Grandparents

Last weekend one of the PhD students in our department was getting married, and Jay and I were invited to the evening bash. In order to do this we needed a babysitter willing to also put three little girls to bed (the dance was in Blantyre) - so we made this a reason for a visit from my parents. Naturally this was highly exciting, and the girls had a really good time.

There is actually a picture on that paper.

Grandma -> chocolate

Yes, a visit to soft play sponsored by Grandma and Granddad. Guaranteed fun.

Husband and Wife in date photograph joy.

In other news, Miriam recently decided that the lack of a Xylophone (or indeed any other instruments from the tail end of the alphabet) in our house was no longer tolerable.

Finally, some bits of creativity. First - two of Naomi's recent pictures:

A mug.

It isn't actually Grandma's birthday any time soon - but let's make a card anyway.

"I made a tower!"

Musical

We've noticed that Miriam seems to have a bit of musical talent. Yesterday she was playing on my brother's drums and can keep a reasonably good rhythm, then later on she found a mouth organ and was having a go on that. She sounds pretty good! Enjoy...

Dancing

While the limbo period of Baby-II-nearly-here continues, Naomi keeps us well entertained. She's a little ill at the moment (as am I) but she's still full of energy.

One of the things she really likes to do is dance, and particularly to our odd tastes in music. Here she is a few days ago having a bit of a ceilidh with her bear, accompanied by the legendary Shindig.

Now a couple of recent pictures...

As winter nears, it's even getting cold in England now!

 

 

Naomi has taken to enjoying mummy and daddy's bed on the occasions she comes into our room (this is during the day when we have to get something from there, mind: she's very good at staying in her own bed during the night). She's also most particular about making sure it's quiet when this happens. She even pats my pillow indicating that I'm meant to be sleeping too. At the end of a long day at work it's hard to turn this down!

Fun

Naomi's really getting the hang of playing with things, and is quite a lot of fun to be around just now. We're both happy that she finds reading a lot of fun, she's good at working the flaps in some of her books now and knows what to expect on some of the pages!

A couple of weeks ago, a shiny toothpaste box formed the ideal extension to her arm...

... which was waved about at such high speed my camera couldn't capture it all that well.

"Look, I put the trousers on my head!" (for those who don't get the reference to one of my all time favourite programmes, here's a link for you)

More trouser-on-head-based fun. She was like this for at least 15 minutes....

and more...

You may remember the drum from some time ago. It's gained in it's fun value. Another interesting thing here is that Naomi can't stand hats or hoods, except when it's inside and the thing on her head is neither of those.

Finally, just a few days ago Naomi got her first doll. She's being very cute with her, offing her drinks from her cup, putting clothes over her as a blanket, and lots of hugs.

Toot!

The fun that one can have with a cardboard tube... Naomi discovered today that the former centre from a roll of wrapping paper made an odd sound when she sang into it. So she proceeded to do that for some time!

She also discovered today that one of her yellow bath ducks squeaks when squeezed. Needless to say it was even more fun when she found that bubbles came out of it underwater, and water shoots out when it gets full up! Sadly no video of that though.

Finally, here she is causing trouble in the kitchen last week. That gate was left open for about 20 seconds before she was through and pulling the cookery books down :)

Dancing

Naomi's been learning a few things recently. First one is that she now seems to be able to wave - and has been waving whenever the opportunity presents itself. Mummy or daddy leaving the house; contestants on Family Fortunes; you name it!

She's also started dancing. It's pretty much just a bounce, but she only really does it when there's music being played (or when I have the guitar out)... Here she is in action:

(by the way, the tune being played is a mixture of a human jazz trumpeter and a computer running a genetic algorithm. They take it in turns to improvise solos. One of the coolest demos of artificial intelligence at work :) You can find it here )

Holiday

In a shameful display of effort it's taken me quite some time to get round to writing up our Christmas holidays. Things are getting a little busy at work at the moment as I've got a paper to write which is due on the same day as the baby! So I'm trying to get it out of the way now in case we have an early arrival.

It was really great to be back up in Scotland among our friends and family again. It was a little surreal being there knowing it was just a visit. It was a good couple of weeks - though a little tiring darting all over the place to catch up with everyone :) We also got a experience some proper winter weather in place of the tame stuff we've been getting used to of late.

First stop on the way up was a quick check on our house, including a drop off of some things that were taken by accident in the rush of the move. My parents and brother kindly helped finish off the decorating once we'd gone and it was nice to see the results of their hard work. (especially knowing that we've now got a likely taker for the place)

As I said, we spent much of our time visiting folks and apologies to those we missed - we will try to see you when we come up again, which won't be long. You'll also be most welcome to come to us, it's only 8 or so hours' drive though it's a bit of a squeeze in our house.

As a mark of how good the weather was, about halfway through the holiday I helped my brother and brother-in-law to build an igloo in the garden for Steven and Holly (my nephew and niece). Here's the result:



How better to pass the time than racing some wind-up royals?

On hogmanay we went to the ceilidh that the church in New Deer have been holding for the last few years. Always a good time, though accompanied by the obligatory embarrassing birthday recognition for me. Also Jay didn't get to dance as much as usual for obvious reasons, though she did mime nappy changing in one of the games (yes, there were games).

Finally, on the recommendation of Mr. Joe McGarry I have recently been listening to Slagsmalsklubben-den Svenske Disko - which has provided some enjoyable diversity when interspersed with the 50s Rock and Roll I've had on for much of the past couple of days. It's essentially a generic version of 80s arcade game sountracks and well worth a listen if you like kind of thing. (just try not to bounce too much if you're in an office within sight of others)