phone to Izz, she just rings it again. 'Mummy, it's Aunty Soph!'

But it works to some advantage. Boo is obviously too shy to talk to Aunty Soph but she does want to do what Aunty Soph does, as I realised as I was in the middle of making her eat some porridge with fish. She was refusing all fish until I said 'Oh, and you're eating fish too, Aunty Sophie? Izzy doesn't like fish...' when she suddenly began pointing at the fish and nodding her head enthusiastically. Hahaaa, score one over the monkey!

Battersea park

Last weekend after a late attempt to join another rally for Burma.

The remains of the cake

We got half a butterfly to bring home from nursery after boo's celebrations there. She loved the sprinkles on the cake.

Blackberry picking

For Burma