More Food!!

As you can see here Miriam is now starting to enjoy the world of solid food.  I can report, that just like her big sister she LOVES food!

Having not been on solid foods very long most foods are a new experience.  I thought you might like to see what she looked like after her first experience of spinach, she had it tonight with fish and mashed potato.

Yum!!

Holiday

So, here's part 2 of our Scottish holidays. Apologies for the lack of posting at the moment, things are a bit hectic with us - and we have a bit of a backlog of news to work through!

What better way to open a blogpost than with a picture of a teepee? During our time at Granny and Granddad's (Jay's parents), we had a lovely visit to Castle Fraser, where Naomi has a good run around the various outdoor things that they have.

On arrival at Grandma and Granddad's (my parents), I was quite taken by the hot news in the local paper. Yes, it was a gripping read.

Naomi had some good fun with her cousins, and had a few trips to the park in Keig and New Deer. She climbed on this toy all by herself!

Here she is with the little red car I used to play with when I was small. Interesting to note that she can't work the weir pedals inside either! (they go back-and-forward instead of round-and-round)

Playing on my old swing...

I also quite enjoyed Naomi playing with her cousins. A classic example, where I suspect that Naomi's got the better deal:

Now, on to the wedding. My brother Ian and his now wife Christine had a fantastic day, getting married in Fochabers. We'll do a blog post focused on just that once we've got some more pictures through, but for now here's the ones I took. We start with a picture I took at the reception - in case you're worried Ian is only three years younger than me - this picture was taken a long time ago and featured in a selection of embarrassing child pictures all around the church hall. (this was a great idea: straight after the wedding itself there were tea and cakes in the church hall while all the photos were taken, then we headed to the reception hotel in a much more relaxed and not ridiculously hungry state!) I took this one for incorporation into my best man speech, but I didn't have time to include it in the end.

Here is the picture of a standing ovation at my amazing speech. If you were there, you can really appreciate this :)

The packed reception venue, home of some good ceilidh action.

A puzzling arrangement in the shower.What does this button do? My uncle is a plumber and he didn't even know.

Dinner with the Brownlees a day after the wedding. Here's Naomi with a child's portion ice cream. Can she eat it all?

Yes.

Some great playing on the way home to Loughborough!

Travels

Many of you will know that we (and I in particular) have been travelling quite a bit of late. My first trek was in late March, to the EMO2013 conference. (Yes, it's really called that) No papers to present at this one, just a glorious bit of networking and learning about what other people are getting up to. In case you're wondering, EMO is Evolutionary Multi-criterion Optimisation, which is using genetic algorithms to find the trade-off between conflicting goals; a prime example being what I've been up to at Loughborough, finding the trade-offs between cheap, comfortable and energy efficient buildings.

No trekking far afield for this one, just a train up the country to Sheffield. Here's the view from my hotel window, overlooking a tram bridge (some of us like that type of thing...)

The conference was held at the University of Sheffield, a couple of miles from the city centre, so we had to get a bus there at 7:30 each morning, and returned late at night after the sessions were all done.

The conference dinner was at Chatsworth House - very nice! Here's some poor-quality shots of the house's splendour...

This is really the ceiling! An improvement on polystyrene tiles anyway.

On our walk around the house, we were presented with this lovely table setting.

Sadly, it turned out that our dinner was to be served in the stables, though it was still pretty good:

The conference was pretty good, lots of interesting stuff to chew over. Also, at the end of it all, I got a lovely bag to show off:

Super! The one sad part of it all is that it's getting harder to leave all the girls behind. Naomi was very sad that I was gone, and most happy to see me when I returned. As an aside, in an exciting move, Naomi's getting good at doing puzzles!

My next trip was to a wintry Stirling. More on what that was all about later, but for now, here's a shot of the view from the Computing department windows there. Yes, that's the Wallace Monument.

Straight after arriving back from that trip, we then all got in the car and drove back to NE Scotland, for parental visiting and my brother's wedding. Installment one is the trip up, which I think nicely rounds off this post...

An exciting place to eat lunch

A car with Peppa Pig in it. Does life get any better?

A Cautionary Tale About Co-sleeping

After a hideous night with the children a few nights ago while Sandy was away, I share with you my cautionary tale about co-sleeping which should be sung (approximately) to the tune of "there were ten in the bed".  But before I do, here is a photo that was taken at bath-time just before the night in question

There were three in their beds and the biggest one said,

"all sleep there, all sleep there."

