Bathtime!

12 days on, Esther has so far shown her self to be a highly content child. She's sleeping reasonably well for her age on most nights and aside from the usual hunger/wind/tired baby crying she quite likes looking around her and taking it all in. Her sisters have also been very cute around her, and have been keen to help with her first bath.

Her tummy button took a while to heal up so this only happened today, with three big sisters very eager to join in the fun. Esther doesn't look so happy in the pictures but she did seem to enjoy it!

Really, the kirchen was actually the best space for this activity!

All clean! But why didn't they brush my hair after drying it?

Play

A nice selection of the girls at play. It's really great seeing all the sisters enjoying each others' company :-)

The wooden trains remain particularly popular - especially with Miriam.

Of course, we frequently have "mummy and baby" type play at the moment...

Given that none of us have been there for at least a couple of months now, I'm not sure what prompted the girls to have a go at playing "dentists" while in the bath recently...

All three of them chilling out before bedtime...

Naomi still enjoys her craft. I really liked the happy face that she'd made here.

"I know what you're up to"

Naomi, Miriam and I went to the park last weekend. Here's Naomi, who has now figured out how to run and jump onto the spinning cup so she can spin herself.

Finally, here they are playing hide and seek, with some proper childlike hiding.

Celebrations

The past couple of weeks have seen a lot of celebrations and party-like activities, so here's a bit of a roundup. First though, an all-important catchup on my various travels again. Another trip to COW in London...

I was going to caption this just as "SWEET!", but it's not quite clear enough for that. It's the Tate and Lyle factory near London City Airport - a happy sight to see on arrival in London! Here it is taken by someone else's much better camera in daylight...

I'm getting too familiar with this hotel. This time I was very near the lifts (just left of the top-right corner on the plan), but usually I'm the lucky chap on the far bottom left, with what feels like an hours' walk to breakfast in the morning.

Only downside of being near the lifts is that it's very much within earshot of the PA system at Euston Station. Of course, an upside is that this means that I got a splendid view of Euston station from my window. Even if it is that horrible 60s rebuild.

Obligatory cow picture.

The oh-so legible receipt from my takeaway meal. I eventually made this an "unreceipted claim" (acceptable as long as you don't do it very often).

A trip to London meant a visit to my sister Heather. And some more clothes for Naomi from her cousin!

Now, on to the celebrations. Naomi's best friend Ello had a birthday party last Saturday. I got to take an excited 4 year old and an excited 4 year old to a soft play place with sugar and HUNDREDS of excited 2-5 year olds. Yes, it was fun.

CAKE! CANDLES!

PARTY FOOD!

Then on to birthday 2. Jay's birthday was on Sunday...

Naomi and Miriam helped me to make a lovely cake

Happy birthday Mummy!

Now for a diversion into some bathtime fun. Miriam was making a brilliant face because apparently an elephant was on the stairs. Of course, upon taking her picture, she did this...

And this

...and there it is. Yikes, there's an elephant outside.

The party opportunity on Friday was Red Nose Day at the nursery. "Dress up as an animal" (by the way, the place was priceless when I dropped off Naomi in the morning...)

Naomi was a butterfly. Here's her wings.

Miriam painted a butterfly too of course.

Where's Naomi? All I can see is Heliconius charitonia

Lydia is learning to sit up. (well, sitting is a kind of celebration...)

Mmmmmm, Jay got a truffle making kit for her birthday. Yes, they ARE that good.

Finally, on to Mothers' Day...

Both girls made cards for their Mummy, and Naomi helped me to make a load of butterfly/fairy/angel cakes

Yes, they are also THAT GOOD.

Variety

A few more pictures from the past couple of weeks...

Given that it's winter, one wouldn't have expected picnics to be so popular, but they are.

We don't know which of the girls did this but we liked it. Naomi and Miriam are often giving their toys to Lydia to play with, it's very sweet. Miriam even offered her cat a few days ago.

Docs

In the bath last night Naomi was having a lot of fun with her hippos. They were having a lot of adventures but at one point the pink one wasn't feeling well.

So, here we have the blue one being a doctor,  the link one in the doctors bed,  and the whale being, well,  a whale.  What else?

I like this stage of development :-)

Washing

We'll catch up on the banter from Scotland shortly, but meantime I thought I'd share a great thing that happened tonight. I was supervising Naomi in the bath and she started washing my face. Reaching out of the bath, she tipped some imaginary soap from one of the closed bottles on the side of the bath onto her hands, then reached up and rubbed my cheeks. She then followed up with a rinse, and this went on for a good few minutes until my face was completely done. All very gentle (some things like this that she does are quite firm!) and she was really enjoying it.

It's not really the first time, she's given it a go before and Jay informs me that she also received similar treatment while I was away, but tonight it went on for a good long time and it really hit me how quickly our little girl it learning and growing up. I also love how in her own wee way she's already good at looking after others :-)

Bubbles

Some weeks ago now we were near the end of a bubble-bath bottle, and opted for a bumper load of bubbles so the bottle could be cleaned out completely. Naomi seems to find bubble fascinating!

In the past month or so, she's also got in to shoes in a big way. Taking off her one ones seems quite fun (resulting in a couple of near-misses with losing them), but even better is putting on someone else's shoes.  Mummy's slipper boots are quite good for this, but pretty much anything will do. She's developed something of an affinity for putting rings (such as the big plastic ones for her bathtime hippos) on her legs and arms too, being quite happy to sit for the whole of bathtime with those things on.

Anyway, here she is with my shoes - she can even take a few steps in them before falling over...

Bababath

Naomi's been starting to do proper baby-babble for the last few days. Mostly sounds like babababa and mumumumum, and it's all very cute. We've tried recording it several times, but she's very good at spotting the camera and going silent straight away. Last night during bath time I got a successful capture of some of it, plus as a bonus we can see her enjoying her baths once again... (the really talkative bit is about 2/3 the way through)

She also gets bouts of laughter from time to time for no apparent reason. Here, the mere sight of mummy was enough to launch into hysterics that last 5 full minutes...

Finally, we are more than a little disturbed at the fun she gets from one of her new-found toys. She even points it in the right direction! At least the TV stays off quite a bit just now so she doesn't get used to it being always on in the background.