Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!

Birdland!

Was a lovely little park. Perfect for Izzy's attention span - worth a good 45-min walk or so, with fish pond for interactivity (you can feed the fish) and flamingos and penguins up close for the exotic. More pix on FB here.

Visiting the Cotswolds

Yahoo!

I am now on maternity leave! In the end it was quite a good thing that I had a whole two weeks off before my last two weeks at work. Initially I was only going to take a week off over Christmas given the amount of work we had to do on the project. But when my boss suggested I take a second week I got fed-up and thought what difference is a week going to make, really? So ta-da, over two weeks of holiday I de-stressed and decided the only things worth doing when I got back for my final two weeks would be to tie up loose ends and try to leave things in as decent a state as possible for the people taking over my jobs.

I'm still finding it amusing that I've had to hand over to two people; and that there should have been a third except they hadn't hired the person in time. I'm not saying I used to do three jobs' worth of work, because I certainly didn't, it was just the legacy of carrying one job to the next and the next and the next, all with the 'do what you can, when you can' understanding until well, there you go, you have to hand over to three people. 

What to do next (26 things and counting)

I've already started drawing up a list of things that need to be done anyway. Top of that relates to our house move - informing the remaining companies or agencies that we've moved and trying to find out from the stupid landlords exactly what they intend to do about the state of things including the blown fuse for the extractor fan above the cooker. We wrote to them before Christmas and still haven't heard anything. 

Originally I thought I would look forward to just the rest. Or the opportunity to nap. And I am, rather, looking forward to that. Because I haven't really slept through the entire night once in the last two months - mainly because of the discomfort of the watermelon I'm hoicking around. Fortunately, because I can fall asleep again really easily, this hasn't really affected me - I am a little more tired than usual - but I do miss the feeling of wellbeing that comes from a solid eight- or 10-hour sleep.

Given the list I have of things to do though I'm now starting to think hmm I really hope this baby isn't early! If nothing else I'd quite like some luxury time to pretend to be a Stepford Wife minus dress sense. I've arranged with a similarly on-leave colleague to go to a local spa but, also, really I'd like to indulge Izzy and Alex a little before our world is thrown into turmoil again.

In the last month or so I've finally regained my appetite properly and I'm quite longing for interesting food again. Now that I'll finally have time to prepare nice meals, I'm intending to cook quite a few more curries for Alex - I know how much he misses his chillies - and preparing pasta for Izzy that isn't just Seeds of Change Roast Garlic and Tomato Sauce (nice though that is) plus whatever meat is handy. 

In fact - haha mom, you may be pleased to know - I've started looking again in particular at the Chinese recipe books we have (including one for tasty ante- and post-natal confinement food) because I think I seriously miss that sort of thing most of all. Since moving to Reading we really have been having majorly bland, routine meals of the requiring-only-20-mins-preparation variety. All in all I think my repertoire of meals - weekdays and weekends - spans perhaps 15 recipes.

Part of it is due to the above-mentioned need for speed, part of it because I have been shopping almost exclusively at the same supermarket for the last year. And Waitrose is a good one but you do tend to end up buying the exact same things. Now I should at least have time to pop into the local butcher's (usually closed before I finish work) and try to find a decent fishmonger, or at least think of recipes beyond steamed sea bass.

I'm thinking of checking out some classes and things to take Izzy to as well, or at least just taking her to things like the pantomime maybe, or to the local museum where they have child activity sessions, and stuff like that. She's now old enough, I think to be able to interact with me quite well and I think she'd enjoy it. 

I've been mulling the idea of trying to find local ballet or swimming classes for her - just to take her along and see if she shows any interest in attending. (She went through a bit of a phase of continuously doing the three steps shown by on one of her favourite TV shows and she does like dancing to music, though she seems a bit more self-conscious in front of Alex and me than she does at nursery or at her friends' houses.)

If I thought we had the space I'd hunt around for the possibility of hiring an electric piano again really, and seeing if she liked that. Because I do have a colleague who teaches and, although I'm sure she's way too young for piano at three, I was thinking of trying to hunt out Suzuki method teachers in the area - where the focus is much more on listening to the music and learning it by ear rather than methodology. Izzy keeps insisting she wants to learn the trumpet though, rather than the piano or violin. 

Ah our jolly princess has just finished a bath with daddy so  I have to scoot and prepare her susu, as promised. I believe she intends to come down to the 'pooter and have more goes at typing her name - something I let her do on Friday and which she now keeps insisting on doing when we have the laptop on. She can type isabel quite quickly now and finds it fun to do it in different fonts. I'm torn over whether to start insisting she use the right fingers for touch-typing.

Belated birthday things

While clearing out my folders at work I came across the invites I knocked up for Izzy's last two birthday parties:

As you can see we've always gone for joint affairs, to have people to share the pain with.

Posted a lot of pictures from her birthday party this year on Facebook. Click here to have a look here if you're not on Facebook.

Izzy loves her present from Kyrill and Liss

And says thank you very much! Good timing too as we've misplaced her only pair of wrist-warmers and she won't wear mittens despite the recent cold snap.

Two weeks with Izzy
Well the last two weeks have been a panacea. I'm not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow but heck it's only to tie up loose ends and say bye-bye for now anyway, hardly a hardship. Alex has been a champion and done 90% of the packing and unpacking, and he only had a week and a half off, so he's probably exhausted, but I've had a really good rest and it's been really nice being at home with Izzy actually.

That wasn't completely planned. I wasn't paying very much attention and didn't realise till the end of the previous week that nursery was only open two days this week. I thought it would only be closed on New Year's day. As it turned out it's been easier entertaining Izzy than we imagined - er though she's also watched a lot more TV than she should have.

