Not a teapot.....

11 weeks

2012-02-07T20:43:00.000Z

(The ones where she was smiling also feature large amounts of unatractive dribble!)

Snow (2)

2012-02-06T20:32:00.000Z

Take three little boys, two little sisters, three mums and a dad home on a snow-day. Put them all in the snow. You get a snowman and........an amazing igloo!They thought I was joking when I suggested it, and by the end, most people had retired indoors to have lunch, but Bruce and I persevered, and in the bright warm sun completed a whole room complete with ceiling!The photo doesn't really do it any kind of justice:

Snow

2012-02-05T20:34:00.000Z

The snow has arrived!

Funny Frustration

2012-02-04T19:54:00.002Z

As previously mentioned, Thea has been enjoying finding out about hands and starting to grab things. However, this doesn't always lead to an easy life.

Today at supper she was waving her hands carefully around and making sad noises. When we watched, we realised why. She had seen something in front of her - her hand - and was trying to grab it. Unfortunately, as she tried to grab it, it moved!

Definitely frustrating!

Fun with mirrors

2012-02-02T20:54:00.000Z

Thank you toy bus!

We're still here!

2012-02-01T10:41:00.000Z

Things have been rather busy recently, so sorry for the lack of posts. I'm going to try and get up to date, so I'll be posting some things in the past. Keep a look out for them. But be warned, they might be rather word-light!

10 weeks

2012-01-31T10:41:00.000Z

Dorothea is being very smiley and initiates grinning sessions with pretty much anyone! She is starting to grab things and when lying on the play mat, slowly, with great concentration, raises her hand to the hanging toy and carefully wraps her fingers around it. She'll persevere with this for ages. She's learnt the value of the p word (practise) already!

Scooting with friends

2012-01-23T11:18:00.000Z

Getting to Steiner has got a bit more complicated now that there are two of them. We can't cycle yet, and it's a pretty long walk. So we have taken to driving to South Bank and then scooty biking over the bridge. Some of our friends have followed suit (they don't like the cold cycle!), and now we have a caravan of scooty bikes heading home at the end of the session.

The boys are so funny - they scoot 200 yards and then stop for a chat:
"Why is your bike pink, Robin?"
"It's not pink, Hanyul, it's purple"
"It is pink, Dylan - I like it"
"I like it too"

The Park

2012-01-19T11:36:00.000Z

Nathaniel and I have been enjoying going to the Very Young Friends of West Bank Park again. This week we made houses for felt animals and then built a den big enough for us all stil in and listen to a story and have a snack.

Then we went scootering around the park and had fun learning how to zoom down the hill and use the break to stop.

And what was Dorothea doing?

Normality

2012-01-04T12:53:00.002Z

Christmas was great, but it is nice to get back to normal life (though saying that, I haven't done a day on my own with both kids yet!).

Nothing of particular interest has happened, which is exactly the way it should be. There have been scooter rides and seeing friends and doing drawings. And everyone has grown a bit:

Strange behaviour

2011-12-29T11:46:00.000Z

The Windmill

2011-12-27T12:45:00.002Z

Nathaniel has been a great fan of windmills ever since we introduced him to Camberwick Green and Windy Miller. So he was very excited when the Holgate Windmill got it's long-awaited sails up and a trip had to be taken in the pouring rain to see them.

He's even more excited to find that he can see them from his bedroom window. They look pretty impressive against a leaden sky.

Firsts

2011-12-22T17:38:00.000Z

There are lots of things that were a big deal when Nathaniel was little that are a hundred times more complicated with Dorothea. Baths are one. But we needed a bedtime routine, and there is only so much washing you can do with a bit of wet cotton wool, so we embarked on the first bath.

Fortunately, Nathaniel was incredibly keen on this idea and was excited all day. He was absolutely certain that this activity should involve him! Dorothea wasn't desperately impressed by the whole proceedings, but neither was she unimpressed. I'd go with puzzled.

I can understand why!

Nathaniel is currently sulking because I said that we couldn't have another first bath. I'm am waiting to introduce him to the idea that we'll be able to have a second bath, and a third, and a fourth....

Preparations

2011-12-22T14:43:00.000Z

We discovered a useful thing last week - we'll be able to use our favourite new toy earlier than we thought!

We bought the trailer knowing that it was going to be a while before Thea would be able to go in it. Even with the baby sling, she'd need to be at least 3 months before she could cope with the bumps. But on reading the info that came with the sling, we discovered that actually they recommend that you can use it from a month if you just walk with it. So now we have a double buggy!

We celebrated by using it to go for a foraging trip to the woods. Nathaniel was very keen to go and got quite grumpy that it took us so long to get Dorothea installed and appropriately wrapped up!

But everyone was jolly by the time we got to the sunny woods. Nathaniel and I took to the holly bushes with secateurs.

Then a friendly gentleman who was out to watch birds told us about a big bush covered in berries, so we headed there via pine cones and ivy.

Lots of fun was had!

When we got home, we released the tree from its netting and got to work installing it and decorating.

Most of the house is now covered in holly and ivy. Nathaniel spent some time in the garden collecting ivy (more secateurs always leads to a fun game!) and twigs, and Ian and I have done artistic things!

It's a shame it can't stay decorated all year.

Spot the difference

2011-12-20T09:04:00.001Z

Actually they don't look that alike in these photos, but rest assured, there is a striking resemblance!

Christmas Songs

2011-12-16T20:26:00.004Z

Today was Nathaniel's Nursery christmas carol concert. All the parents are invited to hear them sing the Christmas "carols" that they have been singing. Carols include such favourites as Santa Claus is Coming to Town and I'm a little Snowman.

The children are all encouraged to come in costume, but when I asked Nathaniel about what he would like to wear, he was very insistant that he didn't want to dress up as anything and just wanted to be a little boy.

However, I made appropriate arrangements just in case (two options!), and it's just as well, as half an hour before I set out to nursery, one of the staff rang to ask if I was bringing a costume as Nathaniel was upset that he didn't have one!

So I turned up with my options, and unsurprisingly Nathaniel decided again that he didn't want to dress up! I persuaded him that although he didn't want to be a christmas tree, he might like to be a Nathaniel with baubles, and so he was the only kid wearing half a costume!

It was well worth attending. I wasn't sure whether he would join in the songs with such a giant audience, but in fact he was one of a very few kids who sang with gusto all the way through. He knew all the words, even to the verses of some of the more obscure songs, and sang so loudly (though tunefully), that I could hear him clearly along with the nursery staff.

I figured that you'd all like to see his Christmas tree costume (which he became interested in once we got home), but once he had dressed up in it, he suddenly became all shy and just wanted to sit down. So here is the moodiest of all christmas trees:

It looked more impressive with the green t-shirt and the baubles pinned in more elegant places.

Ian was more jolly!

Four Weeks

2011-12-15T20:12:00.000Z

Dorothea is four weeks old today, and I'm afraid that nothing partcularly interesting has happened. Also, entertaining a three year old has ensured that we haven't been sitting around with nothing better to do then take cute photos!

Unexpectedly, Dorothea's interest in sleep has remained an obsession far beyond the two weeks that it took Nathaniel to get over it, and so most of the time she looks like this:

Most of our friends have never seen her eyes!

In some ways this has been incredibly convenient as Nathaniel has had a tonsilitis-like virus resulting in a roaring temperature and some extremely sleepless nights. What's more fun than looking after an ill toddler? Lokking after asn ill toddler and a new born!

I'm sure there's more fun ahead.....

More Dorothea

2011-11-30T19:28:00.003Z

When Nathaniel was little, we were very good at posting about every little thing and sharing lots of photos. But somehow, I can see us being less diligent this time!

But to try and start off on the right foot, here are some random pictures of Thea's first two weeks:

Day 4: Being a potato

Day 6

Day 7: Thriller baby

Day 13: Interested in supper

Commodore's Trophy Part 2

2011-11-27T19:58:00.001Z

As you recall, the sailing club were generally very pleased that Nathaniel had won the Commodore's Trophy, albeit with a little help from Ian. They were also rather keen to meet Thea.

So we broke with our normal obsession with getting to bed at a sensible bedtime, and decided to attend the beginning of the YRISC Annual Dinner en famille.

Nathaniel was very excited. After supper, instead of having five minutes playing and then going to bed, he put on his smart "work shirt" (plus a rather fine t-shirt that says "can't sail (yet)" on it), and we went out to the hotel at which the dinner was being held.

At a special ceremony before everyone sat down to supper, Steve, the Commodore, presented Nathaniel with the Commodore's Trophy plus a matchbox jeep towing a rescue boat on a trailer (the later doesn't have to be returned next year!).

Despite our best efforts to prepare him with endless renditions of the story "Nathaniel wins a prize", Nathaniel had a moment of shyness, and had to accept the trophy with my help.

He regained his composure afterwards and was able to put his firm handshake into practice.

