A birthday, and an awards ceremony

Isabel enjoyed her birthday, as did Lily. Lily seemed to enjoy Isabel's presents as much as Isable did. However, Lily came down with a vomitting bug so Isabel's party had to be cancelled. Anne's going to re-arrange it for next week. It's mainly for Lily's beneift, since Isabel won't care and Lils will be upset if Isabel doesn't have a cake with candles.

 

 

 

On Saturday, Lily got her bronze medal at her dance class. This is entirely pointless in some ways. The children 'earn' their medals by attending a certain number of times. They're not assessed on anything. You get a sticker each week and when you've collected 12 stickers (on sticker charts you have to buy) you get a medal. I'm not entirely cynical about it since it acts as an encouragement and Lily was really pleased with her presentation and having people clapping her. For almost the entire first year she went to this class we just disposed of the weekly stickers after Lily had worn them for a bit. If we'd got the sticker charts from the off Lily would probably be on her platinum medal by now. (I don't know if there is a platinum medal.)

 

The year of the Isabel

Happy first birthday Isabel!

Has it really been a year since the earthquake that announced Isabel's arrival? Yes. It has. Our calendar proves it.

It's been an interesting year, and Isabel's proved to be a happy baby (though teeth seem to be trying to prove me wrong in the last few weeks).

We've got Isabel a ride on bee (!) for her birthday, and Lily 'bought' her sister a toy flower (in fact it was me what paid for it - she can buy me something of equal value later).

As I did on Lily's first birthday, I've made a four (and a bit) minute video of the first year of Bella's life. Lots of smiles. It was sometimes difficult to find video of youngest without eldest leaping in the way of the camera, but I managed to get enough together.

It's been great getting to know you Isabel. Looking forward to the next year.

An organ ,a cake and a kite in Woodhall Spa

We spent last weekend in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire visiting Anne's mum and step dad. On the Saturday evening we even got to go to the cinema to see Slumdog Millionaire (the night before it won all those Oscars). We saw it at the Kinema in the Woods cinema in Woodhall Spa, an old historic cinema which still has an intermission in its films. As the curtain came down, a man playing an organ came up through the stage floor and entertained the crowd with old fasioned organ music. It's a bizarre thing to see during a film. We've been there before but it's not something you get used to. Here's a You Tube vid (not mine) of what I'm talking about.

While we were at 'Granny Watkins's house' we had a samll celebration of Isabel's first birthday (which is tomorrow). Isabel enjoyed her cake (dairy free and egg free thanks to our kids' allergies), and her Benjamin Bunny soft toy.

 

I showed Lily Disney's Cinderella on DVD, and coincidentally she also got a late birthday present of an old fashioned cardboard theatre featuring the story of Cinderella. She took to this surprisingly well, and played by herself for ages (presumably wondering where the singing mice were).

 

Most impresssively (to me) Lils and I got to fly a kite together, even though there wasn't much wind. Here's a shot of Lily the kite runner. She was impressed for a short while, and then decided she was going to dance on 'the stage' (some tarmac) and the boys (me) weren't allowed on the stage. They needed to run around with the kite. So essentially it ended up as ten minutes of her doing a weird little jig at the edge of a field while I ran around with the kite. Whenever I stopped (exhausted) Lily would shout at me to keep running, and then carry on dancing. SHouldn't she be doing the running? She's got youth on her side.

 

...and you're not so big

As I put Lily to bed this evening I told her not to be so noisy as her sister was asleep. In a polite, sweet voice, Lily replied, "Daddy, you're not the boss of me. I'm the boss of me."

I blame They Might Be Giants. And the parents.

Toddler talk

Lily seems to have made another leap in language and understanding lately. Here's three conversations or quotes that have impressed us or made us laugh recently. None are particularly cute or funny, but I wanted to record them as they give us a good indication of where a three year old Lily was at. Poor Isabel is going to be judged against this.

When Anne was annoyed at Lily for something, Lily said the following in an angry tone (the numbers are part of the quote):
"1. Calm down
2. Stop being cross
3. Do you want me to give you a cuddle?"

When looking in the mirror, Lily asked her mum about her (Lily's) eyes. Presumably this interest was brought on by this book I recently bought for her about the human body:
L: My eyes are blue
A: Yes, they are
L: Which bit do you mean? The circle bit?
A: Yes
L: The bit in the middle is black
A: That's right. What colour is the bit around the outside?
L: It's white
A: That's right
L: Is that my bone?

We're frequently impressed by Lily's grasp of left and right, a concept we thought would be difficult for her to pick up. She was looking at Isabel yesterday and vocalised her thought processes when working out which side of her face Isabel had some food on:
"Look. Isabel has a bit of breadstick on her left cheek. It's her left because she's facing the other way to me."

Dad and Lily make a promo

Up until now, when I've made a video of Lily (or Isabel) it's been for Anne's and my amusement, or as a record of some stage of development. Nowadays, when I take video on our ElecticPhotoCamera Lily immediately wants to see it, so now I seem to be forced to take a lot of videos of her dancing. Many many dancing videos.

Lily recently saw an episode of Peppa Pig where Peppa's dad makes a movie with a movie camera. I said that we could make a video ourselves if she liked and she seemed keen. She seemed less keen when I tried to 'direct' her. I had her going in and out of her toy box so I could impress her with camera trickery, but Lily didn't seem to have the end product in mind and was more on for immediate gratification. By which I mean she wanted to do dancing and toddler tomfoolery.

I was up until late last night editing it together, and was please to see Lily laugh and laugh when she saw the result this morning. Partly she was amused by the little bits of amateurish camera trickery ("Daddy did magic" she said when she saw herself get out of a box twice in quick succession), but mainly she just likes to see herself on TV, and likes to see her 'beautiful beautiful ballet dancing'.

Probably one for close family only this - four minutes of Lily auditioning for High School Musical 13...

Sock on

I was clearly a little distracted as I put the girls in the bath tonight. The girls love bath time. They splash around, play with toys, and try to splash us. Ten minutes into the bath tonight Lily noticed that Isabel still had a sock on. Anne sang "Amateur Dad" at me (a favourite song of hers she made up) and I looked foolish. In my defence it was a pink sock, so it was hard to see.

No one focused on all the items of Isabel's clothing I'd managed to take off before I put her in the bath. Oh no. Let's concentrate on the one single item I left on.

White Monday

Breakfast was cut short this morning so Lily and I can make a (fairly small) snowman, which Lily has names Lolly (as she does every snowman she sees). She got very cold, and Anne gave her a hot chocolate, which seemed to help. I was cold too. Where was MY hot chocolate?

Now I have to work out if I can get into work...