Daddy's little TV addict
Note below the reaction obtained when Daddy turned off the TV for a bit and told her she could only have it back after she'd cooked us dinner on her new stove. It doesn't totally convey the huffing and stomping that ensued. She marched to the stove (stomp, stomp, 'Humph!') then marched back to the living room.

Arms on hips, pout on face: 'Humph! Daddy. What do you want for your dinner?'
Alex: Er fish and chips.
Izzy: Humph! Fish! AND chips! (Stomps to stove then stomps back.) What vegetables do you want, Daddy?
Alex: How about carrots.
Izzy: Carrots. Humph! (stomp stomp back to the stove, then stomps back) There are NO carrots, Daddy. What ELSE do you want?
Alex: Aren't those carrots over there?
Izzy: Humph. (Stomps to stove again.) OK. You can HAVE carrots.

Two minutes later she stomps back to the living room.

Izzy: Daddy! Your dinner is ready! NOW can I have TV?
Alex: What about mummy's dinner?
Izzy: MUMMY?! (Voice rises an octave.)
Alex: Yes, what's mummy going to eat if you don't make her any dinner?
Izzy: Hmph! (Crosses arms) Mummy! What do YOU want for dinner?
Me: Hmm what about roast chicken.
Izzy: Hmph! Roast chicken! Fine!

Repeats performance above. I tell you she doesn't get the drama-rama genes from me...

It's nice now though to be able to launch her into some activity and have her stick with it for about half an hour to 40 minutes before she gets bored. This holiday we've done Play-Doh cookies, real cookies, painting of fridge magnets and play food I'd modelled out of salt dough for her new kitchen.

Sadly she didn't like playing with the salt dough I'd made - I think it needed more flour and/or salt; it was too sticky and defeated even the older and usually very artistically determined Sam E, who tried to make a Power Ranger out of it before giving up.

'I'll be the mummy, OK'
She does a lot of pretend play nowadays - will ferry her doll all over, feeding it with a milk bottle and giving it a bath. And one of her favourite games with a companion is 'mummy and baby' - though I've yet to hear of an instance when she is the baby.

My friend Charlotte had her for a few hours the other day and she was playing it with her son, Sam. Apparently he took off his top and then they had to go to the baby clinic to make sure he was OK. Which Charlotte took as a good sign she was getting ready for Charley Dex's arrival. It all got a bit much though when the two monkeys started pretending Charlotte and another (adult) friend, John, were 'naughty dogs'.

First they kept coming into the room and telling both adults off for being naughty and messy. Then they made poor John sweep up his mess with Sam's pretend broom. Then they were so naughty and messy, apparently, they were going to give them away and get a cat instead.

Izzy and Sam get on really well because I think they're both quite keyed up in the imagination department and quite enjoy pretend play. When Sam was at ours for a few hours the other day my jaw dropped to hear the things Izzy was coming up with. I mean, I think she's reasonably chatty with Alex and I but what she says to me is nothing compared with the non-stop narrative coming from her and Sam when they played together.

They were both being super-heroes, with capes tied round their necks and were leaping on and off the sofa, on a mission to save somebody or something. It was a bit impossible following the story because Sam was riffing off Ben-10 and Power Rangers, and with Izzy it was all Dora the Explorer and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: 'We have to wait for Professor Longdrake (von Drake actually) to show us the way on the map!'

When I sat down with them to play along, I unfortunately disrupted the harmonious complementary narratives. Before I sat down, one person would say something (eg 'Now we're going to jump out of the plane! Make sure you've got your parachute on first!') and the other would go 'Yeah, and then...'

Once I started paying attention though they each looked to me to validate exactly what they were saying and were being forced to listen to each other more closely and pick up the story the other had started. Which clearly didn't suit either of them as well as before. Moral of story, when kids are playing nicely, leave them to it!

We've also started playing I Spy in the car, though with colours and just the occasional phonetic (she does these better than letters). I was quite astounded when she asked to play it and didn't expect her to be able to follow through but, bar the odd escape into imagination once she gets bored (today it was a brown teddy bear she was knitting with my house keys), you can actually get through quite a few rounds with her.

We've moved
Ahh. All in all, it's been a really nice two weeks. While it would have been nice to have been able to go away on a break I think more importantly we've settled into our new house very nicely. Since it has the exact same layout as the last one, we've rearranged furniture according to what we were actually using in the last one. So the house has a much less cluttered feel to it.

For example, we're using the dining room to store nearly all of Izzy's toys, so at least the hazard of stepping on small plastic things is a bit more confined, and she has a table right by the French windows, which gets a lot of evening sun. And we've taken an armchair out of the living room and put it upstairs so there's more space to walk through the living room. While we've not exactly feng shui-d the house, I can totally see the logic in the concept of having good 'flows' through the house. It helps also, of course, that the house is just decorated more nicely than the last one, so has an immediately more homely feel to it.

Best of all though is what I realised the morning after our first night in it: that I hadn't woken once during the night because of people talking loudly or shouting from outside. It's not that the neighbourhood we're in is particularly rowdy, or that people shout a lot when walking past our house, it was just one of the consequences of living on the main road feeding into most of our neighbourhoods, and having a public walkway next to our house.

If you haven't been told yet what our new address is it's because it was one of those things I meant to do this week, when I thought Izzy would be at nursery the whole week. So now it's going to have to wait for maternity leave - in two weeks - but rest assured we have the last place till the end of January anyway so will be picking up mail from there until then.

Izzy trying to be huffy

But not really succeeding because I'm laughing at her. The cause was Daddy's pronouncement of no more TV till she made us pretend dinner on her new kitchen range.

Two princesses