Dorothea Hilary Graham

2011-11-19T12:24:00.002Z

Dorothea arrived on Thursday 17th November at 7pm. She managed to be born at home, and everything was really quite chilled out! We never managed to use the birth pool, despite Ian eventually filling it with a bucket!

Nathaniel is being an ideal older brother and looking after Thea very well. He is very diligent about finding her blankets to keep her warm! He looks like a plague victim because he had his face painted for Children in Need!

After

2011-11-11T09:40:00.003Z

Sorry - we never took a proper "before" picture. But you can probably remember what it was like - turquoise walls, delightful orange and brown flowery carpet. And don't forget that the carpet never reached the walls - there was a border of unsanded floorboards around the edge, and that the underlay felt like plastic bags - it crackled as you walked across it and barely added any padding to the floorboards.

This is the best photo I could find:

(Jan 2011 - building the expedit (essential ikea part of all childrens' rooms)

Of course, the room was also furnished with all the boxes that we haven't unpacked since moving. Even when Nim was living in it, the whole of one wall had a line (sometimes two thick), of packing boxes full of useful things such as playstations and games, notebooks with only two or three pages filled, baby clothes that have never been worn. I won't tell you where they all are now, but you wouldn't be surprised.

But thanks to the parents, all these things are gone and we now have cream walls. Two days of fierce painting have eliminated the turquoise, and although we will have to come back to it one day and deal with the textured wall paper which is still in place, it looks amazing! And no young child ever cares to that extent!

We have never told Nathaniel that he should move into the room - we didn't want him to feel that he was being moved to make room for Adama. He has just been told that we are sorting out Auntie Nimmy's room and that he wants to move into it, he can. And he really does want to!

He watched the carpet fitter very carefully (he has been playing laying carpets ever since), and gave him a running commentary on how he was planning to move in. He then spent all afternoon and evening playing in there and running around - "I really enjoying all this space, Mummy!". He was disappointed not to sleep in there, and has been quite clear that we should move his bed this evening. He seems rather taken by the idea!

Fireworks

2011-11-06T20:59:00.002Z

I've never been terribly convinced about the merits of taking small children to firework displays. Particularly when the small child in question isn't altogether convinced about loud noises (he sometimes asks to put on his headphones that we bought him for seeing bands at festivals when the drill or hoover is being used!), or about large crowds of people (we are raising a hermit!).

So we decided not to bother with the various spectacles on offer and just have a look and see what we could see in the sky from here.

Fortunately, on Friday we were treated to a really good display just east of the house, just at bedtime. So after teeth brushing and pyjamaing, we sat on our bed and looked out of our giant bedroom window (so that was why they put in such ridiculous windows in the 60s - for watching fireworks!), and watched a great display in the warm, with double glazing insulating us from the loudest bangs.

N was pretty convinced by this, and talked all day on Saturday about fireworks, and as he had a good nap in the afternoon, we decided to go out at bedtime and see what could be seen.

The views from the Moor were amazing. Standing in the middle we got 360 degrees of fireworks, and due to the low cloud and damp conditions, all the smell of being in close proximity to a bonfire! As every display/pile in someone's garden died out, another would begin, and we mostly were spoilt for choice in where to look.

Nathaniel enjoyed himself and was pleased to report that he liked the ones that banged the best, and that I liked the fizzing ones; "There's another fizzy one Mummy - you are a big fan of them"; "Bang - did you jump?!".

We didn't manage to leave until past 8 o'clock, and the boy would have stayed for longer if we had let him.

A most sucessful adventure.

Dusk

2011-10-31T21:38:00.003Z

Last year, Nathaniel and I marked the changing of the clocks by embarking on torch walks before supper. We'd go out, armed with a torch each, and chase the "dancing lights", light up trees and generally play in the dark.

This year, the scooty bike is the preferred method of transport, and Nathaniel has become very interested in sunsets. Fortunately, at this point, the sunset is late enough to make it interesting to chase. He is also very excited as he has lights on his bike, and has been really looking forward to it being dark enough to use them.

So off we went on to the Moor. It was mild with a warm breeze and felt properly autumnal. We met several friends on their way home from work, and many exciting dogs.

We enjoyed the sunset, and I discovered that I couldn't work out how to take a picture in which you could see both the sunset and the boy.

Then we went off-piste and explored a muddy path and collected golden leaves for making art with later in the week.

By the time we got home, it was properly dark, so N felt that he had got the most out of his bike lights, and we were ready for warm spiced apple juice. Marvellous!

Something different

2011-10-25T20:45:00.003+01:00

Poor Nathaniel has suffered lately from our to-do list. Weekends are filled with me having random naps and us not doing anything exciting because we have to purchase some random bit of baby gear that we forgot that we didn't have, or varnish some boat, or paint some walls. He was quite distraught when we left the sailing club at lunch time on Sunday. He couldn't possibly see how returning to the house to sort out some more boxes of accumalated junk could be more important than sailing.

So when we had a random Monday with everyone at home, we decided that we wouldn't be useful and do stuff just for fun instead. A couple of weeks ago we noticed how interested Nathaniel was in town. We never go there except to dash into a particular shop to buy a specific thing and hardly ever wander. So we decided to go into town, have some lunch, go to the slipper shop (N needs slippers), but have no other proper agenda.

We even decided to get the bus rather than cycling, which was greeted with great enthusiasm. Waiting at the bus stop meant we had to watch all the different vehicles (always fun), and then there was the excitement of sitting at the front of the top of a double decker bus!

Lunch was taken at Pizza Express, and Nathaniel excelled in remembering all the guidlines about eating out that we had discussed. His behaviour was marvellous. We were seated in the bar area, which normally I dislike, but it meant that we could watch the waiters preparing all the drinks, which was a great hit.

Nathaniel took this picture:

It was so over stimulating, that N was exhausted by the end and suggested that we went and had a nap somewhere! So we had a brief rest at the library with some books and then wandered leisurely through town towards the slipper shop, with lots of time to stop and chase pigeons.

Nathaniel was very thorough about seeing them all off, and his plan of campaign was so efficient, that by the time I had got the camera out, he had rid the square of almost all of them. Hence my photo is not the entertaining action shot I was after!

Then there was some good climbing along walls and running along pavements. All good Nathaniel fun.

After all that, we were all good for nothing apart from home and some quiet reading! Auntie Nimmy came over for supper (always well received) and then Ian and I went out for dinner at a real restaurant. A very superb day!

new posts

2011-10-23T21:15:00.001+01:00

Sorry - we've been a bit tired, busy and generally distracted. But a post about N's birthday has eventually appeared. Of course, it had to be put in the right order, so please scroll down to read..........

Commodore's Trophy

2011-10-02T20:00:00.002+01:00

Trophies at our sailing club are a serious business. Not so much the competition! For some reason we have a collosal number of trophies to give out at the end of each year, and it sometimes feels like we are just dividing them equally between us all rather than competing for them. There are some that no-one wants - the Alex Smith trophy is giant and unwieldy and requires polishing. There are some that are just a pain - a few of the second crew ones are so light that the wind blows them off the mantlepiece. Most people just put them in a box in the loft and forget about them until they are demanded back the following year!

However, when we are actually racing, we somehow manage to maintain that it is important who wins them, and so sometimes the races end up a little strange. This year, Steve, as Commodore, decided that the Commodore's trophy should be a personal pursuit race in order to allow everyone a good chance of winning. He and Hugh and I were OD, and Nathaniel decided to race with Ian.

There really wasn't any wind, so they decided to take the RS200 (!). Nathaniel, as usual, helped to rig and launch the boat with enthusiasm.

There really wasn't ANY wind!

But Nathaniel enjoyed himself (and the chocolate rations that were taken on board).

And it didn't stop them from winning the race and therefore the trophy! There was general excitement across the club about this, and most people failed to note that Ian may have something to do with the result. Even now, several weeks later, everyone refers to the fact that Nathaniel has won the Commodore's Cup.

There is general disappointment about the fact that he will not be at the Annual Dinner to collect his trophy (it's on the same night that we are expecting Adama to arrive, so we've sent our apologies), and no-one can seem to remember, that even if Ian and I were planning to go, it would be unusual for a 3 year old to be attending a dinner that starts at 8pm!

You can't say that YRISC doesn't support it's younger members!

Maisie's Wings

2011-10-01T22:55:00.003+01:00

When I saw these wings on the internet, I knew that Maisie would need a pair to dress up with. So I made them for her birthday, and I'm rather pleased with them.

Fortunately, after modeling them for me, Nathaniel wasn't that interested by them, and was happy to package them up for Maisie.

Birthday

2011-09-24T20:00:00.002+01:00

Nathaniel had a fine third birthday! Thank you all for your cards and presents.

Ian and I had to be at work on the actual day, but we had cards at breakfast;

And then we both took the afternoon off so that we could do opening of presents;

playing with new toys;

and eating cupcakes (Nathaniel's favourite). In the evening, as per tradition, several of OUR friends came around (also bearing gifts), and we had more cake (thank you Auntie Nimmy):

Nathaniel wasn't impressed with the idea of being sung to (we suspect that he hadn't enjoyed it at nursery that morning), and after much enthusiasm for lighting the candle, he hid under the table. So we abandoned singing, and just ate cake.

