'I'm not a playground monkey!'

Big sisterly sharing of lollipops

OK that's enough now

New house shenanigans

There was a frost this morning

So Izzy made me a snowflake. She is very excited at the thought it
might snow. I'm just remembering the two-hour 1km trek home and our
poor frozen extremities.

Girls' own production

Lollipops - reasons for being

Roz playing dressing up

She purses her lips when she concentrates

She can read!

OK a lot of it is still memory but you can see Izzy working out the
words more and more now, either by recognition or guessing from the
first letter or, more frequently now, the first few letters.

Retribution

For watching X Factor and taking our eyes off the bub who wandered
over to Izzy who was decorating a photo album with lots of stamps and
picked up a couple. We paid no attention when she wandered into the
dark corridor. And then minutes later returned. She chucked them on
the floor in pique when the three of us howled at seeing her face. But
can you blame us?

Indian summer day! Woot!

"Duck duck"

Work continues on our patio garden

I'm thinking of training a cherry tree against the walls in the corner.

Roz goes on her first ride

Ooh

I think she likes it

Roz waving to daddy on the phone

Snack break at the playground

Did I say I was busy before?

Clearly I was dreaming. I've quite settled into the school routine now, and the morning dance routine that is getting the lunchbox packed and the kids fed with something that is neither Nutella nor chocolate brioche.

Recently I've taken to cutting up slightly manky toast with cookie cutters as that lures Izzy into a few bites and Roz into at least licking off whatever's on it. Otherwise the munchkins generally take it in turns to fight over a glass of milk or mug of hot chocolate. They both like spooning it into their mouths and so I've also bought Roz some new apron-length bibs after realising that hot chocolate leaves quite lasting stains.

Izzy has settled well into school. She's made a number of friends and I only get to know who they might be based on her changing invitation list for her upcoming birthday party. Which I er might want to postpone even later because I've realised now it's the weekend before the week we move and so actually we may want to be busy packing rather than baking etc.

We shall see. I don't think I'm going to endear myself any further to the gym we're holding the party at. I swear when I called to ask for a party booking the voice of the guy who runs it dropped when I said it was for Izzy. Seeing as we er just never showed up to the last term she was supposed to because we were on holiday the first three weeks of term and then Izzy just refused to go back and I was too embarrased to call and say she just didn't like it.

Izzy keeps insisting on having packed lunches which is driving me mad because she is keen on everything except the main part of the meal. No problem at all in regards to the veg portion - cucumbers and cherry tomatoes are fine; she's happy with portions of fruit as well; and we can always slip in a pot of yoghurt or some cheese monstrosity. But the main meal - urgh.

She's now fed up of leftover chicken wings, has realised cold leftover rice is not that great, and is quite fixed on ham and cheese wraps (which is fine once a week), and cheese sandwiches. Has nixed the tuna sandwiches, leftover pasta, leftover rice and ... well leftover anything I think. And leftovers were to have formed the basis of her lunches. Although she ate all of the fish fingers and roast potatoes I put in once. And who would've thought cold fish fingers were appealing?

In the meantime I figure well if she's eating two portions of veg and two of fruit and has either yoghurt or cheese on top of that I suppose I don't need to worry too much about the main.

She's also taken to the reading programme at school quite well. All the children are assessed when they start and are given a target card based on whatever ability level they are at. Then they take books home every week or few days and we're meant to read the books with them, doing things the targets mention.

Was dreading this at first but it turns out the books are really simple - four or five word sentences per page, about eight pages in total - which makes sense I guess to get the children to really read them. But Izzy memorises the damn things far too quickly and so although she's able to hit targets like 'Finish a sentence if a grown-up starts it' it means she gets away with not actually reading the words.

So I've started making her read pages out of turn and making her focus on words at random in a sentence. What's really encouraging though is that we've also been going through other story books and she is quite keen to try sounding out those words and actually reading them.

She's still quite cheeky in that she often tries to see a related picture and, when she remembers the story, is usually canny enough to guess the word based on its first letter (Alex taught her that) or its position in the sentence.

