Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Diggers, Birds, Boats and Puddles

I'm being unusually on the ball and blogging this before the day is even out, mainly cos I know that if I don't, I'll forget everything and we had such a lovely morning that I wanted to record it.

After a massive thunderstorm last night, where our electricity and seemingly all the electricity as far as the eye could see (and thats a long way, cos we're on the 11th floor) went off near midnight, I wasn't hopeful that today would be anything other than an at home day, and I so wanted us to get outside, because to be honest the last couple of days we haven't really got up to much.

But this morning we woke up to reasonable weather, so at about 10 we ventured out, armed only with a few coins, my phone, a bottle of water and the hip seat.
At first I thought we were only going to get as far as outside the building, as a man was mowing the grass on his ride on mower, so several minutes were spent watching him going up and down. But we finally tore ourselves away and wandered down to the old football pitch where there is currently a lot of work going on with diggers, steam rollers and so on. I found out that they are building an all weather pitch, which isn't nearly as exciting as the proposed go kart track, or skateboard park which A and I were convinced was being built!

Just for all those digger lovers out there, here are a few pics:







The last pic shows our apartment building in the background. Its the right hand tower block of the three, so we have been able to watch the building work from our balcony.

It was really tough to tear M away from the 'little digger' (I think the man was just putting on a show for us, cos as soon as we left, he stopped working!), but the promise of a croissant did the job!

On the way there, M collected several sticks, including one that I was hoping he would realise was a little large:



Luckily he dropped that one in favour of one that in the end just proved to much of a handful!



We went to a nice cafe by the harbour, and had croissant, coffee and water (with a straw so that lots of bubbles could be blown!). The croissant attracted lots of sparrows, and while I was trying to persuade M to have the last bit before I scoffed it, one cheeky one swooped down, grabbed it right out of my hand and flew off, almost hitting M in the face! I was in shock! The waiter seemed to think it was the funniest thing in the world though!
I think that this may have been the culprit, look at that innocent face.........



We then went to have a look for a duck or two by the water, but instead watched a man struggling to get his boat down the slipway into the lake. I guess us watching him was a bit offputting, but M certainly found it fascinating, the way he used a machine to roll the boat halfway in and then had to use brute force to push it the rest of the way. No photos for this part of the expedition - I thought it was a bit unfair on the guy!

By this time, M was getting tired, but insisted on walking just a little bit further. He also discovered the pockets of his shorts and these are my favourite sort of shots, where he looks so grown up, but really just a little cutie!





Not long after this, he decided that being carried was the way forward, but not before we jumped in a few (small!) puddles left over from last nights storm.

So, our short trip to watch the diggers turned into a 2 hour adventure which wore the little guy out. He is now sleeping, and to be honest, I don't blame him. I wish I could join him!

Friday, June 23, 2006

Typical!

I have spent the last couple of days trying to explain to M that nee-naws (police, ambulance and fire engines) have blue lights and a siren and other vehicles that have orange lights aren't nee-naws.
I haven't been forcing the issue, just gently saying 'thats not a nee- naw, its a ......'

Of course this morning M brings his fire truck (note I said truck, not engine) that Nanny and Grandad bought him from Sainsburys into the living room, and lo and behold, it has an orange light! Why do I bother?!

After lunch today, we both had some raisins. I picked out the biggest ones to show to him, whereupon he promptly took them off me and ate them! After that though, he looked for big ones in his pot, and did pretty well. He has also begun to put simple sentences together and I could almost see his cogs turning trying to say 'Eat bigger raisins'!

He went off to nursery in the afternoon. I wasn't sure how he would feel about me leaving as he hasn't been for 3 weeks, but as usual, there was no looking back.
A left work early to come on a coffee and icecream date, and then we picked M up from nursery. Apparently he had a bit of a wobble about 30 minutes in, but one of the acceuilantes took him aside and played in the water with him and he was happy as larry. He also had a bit of a set-to with Gabriel, but the same thing happened at playgroup on Thursday, so I think they're going through a bit of a 'checking each other out' phase.
We also (sounds awful, all this stuff!) were told that he pushed a non-walking baby over, but the acceuilante, Veronique, thinks it was because he had been playing with one of those clown things that pops back up if you push it over, and he wanted to see if the baby did it too! Shouldn't laugh, but I'm amazed at how their little minds work!


I did ask if she thought we had a problem, or the beginning of a problem with his behaviour, but she reassured me that it was perfectly normal. I probably knew that anyway, but I guess just needed some reassurance. Of course, its not acceptable, but these are the sort of things M needs to work out for himself, with some guidance from us, obviously.

In the evening we watched the Switzerland-South Korea match. M woke up half way through and so he sat on my lap for a big cuddle until he dropped off again. Its the second night in a row we've done it, the first night because he had a nightmare (we think); he woke up crying and dripping with sweat.

Switzerland won, and are through to the second round. Honestly you'd think that they'd won the whole tournament, the amount of noise they made. There were so many cars out until about 12.30am tooting their horns, people shouting out of their windows. Luckily M didn't wake up though. They play Ukraine next. Wonder what the reaction will be if they win that one........

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Muddle Puddle Camp at Kessingland

OK, I promise I will write about this soon. Preferably before I forget what happened when. Maybe I'll just drip feed it to you, not particularly deliberately, but just cos I'm rubbish at keeping my blog up to date.


We had a good time though!