Then he went to bed and we all celebrated surviving another year by over-ordering curry!

At the weekend, we had a low-key birthday party - friends and their families over for playing, coffee and cake. It turned into an all-day affair, with people dropping in and out and in again throughout the day, and different people for each meal! It was really nice. Nathaniel didn't get overwhelmed, no-one cried, and everyone had fun.

Auntie Nimmy excelled herself on the cake front:

The bell tent was out in force;

and we made up for being cruel parents and never providing money to go on moving rides outside supermarkets etc by providing a special treat:

It was well used by all ages!

By the evening, everyone was exhausted, happy and generally very merry. Exactly how a birthday should be!

Preparations 2011

2011-09-20T20:00:00.002+01:00

Dance of the Woodlice

2011-09-19T23:01:00.000+01:00

Nathaniel very much enjoys being creatures other than little boys. He is very likely at any point in the day to say "I a little owl/cat/dog/bird/earwig", and he'll then let you know that you are a big owl/cat/dog/bird/earwig. You'll often then get a short lecture on his distinguishing features - whether he has fur or feathers, his colour, how he moves, the noise he makes etc etc.

It's all very entertaining.

But my favourite is when he is a little woodlouse. Woodlice dance to Sans Saens' Dance Macabre (of course - you knew that....). This is the bit where they get stuck on their back and wiggle their legs in the air:

It's worrying quite how carefully he has been observing them!

Things that are fun

2011-09-02T19:58:00.003+01:00

Scooty biking to nursery in the morning:

Hugging the baked apples:

Nathaniel loves baked apples, and tells them so every time we make them:"I like you baked apples - you are very spicy and tasty".

Galtres

2011-08-31T19:57:00.003+01:00

Over the bank holiday, we went to the Galtres Festival - a little local festival that has evolved from a beer and food festival into a family extravaganza of bands and beers.

As you are well aware, I'm writing this a good month after the event, so you'll have to make do with the edited highlights. As it is we didn't take a camera (we sadly lost the little camera last winter, and we didn't like the idea of taking the expensive SLR to a festival), so this is a bit bereft of photos.

Mud
It rained. For several days beforehand and then most of the first day. And people walked around on the wet grass until there was no grass left. So we got to experience the seven ages of mud right from the sludgy stuff squidging around the grass, through molten flowing liquid mud, to sticky, half-foot deep quagmire that sucked toddler wellies off every other step, all the way to dried rocky ravine mud. As someone who was at Glastonbury in the Year of the Mud, before they installed the amazing drainage system, I wasn't too bothered, but some people didn't enjoy it, and the campsite emptied out on Sunday quite dramatically.

Typically, the kids weren't too bothered. They didn't like it the first time they fell over and got caked in soft runny stuff, but once we had explained that we weren't going to wipe it, that it just dried and then you brushed clumps of it off leaving an insulating brown crust, they just got on with it! It meant that there was none of the sitting round on the grass, listening to bands, nursing a cold beer while the kids ran around us, which is what we had all been imagining, but it just added an extra dimension to the complexity of moving around the festival site.

We had to do quite a bit of hosing down when we got home!

The amazing bell tent
You wouldn't think we could get more enthusiastic about the bell tent, but we can! The bell tent was in it's element. Cars weren't allowed on the campsite - you had to carry things in. When we arrived at the site, it was chucking down with rain - really throwing it down. But Nathaniel and I were smug in the knowledge that during the 10 mins that Ian spent taking the tent to the campsite, he wasn't just finding a pitch and dumping the tent to get rained on like everyone else, he was putting up the tent, so that we could retire to the dry while he brought all the other kit.

Then as the rain continued, we sat in the tent with the door open, watching everything that was going on, with no rain getting in at all. There wasn't a nylon tent on the site that you could do that in.

And we quickly met the other bell tent enthusiasts - five others around us - and spent hours afirming how great our tents were!

The awning was a godsend as well. While other people had a swamp outside their doors, we rigged the awning between us and the Turner's tent and had a covered, dryish mud area where we could barbeque, put chairs and generally shelter without running for the cover of tents.

The buggy

We don't use the buggy much anymore, Nathaniel prefers to scooty bike, so we felt a bit silly taking such a big conveyance to a festival. But we had the idea that it would enable us to carry stuff around the site during the day easily, and give Nathaniel somewhere to have a bit of a rest without returning to the tent. Obviously that turned out to be not even an option once the mud started to stiffen up, but the buggy had already turned out to be worth it's weight in gold.

Carrying three days worth of food and camping equipment from a distant car park to a tent doesn't sound too arduous, but when the car parks have all been closed due to the fact that no-one could move the cars through the mud, and your car is miles away, and it's tipping with rain, and the mud is deep and squelchy, life is much easier if you can load up a buggy and push it!

Nathaniel the wonder-toddler

Festivals aren't necessary the best place for 2 year-olds, especially when they are very muddy. There is noise 24 hours a day, and nowhere to retreat. But Nathaniel took it in his stride. We anticipated that he would find the stages rather loud, and got him a pair of ear defenders which he wore with pride and as result really enjoyed seeing bands.

As it was, this was the most amazingly family friendly festival that I have ever seen. Along side all the story-telling, sing-a-long sessions, shadow puppet shows and tents filled with sofas and tea, there was a whole kids field with a tent full of brio! Nathaniel spent a good afternoon playing with trains and castles and planes while I reclined on bean bags and chatted to the play workers.

The rest of the time he happily squelched his way around in shorts and wellies, encrusted with mud up to the waist, with his cap on his head and backpack on his back taking in the sights and sounds.

In the evening when our friends were wrestling their over-tired toddlers into bed, we sat around the barbeque with a big carry keg of beer from the beer-tent while Nathaniel peacefully went to sleep. Star child!

Bands
We weren't really expecting to see many bands, particularly when it became apparent how muddy it was going to be. After bedtime, someone was going to need to stay with the sleeping boy. So we drew up a rota according to who liked what the most, and resigned ourselves to the fact that only one of us would see most of them, especially, the Sunday night headliners, the Levellers.

But come Sunday night, Nathaniel had been so good, that we agreed that after supper he could get ready for bed and then come out to see a band in the dark so that he could see all the lights. He decided that he was going to do this in the buggy, so we bundled him up in warm pyjamas, blankets, ear defenders and a hat, and pushed him over to see Beyond all Reason, who we both wanted to see. He was fascinated, and then promtly fell asleep in the second song! So Ian and I both saw them, and then pushed him over to the Levellers, and due to the complicated way that the site worked, got to see both bands from relatively near the front. Excited doesn't really cover it!!

All in all, we had a great weekend, and although the mud made it a different experience, it wasn't a disaster at all. We're already considering tickets for next year........

Adventures of the Bell Tent

2011-08-21T21:31:00.005+01:00

It wasn't really an impulse buy, it's just that we had managed to shrink our usual decision making process time scale of around 18 months to two weeks on this occasion. That sounds a lot like impulse for us!

Buying our last tent was done out of necessity rather than true desire, mainly because we figured that it was going to be hard camping with a baby in our Vango Delta which required one to get in on your hands and knees. But we didn't really think it through as carefully as we should have, probably because we didn't really know much about camping with babies and definitely had never considered taking something so ludicrous as a travel cot with us. Basically our hearts have never been in big tents - we've always been light-weight on equipment (we never had camping chairs until Nathaniel was imminent), and the idea of sleeping in a nylon palace rather than a luxurious bivouac didn't really appeal.

But it became apparent this year that getting two adults, one growing Nathaniel and one Adama (who would probably also grow) into our tent, was going to get a bit tricky.

So we started looking at other tents. We spent hours on the internet, and ages sniffing around other people's tents at campsites. We went along to a proper outside tent exhibition and climbed into tens and tens of tents. And while this was great fun (Nathaniel enjoyed counting the bedrooms, finding the built-in storage and unzipping all the electric hook-up zips and pulling tufts of grass through), we never found a tent that we wandered into and felt at home. In fact, the tents we liked the most were little low ones, much like our very old ones, and we found ourselves pondering how soon we could have one little tent for us and one for the kids.

And then the internet struck. And I saw a bell tent on someone's website. And was smitten. And I showed Ian, sort of as a joke, and he became more obsessed than I was.

We dutifully kept looking at modern tents, but none of them matched up. We started pacing out its footprint in other tents and obsessively observing living arrangements, and came to the conclusion that we had entered the realm of the yogurt-weavers, and nothing except a Baden-Powel worthy canvas monster was going to satisfy us.

So we bought it, immediately put it up in the garden, and instantly it was perfect.

So this weekend we took it for it's first outing. Just up to the moors, to a little campsite on a farm with room for only a few tents (a good antidote for the Butlins-for-Boden we visited in Rutland), and played.

It was perfect. We have been broken records with our exclamations of "I love our bell tent!"