So they all slept a while but the little one said,

"I want milk, I want milk"

So Mummy rolled over and gave some milk but the little one said,

"I'll stay here, I'll stay here"

There were two in the bed but the bigger one said,

"I want in, I want in"

So Mummy let the bigger one in, but she wriggled and she jiggled so the little one said,

"I want milk, I want milk"

So mummy rolled over and gave some milk and the bigger one said,

"HELLO" at the top of her voice

So the little one said,

"Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah"

So the bigger one said,

"Not here, not here"

So the mummy one took her back to her bed so there were two in the bed and the little one said,

"I want milk, I want milk"

There were two in the bed when the bigger one said,

"I want back, I want back"

So the Mummy one got her and tucked her in and begged her to close her eyes for there were three in the bed when the little one said,

"I want milk, I want milk"

So we all rolled over and some milk was drunk.

There were three in the bed when we fell asleep just in time for the alarm to say

"Beep beep beep, beep beep beep"

There was no-one in the bed when the Mummy said,

"Give me coffee, give me coffee"

Food!

So, we had been planning on weaning Miriam after we got back from our next trip to Scotland as it is only a couple of weeks away.  Our baby was just too hungry, though, so I thought I would try her with a little bit of baby rice.

Here she is waiting with anticipation

As an aside, this failed photo shows a very cool hair style!

Here she is after the first spoonful, she took a moment to decide how she felt

But very quickly she decided that she LOVED it!

And indeed as soon as it finished (despite being given what I thought was quite a large first ever portion) she let me know she was sad about it

Today she has also had some banana and I can tell you that she is LOVING food, just like her big sister did!

I also thought I would share this picture from last thing before bed as we were getting changed after a shared bath

sisters

Peppa

We commence today's post with something that mildly brightened my day recently. In the midst of a proper Midlands fog day, a bunch of workers came out and finally cleared the cycle path that takes me to the university. In the distance (on the right) you can just about make out the resulting vertical wall of bushes, which used to cut right across my path and made for some nasty twig-related pain in the dark of winter.

Next up, Naomi is getting better at playing with her sister, although it can still get a bit rough sometimes. Here she is demonstrating the baby gym.

This past weekend, we met up with my sister and her family at my Uncle's. Her children were fascinated by Naomi when she was small (and now - with no end of mischief...), and the same applied to Miriam.

My sister also gave us a load of old clothes that now fit Naomi, including some dressing up stuff. the result is that she's almost permanently Peppa Pig at the moment. She can even put the costume on all by herself!

Terrific Twos!

Naomi has worked out she is two! Obviously she turned two a few weeks ago but it seems to have taken her till now to find the behaviour that most people associate with being two.  If I'm being honest I am struggling with the transition to this phase, I feel like I now spend all day every day shouting and I don't enjoy it.  As with many things in life when it all feels too hard I like to try and find some humour, so here is a list of things that may (or may not, who knows?) be the latest cause of one of Naomi's tantrums...

It is time to get up
It is time to go to bed
It is time to wear clothes
It is time to put on a nappy
It is time to have her nappy changed
Having asked to sit on the potty she now doesn't want to sit on the potty
Her sister is sleeping (so not playing with her)
Her sister is not sleeping (so taking up my time)
It is time to get in the buggy
It is time to leave the house
It is time to leave toddler group
It is not time to go to 'Kate's House' (she wants to go to this particular friends house, all the time!)
Lunch doesn't feature sausages
Dinner does feature sausages
I won't let her watch "pocket pocket" (a cbeebies programme called Grandpa in my pocket)
I won't let her play with kitchen knives
Large items won't fit into small holes
Water is wet
We have run out of juice
We have run out of raisins
I have suggested that we should drink water (not juice)
I won't let her get in the oven
Fruit is a finite resource
I asked her to wear a hairslide
Her hairslide fell out
Random piece of clothing won't stay on dolly
One of Miriam's dresses won't fit on Naomi
Miriam isn't wearing socks (probably because Naomi just took them off)
Miriam is wearing socks
She wants to go "that way"
Miriam won't let her eye be poked
I won't let my eye be poked
Sandy won't let his eye be poked
I won't let her phone 999 (again!!)
Breakfast was served in a bowl not decorated with peppa pig
I won't let her wear her wellies in bed
I won't let her take every book she owns to bed
I won't let her have calpol for no reason
Life is just tough

All that said, I do love her!