So frequently, for example, if I ask her to read 'this' she says it's 'the'. But the picture book I bought years ago is now coming into quite good use as we can use it to look for words with similar sounds - we've done 'oo' and 'ee' and 'sh' and 'ch for eg - to practise reading.

And if she does well in her reading all week she gets to choose a little treat for her lunch box on Friday, which she loves. Last week was a KitKat and this week it's a Jammy Dodger and strawberry milk. I'm just sitting here going come on, come on, once you get hooked I should be able to leave you with a pile of books for amusment!

Roz is also developing apace. In the last two months or so she's really started speaking a lot more, so much so that I'm less worried about her hearing. She now quite happily repeats new words she hears every so often. And although she still favours pointing and gurning when asking for something she has at least started trying to use words regularly.

Funniest of all though is that she doesn't even try to say please but copies my intonation of the word. So ask her to say please and she goes 'nnnn-ng'.

She also responds much more with nods or shakes of her head to questions and now greets Alex with a happy 'Dadda!' or 'Deh-dee!' when he gets home. And if you ask her to repeat something, if she's interested in it at the moment she will.

You can see she watches Izzy quite closely now and frequently wants to copy what she's doing. In some ways this is good - she now takes swigs of water out of a cup and spits them out after brushing her teeth.

And in some ways of course it is bad because Izzy has greater privileges in regards to things like chocolate from party bags and cake, and so Roz is eating much more crap than Izzy did at her age simply because she knows to watch Izzy like a hawk when it comes to snacks, and she knows how to ask for her share.

To Izzy's great credit, she is usually happy to share whatever she has with Roz and she shares quite generously too - usually giving Roz a good chunk of whatever she has. Mind you she is also not averse to nicking stuff off her sister.

Roz, like Izzy, also loves shoes and her current favourite thing to do in the morning is to try on all of Izzy's different shoes, pushing away her own little red ones when I try to put them on her. The mornings are very trying. Especially if I've fallen asleep earlier than I meant to the night before and haven't made up Izzy's packed lunch.

I've scheduled our routine so that we're meant to drop Roz off at nursery first. Which means if we are running late we just drop off Izzy first so there's a little leeway.

What with the school run and moving into the new house - getting it painted, and shelves put up, looking for curtains etc - and work starting to ratchet up again I think it's going to be a fun haul towards Christmas.

It's just fortunate the two monkeys are still providing just enough entertainment to make up for the times when they act up. One night last week they were both over-tired and both wailing for my attention and there's nothing quite like two whining girls to do your head in. So now I'm trying to make quite sure they go upstairs by 8pm, so we're at least in bed by 8.30, even if they don't sleep by then.

Other times however, like when Roz has stolen her sister's knickers yet again and is gaily running off down the corridor in them, or they both gang up on me in bed and are both trying to blow raspberries on me at the same time, or when Izzy fishes out yet another card she's made at school that says 'I love you mummy, daddy and Roz, love Isabel', or they're both taking it in turns to kick each other in the face in bed in their sleep, you think aaah. For at least five minutes.

School run

My future's so bright

We're spending some birthday money

On these raised beds - thinking of espaliering some fruit trees along
the wall and putting in vegetables or maybe even some soft fruit
underneath.

View from the side

Autumn has descended

And the weather it's brought has necessitated all kinds of home
comforts.

Like this roast chicken

Roast butternut squash

Mmm don't know if it's whether I've finally worked out how to do it,
or it's a good year for squash, or we never owned a hot enough oven
(my guess), but the roast squash we've had so far has been lovely.

We'v been given apples by several people

So tarte tatin has been, I think, necessary.

The leftover puff pastry made some nice cheese and marmite crisps

About a third of the tomato harvest

Which became this

Made a side dish to the roast chicken, a pasta sauce, and some tomato
fried rice.

Who needs langurs?

Roz's nightime go-crazy routine.

Star of the Week

Hey someone got the Star of the Week award at school. Henry the Hippo
apparently watches all the children all week and decides who's been
the star at the end of the week. As a rewars the child get to bring
Henry home for the weekend.

Izzy's being all cagey about it and won't tell me what she got the
award for and is strangely a bit embarrased by it all. Funny girl.