It's made out of polycotton, so its lighter than canvas (just!), and is light and airy and aesthetically pleasing inside. It takes just 15 minutes for one person to put up on their own (and that was just the first attempt!). It has no bedrooms, so camping is a proper communal activity, just as it ought to be. Privacy in a tent is an illusion, so why not stop trying?!

I thought I was over-indulging my kiln-coveting tendencies by making bunting out of scraps of old pyjama, outdoor cushion and ian's shirt material (thank you Mf for all the bits and advice!), but it is lovely, and makes the tent feel all cosy and festive.

Nathaniel thinks the whole thing is brilliant and saying "I like the bunting - I like the stripy flags. I like the bell tent!", and we have found that unlike a nylon tent, sitting inside somehow feels like sitting outside. We have so enjoyed actually being inside it, which is very weird.

While on the moors, we forayed across the purple-heathered high moor to the North Yorks Steam Railway at Grosmont and spent a happy day watching steam trains and visiting their workshop.

Its been pretty much a year since we went there last, and Nathaniel's enthusiasm hasn't wained, though he is still somewhat alarmed by the volume. It took about 10 minutes before he would venture out of the doorway of the waiting room and then would only sit on a bench away from the tracks next to a parent.

He did get as far as standing on the platform, but he still insisted on an arm wrapped around him at all times, and when Ian suggested that the train might sound it's whistle, he ran as fast as he could back to his doorway!

On Saturday evening, the forecast drizzle appeared and we took the opportunity to experiment with our awning......!

Yes, it's pretty much the same size as the tent, and probably a bit overkill. But it is beautiful as well, and will be very useful when camping in the rain to create a bivouac to sit in of an evening around a campfire. We spent a long time investigating various arrangements of poles and guy ropes.

This morning was exactly how camping should be. Warm and sunny and beautiful, and we sat in our doorway (handy to have a bit of insulation so that we didn't wake everyone else at 7 in the morning), and ate bagels and watched the cows. It was very pretty.

Striking camp was so quick - much quicker than with a giant nylon tent with more poles than brains. It helped that Nathaniel took himself quietly into the car, put on his favourite CD (alarmingly, Toby Keith - a patriotic American country singer!) and sat reading his vehicle book.

Then we went for a walk/scooty bike along the Cleveland Way past some rather fine fishpools created by the monks of Rievaulx.

And no walk is complete without compulsory splashing and throwing stones into a stream. We could have stayed there for hours.

We had the country's second best fish and chips and an ice cream in Helmsley and then headed home, feeling as if we had had a relaxing week away rather than just a brief weekend. Everyone is smiley and happy and looking forward to next weekend's adventure in the bell tent - Nathaniel's first festival.

Watch this space!

The Bell Tent...

2011-08-13T22:40:00.004+01:00

Our latest impulse-buy has arrived....

Pickering Steam Fair

2011-08-06T14:17:00.001+01:00

Several years ago, we decided to take various family members on a jolly on the North York Moors, but found ourselves sitting in the world's longest traffic jam just before Pickering. This was our first introduction to the famous Pickering Steam Rally.

Several years on, we now have a use for it! Nathaniel has been talking about steam tractors ever since his recent visit to a steam fair, so we thought that we'd brave the traffic (we set off very early!), and see some more.

We were not put off by the horrendous weather forecast, and were rewarded with lots of steam tractors! Nathaniel was in his element.

Threshing and grinding machines with examples of the cereals before and after. N thinks that they all make weetabix.

The levels of smoke were amazing. With the low, thick cloud, we started to appreciate the true smogginess of Dickens.

I enjoyed meeting Mrs Preston of Prestons of Potto. She was wearing wonderful sandals with gold toenails. I bet she didn't last the whole day!

We spent a vast quantity of time at the fairground, most of it with Nathaniel carefully observing the rides both when stationary and moving. This was the only one that he was actually interested in going on.

Note the concentrating face!

We found our way to the main arena via many stalls containing matchbox cars and tractors and watched tractors and steam engines, and let the rain do it's worst.

A machine that scoops up hay bales.

Then as the heavens opened and thunder rolled, we reverted to the classic rainy day activity - splashing in puddles!

On the way back we found the helicopter (giving rides to those with a budget geared to more than the occasional doughnut from the sweet van), grounded because of the rain. And they were nice enough to let us have a good look.

We were very wet when we got back to the car, and Nathaniel was asleep before we left the carpark, but it was a very fun day!

More window art

2011-08-04T14:16:00.000+01:00

Once you have started making art with sticky-backed plastic and windows, it's hard to stop.

Nathaniel is now demanding more colours of tissue paper!

Sleeping

2011-08-02T13:30:00.000+01:00

Nathaniel is starting to drop his afternoon naps. This is sad for me as I've enjoyed the 2 hours of peace and quiet that I've had reliably for the last year or so. But it's good, as it means we have more time for fun. I've often felt recently that we've not been able to fit everything in as we only have two mornings a week in which we can go and do things.

More amusingly, it sometimes leads to entertaining scenes such as this:

Rutland

2011-07-31T13:07:00.001+01:00

After the general sucess of our trips to the Manifold Valley and Shropshire, and the general fullness of our diaries, we decided some time ago to put a date for a camping weekend in our and James and Beth's diaries. The advance date was made even more complicated by the fact that at the time we would have one extremely, and one somewhat, pregnant people in the party.

But it worked a treat. Everyone was sufficiently mobile for camping and the weather not only obliged, but was downright encouraging. We decided that it wasn't a weekend for scaling the heights of fells and mountains, so met in the middle in Rutland.

It was a glorious weekend. The sun shone and the breeze was light (rubbish for sailing) and refreshing. We did a great deal of not much.

We sat in our campsite (a holiday park for the rugged Boden set - "few" facilities in a some fields by a country house - luxury for us!), and ate and chatted and bimbled.

We went down to Rutland Water and watched a keel boat make absoutley no head way while we did some more eating and chatting and gently sauntering along and Nathaniel did enthusiastic scooty-biking and pestilence chasing.

(Don't let the photos fool you - it was baking hot. The rest of us were over-heating in t-shirts, but N refused to take off his favourite jumper!)

We sat in sandstone country pubs and drank beer in their coiffured gardens.

We sat around the glowing embers of our barbeque all night, watched people send up chinese latterns, and admired the view of the milky way with so little night-glow.

Nathaniel poddled and enjoyed being outside. James taught him how to play boules, and we only had one near-miss involving heads and heavy boules.

As ever, just normal camping equipment provided hours of amusement:

It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend (with pretty much no photos!). But our brains are struggling to imagine what next year's incarnation will be like. Our party of 5 will have turned into 7 with two crawlers!

Southern Steam

2011-07-25T19:25:00.002+01:00

Nathaniel & I went down to his Gran's house for the weekend recently and left Tassy in York. This served multiple purposes, including Nataniel having and exciting adventure and Tassy having some time without any ankle-biting! It turns out some activities are fun in all counties...

However, the most exciting part of the weekend was when the suggestion came that we could go to the Cambridgeshire Steam Rally on the Sunday, which was conveniently being held in practically the next village. Now, steam rallies are not things that normally stir great excitement in me, but then I though, "hmmm, steam powered vehicles, with large wheels, that are basically giant tractors... I think I know someone who may like this..." So I suggested it to the small man and he expressed his enthusiasm for seeing steam tractors. It was brilliant! he was excited even as we were driving across the field to park - and this was just a field and he was excited...! And then, just as we got through the gate, another of Nataniel's favourite activities reared it's head - there was a line of vintage lawnmowers!

In fact he was so excited, that before I could restrain him, he was under the fence and examining the first of them, so was not too impressed when I retrieved him and we discussed how they weren't all for playing with as they are in Homebase (which he knows as "the lawnmower shop"). From that point on he was just fascinated by item after item that came into view: lines of vintage cars ("that Grandpa Beard's car!") rows of old diesel tractors ("that modern tractor") and what he referred to as "spinning things" which were effectively old steam, or petrol engines all lined up performing various tasks such as pumping water.

But then we rounded a corner and saw what we'd come to see...

Steam Tractors!

And as if rows of steam tractors wasn't enough, he then spotted...

We obviously had to have a ride. As with most things, he thought this was brilliant. Afterwards we went to look at the engine more closely, which he was amusingly cautious about. He didn't want to blow the whistle when offered (so I obviously had to do it for him..!)

We then saw many other things including a model railway (which he would have watched ALL DAY had I let him) and a roundabout in the fairground. He's never been on a merry-go-round before as we try to avoid it, not least because they're never cheap and we live in York, where there is invariably some sort of fairground rides present in the town centre and if we let him on one once we'll end up £10 lighter every time we try to go into town! However, this was a little different, so after he'd examined it closely for a while I asked if he'd like to have a go. He took a while to choose which item he wanted to ride on - he was toying with the various cars but then the train (obviously!) caught his eye.

He wanted to go on the Big Wheel afterwards...
After a loooong discussion about how he wasn't big enough (there was actually a height limit - it wasn't just a parental excuse!) we moved on, and quickly found something more exciting to ride on...

He was allowed to turn the wheels and everything! People are so friendly at this sort of thing and are surprisingly happy for small children to clamber all over what is probably one of their prize possessions! He was a very happy man.

(arbitrary steam tractor to end with)

Flower art

2011-07-22T21:18:00.002+01:00

Nathaniel gets lots of oportunities to be creative with music and outside games and stories, but I'm always aware that I'm not great with the visual art thing. And interestingly, he is far less bothered about drawing and painting and colouring than most of the children that I know. But I maintain that that is probably my fault, so I have been trying to inject some more arty activities into our days.

Leaf rubbing didn't go well. I carefully prepared sheets of paper covering interestingly textured and shaped leaves while he was napping, and then encouraged him to rub them with crayons to reveal the interesting shapes. He enjoyed unsticking my bits of paper, gathering the bluetack that I had used to stick down the leaves, and using it to pick up different items in the house - discovering that heavy things will stretch and break the blu-tack. Never let it be said that my son is not a scientist!

But our leaf-art today was much more sucessful. After a good nap (always a promising way to start any activity!), Nathaniel and I scoured the garden for interesting leaves and flowers. We spent some time playing inside the hedge in Nathaniel's new den, and collected quite a range of flora. When we were chilly (it was surprisingly cold for July today), we went inside and made flower-art on the kitchen door.

I think that they are rather pretty!

Ullswater

2011-07-12T20:20:00.002+01:00

We've just got back from the annual sailing club trip to Ullswater and it has been blissful! This is due, in no small part, to the fact that Nathaniel's overriding attitude to the weekend has been this:

He simply loves camping! He likes it that we are all together, he likes running around outside, he likes playing with rocks and mud and water, he likes boats and bits of rope and he likes his friends from the sailing club. He doesn't need toys at all (the emergency duplo went totally untouched), and is much happier playing with all the gadgets and gizmos that our new family-friendly camping regime entails:

He greatly enjoyed exploring the three different types of camper van, and setting fire to things en masse.

Nathaniel adopts the British-standard BBQ look!

In fact, he is probably happiest when poddling around the campsite with open access to all our (and everyone else's!) equipment:

Morning under the YRISC gazebo. The many bottles of home brew aren't all ours!

We were very lucky - the weather forecast hadn't looked at all promising, and after last year, no-one really fancied a wet Ullswater. But in fact, the only rain was on the Friday night. Admittedly it was serious rain, the sort where the insides of your waterproofs are somehow soggy, but we emerged unscathed. Not so fortunate were Hugh and Caroline who found that they had camped on rather a deep dip which filled up, flooding their tent through the cunningly positioned holes in the ground sheet at the centre of the tent (good work Vango! Did you design this tent for British use?).

Hugh attempts to cut a drain for lake Brazier, but is disappointed to find that the water has gathered at the lowest point!

After that evening, we had no rain at all, just beautiful sun obscured just enough by clouds to keep us cool, and enough wind to keep everyone on their toes!

The sailing wasn't bad either! Ian remembered that Lasers are much more fun when you have enough room to get them planing, and he even managed to practise his capsize routine! Nimmy decided that toppers were more her cup of tea, and after a blast across the lake, happily poddled around the marina.

Daffodil, Hugh's project for the last four years, was taken on her maiden voyage, and everyone was impressed with not only how beautiful she was (the inlaid sycamore was coveted by all), but how well she sailed.

I decided that I was too fat and unsteady for anything more exciting than the rescue boat, and it was a bit breezy for Nathaniel, so we stayed ashore. But this didn't mean that we stayed dry!

Nathaniel was terribly pleased to discover that he had got big enough and responsible enough to play in the water. And that's where he spent most of his time.

Sourcing and throwing rocks of different sizes became a full time occupation, and Nathaniel was delighted to find that this activity could be continued at many venues, even when dragged off to walk up Aira Force!

Other firsts for him included fording his first stream;

The intrepid explorers, successful after fording the raging torrents

learning how to climb up rocks;

and finding out that he really doesn't like fizzy drinks!

The sailing club suddenly has a real gang of kids, and although most of the adults act like children most of the time, Nathaniel really appreciated his new friends. He and M (age 6) and E (age 3) played together wonderfully, and Nathaniel became quite smitten with M and demanded to join him in most activities and be taught how to do important things (such as walk up slides and climb up ropes).

It really was the most amazingly relaxing and entertaining weekend. When I asked if he had enjoyed himself, Nathaniel said "Yes, I like camping lots", and the thing he enjoyed most was "people from the sailing club". With the three families with kids now making this a longer and longer weekend, I can see it being a week-long adventure next year!

Jumping

2011-07-07T22:07:00.001+01:00

Still here......

2011-07-07T20:39:00.002+01:00

Sorry about the lack of posts - life has got on top of us a bit. But I have to say, you've all been very restrained! Last time we left it this long, we had demanding emails and comments sugggesting that we got more organised. Saying that, I haven't checked my home email for about a month, so you may well have left emails....

Anyway, we'll try and get up to date. We've got loads of photos, but there may not be much text. So keep checking backwards and I'll try to fill in the gaps from the elderflowers forward.

Sunny weather

2011-07-03T21:37:00.001+01:00

What do you do on a Sunday when there is barely enough wind for sailing and it is forecast to be a scorcher?

First you go picking again!

This time there were raspberries which delighted everyone, especially Nathaniel and I, as they are our favourites.

But then we found something amazing:

I like strawberries. They are very pleasant. But I would hardly class myself as obsessed. Unlike some people, I don't regard summer as imperfect without them, and I'm never desperately waiting for them.

But I don't recall ever having picked big, fat, late strawberries after a week of warm weather and beating sun. I have never tasted anything like that! Or, if as a child I did (Millets definitely provided me with several stomach's-worth), I never appreciated how different they were to the watery supermarket variety, or even the local sort in the greengrocer. Nothing will ever compare to these juicy strawberries, warm from the sun, so full of taste that you can't beleive they don't explode.

I was quite overcome!

So we picked rather a lot!

Then it was off to the sailing club. Nathaniel would have been rather disapointed otherwise.

Here's the start of the race:

You may notice that the orange GP14 has a rather little crew. Maybe the youngest in the club's history.

And he did a rather good job and was very pleased when the boat "wobbled". After a lap or so he started to get a bit bored and noticed me on the jetty and demanded that I join them. I did so, opening all sorts of discussions about whether the rules alow you to take on crew during a race. They are clear about getting rid of your crew, but no-one was sure how to put a crew of 2.5 on the race sheet. Only in our club would the discussion ignore the landing of the boat and concentrate on how the rules stand on crew members in utero.

After lunch, I took the GP out on my own - the first sail I have had this season. It was blissful! Just enough wind to carry me along, plenty of warm sun. Then Nimmy turned up and decided to see if she could remember which rope to pull and which end went first.

We had a lovely time after the initial run aground! The wind picked up a bit as storm clouds gathered over Selby (they are always over Selby, never us!), and we had a lovely beat back to the club. Just as well really, as the encounter with the mud left us without a vital bit of equipment!

The day finished with the traditional charring of meat. Except that it wasn't charred, it was the butcher's finest lamb chops cooked to perfection.

You can't beat days like this!

Drawing

2011-07-01T21:30:00.000+01:00

Nathaniel drew this picture of tractor last week:

I'm rather impressed! You can see the bits that he had to concentrate on - the lines are much harder. Please note the farmer driving (you can see him in the window) - he has two arms, and the plough, which unusually, is on the front of the tractor. There is also an exhaust pipe on the top of the bonnet spewing out smoke.

Silliness

2011-06-29T22:01:00.001+01:00

(For those of you who don't get the joke (and yes, this course was actually sailed), you may recall that we sail on the river. Normally courses are sausage shaped, going up and down the river. On open water, people sail triangular courses which allow you to sail on all points of sail (with the wind, against the wind and across the wind). Obviously this isn't possible on a narrow river.

But what if everyone took out toppers (little one-man boats designed for teenagers)? What silliness could occur then? Remember that the horizontal aspect of this course is only as wide as the river!)

Running (2011)

2011-06-19T21:18:00.002+01:00

Today was Mikey's 5k in the park so we went along to cheer him on in British style (ie clap for everyone politely as they passed us).

It occured to us, that our exciting weekend was somewhat similar, if not exactly the same as last year, which was almost depressing. But lets face it, fruit picking and cheering Mikey are fun activities, so why not do them annually?! And anyway, it's very Steinery to mark the rhythm of the year with annual festivals, and if they involve food and friends, what better way to do it.

So we pottered down to Rowntree Park and clapped politely as Mikey ran around rather quickly.

He got a great time, but as I'm writing this several weeks later, I can't for the life of me remember what it was, except that it was pleasing to all!

Afterwards we all had fun playing in the park:

All of us!

Parks aren't just for toddlers you know!

Strawberries

2011-06-18T20:59:00.003+01:00

It was a slightly chilly and damp morning, perfect for a bit of picking with Nimmy and James. It's Nimmy's favourite season:

Nathaniel got the idea of this activity very quickly:

We were pleased that they hadn't made us weigh him on the way in! But he got into everything very well and when he wasn't eating, greatly enjoyed carrying the basket to us.

We got rather carried away - no-one had strawberried for a while and we'd forgotten how wonderful it was when they were just all over the place - it's very hard to stop yourself from just picking another handful. And the longer we picked, the better ideas we had of things to do with our spoils. In the end, we sent James back to the shop for another basket, and just went wild!

Nathaniel enjoyed mainly finding delicious specimens for people to eat, and if they refused, did the job himself!

Then we moved onto blackcurrants amid much discussion on most successful picking method, pectin levels, required amounts of sugar to make them palatable and other subjects that quickly dissolved into a need for much more accurate scientific data than we could lay our hands on immediately. Nathaniel wasn't so keen on these fruits (less tasty), and it all started to go downhill when he fell into a patch of stinging nettles, and despite being pretty much immune to the York variety (over exposure at the sailing club has its up sides!), got a very stung bottom.

So we went home with a tonne (small exaggeration) of strawberries and a good amount of blackcurrants. The blackcurrants met a sticky end when Nimmy forgot about them halfway through the jamming process, but thanks to her and James' diligence, we now have a good supply of delicious strawberry jam, and Nathaniel and I have made some slightly dubious, but very munchable strawberry muffins. My gooseberry, elderflower and strawberry crumble was a surprise success (don't knock it til you've tried it!), and the freezer, needless to say, is full of fruit ready to liven up apple crumble for the rest of the year!

Nathaniel Gym

2011-06-17T20:47:00.000+01:00

In the last couple of weeks, Nathaniel has show progressively less interest in playing with toys or reading books. Instead, he has run around in circles, faster and faster.

After a bit of thought, we realised that he was obviously going through a new developmental stage, one that was all about physical energy and coordination. Indeed, he is now a whizz at the assault course in the park, and although he still runs like a 14 month old (it's really funny - he looks ridiculous!), he's started to get much better at changing direction quickly.

So this morning Ian invented a new game - Nathaniel Gym. He turned on loud 70s rock (nothing like over-stimulation to wear out a toddler), and then romped around the living room for 90 minutes until Ian couldn't stand up!

The pictures are rather blurry - there wasn't a lot of staying still!

Everyone had a good nap!

Elderflowers

2011-06-09T21:01:00.002+01:00

I have raved on many occasions about the bit of stray that is 2 minutes behind our house. Today we made great use of it for elderflowers. I'm not sure how I became such an elder fan, maybe something to do with how many memories I have of homemade elderberry wine spilling all over our kitchen floor when I was a toddler, but I have a total passion for all things elder - elderflower cordial, elderflower ice cream/cheesecake, elderberry jam, elderberry cordial......

Today Nathaniel and I intended elderberry juice which I planned to make up a recipe for once we got home. We got to use all the best bits of the moor, the rabbit-ful meadow with hummocks of springy grass, the woods with little paths and the moor with odd copses.

Nathaniel was in charge of carrying, and he enjoyed his responsibility, using the basket as a battering ram to get stinging nettles out of his way.

We found a good supply of elderflowers, and Nathaniel picked enthusiastically until I explained that if we decimated one bush, there would be no elderberries in the autumn. He remembered all about how much he enjoyed elderberries!

When we had a basketful, we headed up onto the stray proper for buttercup collecting:

running down hills:

tree hugging:

and climbing:

Then we went back to the house and improvised elderberry juice with boiling water, a little lemon and sugar and a big blanket.

It was declared a great sucess!

The Solar System

2011-06-04T20:21:00.002+01:00

We've all been pretty tired this week, so we thought we'd deal with our lack of energy and avoid lurking irritably in the house by going on a bike ride with Mikey. We got to use our new toy:

I won't bore you with details, but needless to say, we spent many happy hours comparison shopping and admiring different models and we are confident that this one has just enough, but not too many gimmicks.

One of it's good points is that there is plenty of luggage space.

We set off down the track to the solar system, but almost came to blows with Nathaniel immediately as he realised that this was also the way to the sailing club. We didn't have the keys and weren't planning to go in, but try telling him that! Then he remembered that this route also took in the "big bumps" - a set of lumps for skateboarding over. Last week we extracted great shrieks of excitement and exclamations of "I like this!!" as Ian cycled him up and down while he bounced in his bike seat. How would the trailer cope?

Very well:

Then on to the planets. We again got a very careful look and several minutes of thoughtful silence as Nathaniel's brain tried to cope with our explanation that this bit of metal was a model of the earth, and the one next to it a model of the moon. But then he just reverted to excitement about each new planet.

He decided that it was important to hug each planet. "I a planet hugger!"

He was very interested by the relative sizes of each planet (or dwarf planet - this solar system is a bit out of date). He concentrated carefully as we all had long conversations about the interesting aspects of Pluto and Charon. Not many people can be as interested as we are about massive bodies orbitting their common centre of mass!

We returned via a pint in a pub garden, and Nathaniel convinced Mikey ("You my friend!") to push him for ages on the swing!

I'm a bit tired now after a cycle of 9.1 x 10^9 miles!

Bliss

2011-06-02T20:09:00.000+01:00

Fortunately, we didn't end up mortgaged up to the hilt to buy our little (growing!) house and garden.

But if we had, this morning it would have been worth it.

7:30am, sun shining, birds singing, temperature is warm. Time for breakfast in the garden!

Happiness

2011-05-26T20:02:00.000+01:00

Just because it has been raining for 24hrs, doesn't mean that the garden doesn't need water.

And a hosepipe is one of the best ways of entertaining a little boy for at least 45 minutes!

The right book

2011-05-25T20:37:00.000+01:00

Nathaniel has always been fond of reading and has devoured a good range of books, but recently has been less interested. I've been horribly aware that this is probably because he needs some new ones, but ones that are right. We've been to the library a lot, but unfortunately they don't seem to have a big range of things that overlap with our priorities.

Admittedly we've got a bit fussy.

Nathaniel's thoughts on books:
- ideally they should feature something with wheels or a windmill (his interest in the Cat in the Hat is fueled simply from the last two pages where the Cat's amazing car appears)
- if they are non-fiction, the pictures should ideally be photographs (he's not desperately impressed with Usborne's set of Fimo models. He'll read the books once, but then loses interest)
- fiction should have a good story (though for some reason he includes Mick Inkpen's Kipper books in this category. I just don't get that!)
- rhymes are good
- pictures with loads of detail are best.

My thoughts on books:
- no tv character tie-ins unless the story and pictures meet all the other priorities
- pictures should be life-like - I dislike crazy distorted heads
- colour shouldn't be garish. NO DISNEY!
- rhyming books should scan
- limited anthropomorphism. Especially in wheeled vehicles.
- Language should be interesting and dialogue realistic.

So you can see that we've cut down our options rather. We've had great sucesses with the Little Red Train - the stories are good, the pictures are great and the little red train never speaks!

But then we had a triumph! At the Steiner School spring fair there was a book stall (actually a whole classroom full of books!), so I parked N in a corner and we both rifled through books for an hour. We came away with some gems - a selection of late 70's classics with sensible (and in some cases, beautiful), pictures and great stories. Who says I'm not stuck in the past?!

This was the piece de resistance:

12 pages of car brilliance. Simple text, complicated pictures. The background (the garage and its setting), stays the same but people, cars, tractors move round and the story develops.

And he reads it several times a day. Perfect!

Busy busy wet and wndy wekend

2011-05-22T22:20:00.003+01:00

This weekend we have been mostly been either at the sailng club or playing guitars...

Nathaniel has mainly been demanding to get out the "lectrical tars" and "plug in, make very loud noise" so we had to fit that in around all the sailing activities.

Saturday was the second day of the sailing course. Some of you may also have noticed that it was a little breezy. However, despite this we managed to get people out helming in the the morning, before the wind got too crazy. This year we seem to have four people who have taken to sailing rather well and so were managing to helm relatively competently despite the lively conditions.

When the afternoon arrived, the wind had got up though, so we opted for match racing with them taking it in turns to crew/watch from the comittee boat. They all enjoyed it immensly, even when in my enthusiam I snagged a tree during a tack, in a gust and very nearly increased my total number of GP14 capsizes to two! We managed to just rescue it though (I thought we were done for, having been sailing the RS200 recently which goes over a little more quickly!) but we retrieved it from near horizontal. Wetness was narrowly avoided. At least until we stepped back into the bathtub that was the boat when it came back up!

In the middle of all this, Tassy & Nathaniel had gone off to the Steiner Spring fair, where Tassy was singing with the Barberellas. Nathaniel ate much cake, did some good climbing on the climbing frame and bought many crafts. When the came to pick me up afterwards he was fast asleep in the car, clutching an exciting toy and covered in chocolate cake!

After we arrived home and he'd woken up, we then had to indulge N in the loud guitars he'd been asking for all day. He's never seen or heard them plugged in before so he wasn't sure at first how loud it was going to be...

But then once it started he got much more interested (though much of the interest was derived from the fan in the back of the bass amp...)

On Sunday, we were down for being OD at the sailing club. On arrival however, we found a fine selection of people who were fully intent on going nowhere near the river in a boat in a steady 20mph gusting 39mph. There were also some of us who were less sensible. The morning looked largely like this..

and this...

and this....

though (at least sometimes) like this...

This is my particular favourite, due to the shape of my boom.....(!)

Nathaniel ran the racing from the rescue boat (which was actually never required) and was particularly pleased when I capsized right next to it then got my mast stuck underneath it. When I say "ran the racing" I actually meant "wash the flags in the river and then eat them..."

Nathaniel also got to ride around in the rescue boat, which he enjoys greatly.

So when we'd finished doing this:

we headed back to the house (N promptly fell asleep minutes after setting off). Feeling slightly sleepy, but having planned to go to "wee folk" at 3pm (a folk session which is highly child/baby friendly, organised by some of our more crazy acquanitences in a very fine pub) we decided to revitalise ourselves and sit in the warm sun in the car on th driveway drinking tea whilst N slept.

We then swapped smelly wetsuits for guitars, violins and recorders and headed off for a warm pint, a portion of chips and some singing. Nathaniel enjoyed this also, but was absolutely exhausted by the end (as were we) so we all came home to supper and then bed, all refreshed ready to start the week....(!!)

Music

2011-05-20T20:05:00.000+01:00

Nathaniel has recently re-found the guitars and is having great fun playing them. Ian has kindly designated one of them, "Nathaniel's guitar", and N gets it out on a daily basis and strums it. I have to admit to tuning the remaining strings to a major triad, as fingering is not Nathaniel's strong point yet.

Today, Nathaniel re-discovered electric guitars and is very keen to plug them into the amp and big speakers. Unfortunately, he decided that this would be a good idea at 7pm - not a great time to introduce a 2 year old to amplification and volume knobs.

So for the time being, he is enjoying having the loudest guitar and playing along with Ian on his "quiet lectric 'tar".

Pants

2011-05-19T20:00:00.000+01:00

The other day, Nathaniel declared that he wasn't going to wear nappies, and that he needed some pants. Preferably red ones. He actually doesn't own any, so today we went on a expedition to the pant shop to buy some.

There's quite a staggering choice of pants, even in our little M&S, and I was quite pleased that Nathaniel decided early on that the pink ones with frills were not for him. He's rather fond of pink, and although I am happy for him to have what ever standard issue M&S pants he wants, there was something about the pink frills that I'd rather avoid.

Fortunately, he then spotted a pack with cars, fire engines and buses, and after that, looking at any others was completely unecessary.

Have we seen the back of our beloved Wonderoos and BumGenius? I shouldn't hold your breath....

As long as it has wheels......

2011-05-16T19:56:00.000+01:00

Nathaniel has a wide range of interests, but many of them centre on things with wheels, the bigger wheels the better.

Today we were about three quarters through a rather fine game of Moomin dominos (a brilliant gift that Mikey brought back from Finland - home of all things Moomin. It's a pity that Nathaniel has no idea what a Moomin is!), when Nathaniel suddenly had a moment of clarity.

"It's just like a road!" he exclaimed. "Drive cars on the road"

And that was the end of dominos for the day.

Sailing

2011-05-10T21:01:00.001+01:00

It is no secret that we are quietly indoctrinating Nathaniel into the joys of sailing, but it is a very nice surprise to find that he is absolutely obsessed with the sailing club. He has always enjoyed going there, and once almost had a total melt-down when we went on a walk along that stretch of river without the sailing club keys and had to walk past without going in.

He is well aware that Sunday is sailing club day, and can be persuaded into all sorts of terrible things (getting dressed sensibly, eating boring breakfast cereal, not playing driving in the car), if he is told that this will speed up our arrival.

This year he has been enjoying it especially, and enjoys getting out the two petrol lawn mowers and "mowing" the concrete if he can't persuade anyone to actually mow the grass. He'll show you exactly how they both work (someone explained the combustion engine to him), and how to add extra petrol and oil and where in the club to find these things.

He helps people rig their boats (he has a tendency turn up at people's knees, politely requesting "Want to get in boat please"), and will sit and hoist spinnakers and thread sheets through fairleads for quite some time. He's been impressed to find that he needs no assistance to climb into a RS200 or a topper, and will often be found quietly "rigging" them with any bits and pieces that have been left around.

At other times he just potters around looking for rabbits (we once scared one with the lawn mover), playing with empty trolleys, and helping people push their boats around the boat park.

He's made firm friends with the majority of the club, who treat him as a short but fully paid up member and have long discussions with him about boats, mowers, hosepipes and his other interests. He has ODed with Hugh and myself, and been in charge of raising the flags on the starting sequence. He is a great fan of bringing in the buoys at the end of the race, and will sit carefully at the front of the rescue boat on his own, holding on and enjoying the splashes. He enjoys watching people trying to start the safety boat engine (it's a bit temperamental), and will shout instructions and encouragement from the bank.

He is great friends with Steve P, with whom he is growing potatoes in the allotment. At lunch time, the two of them go off with the hosepipe and water everything thoroughly (though interestingly, rarely themselves).

Now that he has got his sea legs, he normally wants to go out in the boats, and often gets a joy ride with Daddy at lunch time, normally in no wind, but once in the RS200!

But on the day of the open day, he was so desperate for a sail (despite the force 3 wind), that he nagged me into asking Steve if he could go out with him: "Mummy, please ask Steve now". So I did, and Steve and Phil were overjoyed to take him out for a joyride. Ian sailed in the vicinity in a topper, but I stayed on the shore, and all I could hear were delighted squeaks and "Daddy, we going faster than you!", "I pull in jib now", "Uncleat!", "Daddy, your boat is tiny", "I in yellow stable boat" "We going very fast now", "Little bit wobbly now".

The little man was in his element!

That is a very happy little boy. He let Phil move around him to balance the now rather tippy boat, and pulled his sheet when asked and uncleated on the call of "Ready about!" He didn't seem phased at all that other boats were capsizing and that the wind was gusting pretty hard.

Sometimes its really hard to remember that he's only 2.

Leeds

2011-05-05T09:28:00.002+01:00

I was in London at the start of the week (somehow changing jobs has not stopped me from having to attend all the same meetings at the IoP!), and found myself wishing that I could bring Nathaniel down to see all the bustling streets and exciting stations, many sorts of buses and awe-inspiring museums.

So I decided that, sickness or no sickness, we needed more adventures. Believe it or not, despite regular trips to the station and the National Railway Museum, Nathaniel has never been on a train! So he and I decided to have an adventure to Leeds.

In the last few months, he has become quite cautious of very loud noises, and shrunk back into the back of his buggy, almost shaking when the first train approached the platform:

But he was surprised at how quiet it was and started to look forward to the trains arriving. Actually being on a train was pretty exciting!

He enjoyed chatting to the ticket collector and examining the buttons that release the doors. And there was plenty to spot out of the windows - lots of stations to see as they whizzed by.

And then, another, albeit very different, station! With more trains!

Many "hours" were spent looking at the strangly small train wheels and discussing why the trains always left the platform in the same direction.

What I had forgotten about Leeds station is that there are only up escalators, so we were forced into the lift to go down. This did not go down well with Nathaniel who is not a big lift fan. After 5 minutes of patient reasoning, I had to carry him in, kicking and crying! It was rather sad. Fortunately he recovered very quickly once he realised that the doors were closed, and was all ready to feed our ticket into the barrier to get out of the station. The station staff were very sympathetic to his desire to crawl under the barrier to go back and do it again! And again!

Once in Leeds, we made use of a couple of shops that we don't have in York and then decided to give the museum a miss (we'd been to see the fossilised hippo before), and hit two extremes of Leeds. First the Victorian quarter with doormen in top hats outside Harvey Nichols (who won't let you try on their hats), incredibly elegant decoration and pretty fountains.

Then to the indoor market to hear market sellers shouting out their offers, pick up gold unitards off rails, and explore glittering sari material stalls. We bought some cherries from my favourite fruit seller and had great fun along the fishmonger aisle.

I always loved going to buy fish when I worked in Leeds - they have the most amazing range and the aisle is always full of asian ladies with bulging fabric shopping trolleys, picking over the sea food and bantering with the fishmongers. We went to my favourite fishmonger (who introduced us to pomfret), and he made whole mackerel swim around and talk to Nathaniel! N was very impressed and enjoyed picking out the fish and stroking their smooth sides. We ended up buying a great selection to freeze - after all, we're never likely to be able to get half of these (and never at such a good price) from York's paltry attempt at a fishmonger. While we were there, a couple of people from Opera North wandered past, and after what was clearly established banter with the lady fishmonger, proceeded to serenade her with Rossini! The quickly-gathered crowd and I were pretty impressed, but Nathaniel declared the singing to be "wobbly" and "too loud" and said that he prefered "One, two, buckle shoe".

As a special treat, we had lunch at the cornish pasty shop and I relented and allowed Nathaniel a special packaged kids meal which came in a box with crayons and other tat. In the end he was most excited by the inclusion of ketchup and the giant cup of milk with a straw!

Yes, we were tired when we got home (we even got the bus back from the station, much to Nathaniel's delight), but it was a mighty fine adventure!

Indoctrination

2011-05-04T09:20:00.001+01:00

Today Nathaniel made these:

For those to whom it is not obvious, you are looking at a red RS 200 sailed by Daddy in a red boyancy aid, and a rescue boat manned by Hugh.

There was almost tears because Nathaniel couldn't work out how to build the main sail and jib (even he admitted that the "spinker" was too hard to build!). In the end we agreed that Daddy had just capsized (we watched him do a lot of that at the weekend), and had taken down his sails.

Here he is demonstrating that the RS is a wobbly boat!

Easter

2011-04-24T20:43:00.001+01:00

Our Easter lunch and egg hunt went very well indeed. We were up bright and early to put the new kitchen through it's paces, and everyone was very jolly:

The great thing about cooking is that there are lots of interesting things to explore, and there are so many interesting foods that there is always some new to examine in detail:

Before long, the kitchen was starting to smell wonderful and we were realising that we were running out of dishes and baking trays!

Once everything was in the oven and Ian had taken over minding the carefully written timings list, Nathaniel and I went out to hide our eggs. At first I was concerned that they were all going to be far to easy to find, but we enjoyed finding elegant perching places:

As it was, hunting for eggs turned out to be harder than we expected and the kids needed quite a lot of help to get them started so that they didn't just walk round the garden aimlessly asking "Where the eggs gone?"

But they did get the hang of it, and soon most of the eggs were found:

Some required some careful looking!

At the end, they exchanged their eggs for a chocolate lolly, and I think it's fair to say that they were greatly enjoyed!

Of course, once the food started to come out of the oven, the smells were so amazing and enticing that all thought of taking photos of the wonderfully laden dining table went out of our heads. Needless to say, it was very delicious!

After some extensive playing outside and general running around, the kids started to flag, so we put them down for naps upstairs. Nathaniel declared forcefully that he wasn't tired and didn't need a nap, so we compromised with some quiet time in his cot with some books.

I think that my assertion that he was tired was right!

Chocolate

2011-04-21T15:03:00.003+01:00

We are having some friends around for an egg hunt and Easter lunch over the weekend, and Nathaniel and I have been busy preparing. We've decorated eggs with oil pastels (plastic ones rather than real - I chickened out!), and today we made our chocolate lollies.

I decided that fun though the idea was of filling two two-year olds with chocolate eggs minutes before we insisted that they sit to the table to eat lunch, we were better off limiting the chocolate content of the morning. So the plan is that they can exchange their basket of eggs for a chocolate lolly.

Nathaniel and I had a happy morning melting chocolate and decorating with various delicious (if you are 2!) toppings:

Some of the reults aren't altogether unpleasing!

A happy morning

2011-04-17T15:00:00.001+01:00

Take one sunny, warm, spring morning when birds are chirping and merrily hopping around the garden looking for worms to take to their young squeaking from the nests in the tree and hedge. Add a little boy, a back step, a pile of interesting pebbles and leaves and grass and a tub of water. Drop items into water to see if they change colour, float, or do anything out of the ordinary. Admire the shiny stones and set up a check out for buying them or using them as money to buy other things.

Play happily for ages!

Bagels

2011-04-08T14:51:00.000+01:00

We've all enjoyed eating bagels recently, so we thought we'd make some of our own on the marvellous beast that is our new oven.

Nathaniel has become rather good at kneading:

And enjoyed watching the dough rise while we had a snack in the sun. He relished the punching down bit:

And did a good job at rolling the dough into sausages before I shaped them:

I have to admit that I did the poaching and baking after he went to bed - I couldn't really see a way that he was going to be able to poach without a total disaster!

I'd love to show you pictures of the stodgy (on purpose), glazed, yummy bagels that resulted, but we ate them rather quickly. Suddenly 1kg of flour was lining our stomachs!

But I think we'll be making more!

What's going to happen?

2011-04-05T14:42:00.001+01:00

Nathaniel's favourite game at the minute revolves around falling beads.

First, you place the car helter skelter in an elevated postition:

Then you pour a jar of beads down it:

And catch them with various vessels:

Then it gets more complicated. You add obstacles on the helter skelter such as blocks and cars, position catching vessels such as dumper trucks and diggers at different distances from the bottom of the helter skelter, and add slides and other paths for the beads to follow:

After every change you retorically ask with glee, "What's going to happen?!"

Yes, that was the best 99p I've spent recently!

We've threaded the beads on thread using needles, sorted them, "cooked" with them, rolled them down things to investigate the effects of slope and friction and made interesting patterns. Here are Nathaniel's flowers:

Stockton Heath

2011-04-04T14:36:00.002+01:00

We spent a very pleasant weekend with friends in Warrington, remembering that there are other places worth inhabiting as well as York. We explored the picturesque village of Lymm, which was much nicer than it's position on the map suggested. Nathaniel enjoyed his first hot chocolate in a cafe, but was rather distracted by the exciting prospect of visiting "Hine's house".

We had a lovely walk around Lymm Dam (which is a lake!), and appreciated the sun and the ducks and the trees and the waterfalls, and Nathaniel declared that fishing looked "silly".

In the evening, Nathaniel and P did some serious triking on P's trike, and some rather impressive sharing. Never have I seen two two year olds ride a trike together so peacefully. Most impressive!

Sunshine

2011-03-31T14:33:00.000+01:00

There's nothing like a sunny day to make everyone cheerful! Its also very handy for actvities such as magic painting;

And endless messing around with bikes!

The rhubarb, as you can see, is growing very well, and we have already had a delicious crumble. Let's just hope we can eat the rest of it quickly enough.

It lives!

2011-03-28T14:31:00.000+01:00

Nearly there!

2011-03-23T22:20:00.002Z

Shropshire

2011-03-22T21:20:00.001Z

Are you bored of pictures of our kitchen? Now for something completely different.

Over Christmas we reminisced with James and Beth how much fun we had when we went camping in Derbyshire, and were sad that camping was so very far off in the distance. So we booked a cottage, and off we went to Shropshire!

After many days on the internet, we decided on the vicinity of Church Stretton in "Little Switzerland", home of hills and moorland. Our rather fine cottage was at the foot of Caer Caradoc:

On Sunday we set off up Long Mynd:

We walked up a steep-sided valley with a marvellously chuckling stream ("That stream is happy, Mummy!"), and found an unfeasibly steep slope on which to eat our lunch.

When we got to the top, we found ourselves in heavily folded moorland.

Though some of us didn't find the scenery too riveting!

We made the obligatory trip to the highest point to see the view. It was hazy, but beautiful, though not easy to photograph.

We almost lost our way along the many footpaths that appear in open access land, but trusted our instincts (the compass was buried at the bottom of the rucksack!), and were rewarded with a narrow gorge with another great stream and an un-photographed waterfall.

There was tea and cake, a bit of map chewing and a very furry caterpillar.

We finished with, ironically, the steepest climb of the whole walk, but it was generally regarded to be lots of fun!

On Monday, it was sunny and so we were incredibly active (can you see how much cake is on that table?), and wandered into Ludlow for some exploring, castling and lunch eating.

We were refreshed by Tuesday and ready to climb Caer Caradoc in the sun.

We stopped for refreshments 7/8s of the way up and to admire the view.

And the little boy walked the last bit himself!

Does anyone else see the spitting image of Ian here?

It really was the most stupendous walk!

If you leave your stuff around.....

2011-03-18T21:15:00.000Z

....my son will play with it!

If you are a pleasant, well mannered, efficient, organised, generally nice builder, I'll tell him that it's the builder's equipment and that it mustn't be touched.

But if you are an arrogant, unhelpful kitchen fitter with no eye for detail, you may wish to put your radio out of toddler reach.

....very, very, different!

2011-03-17T21:14:00.000Z

Suddenly things look very different.......

2011-03-15T21:12:00.000Z

What's left of our kitchen

2011-03-11T21:11:00.000Z

The study takes shape

2011-03-10T21:05:00.000Z

A floor, some plaster and the start of a wall....

2011-03-09T20:54:00.000Z

Wheeled vehicles

2011-03-08T19:48:00.001Z

In the last week, Nathaniel has become very interested in creating "life-size" vehicles in the living room. Unlike previous vehicle-building activities, the important aspect of the game is now adding specific elements to the vehicle rather than "playing" the game. Previously we would "build" a train and then spend half an hour arriving at the station, getting passengers on, driving off, fixing the broken train and filling it up with petrol. Now, the actual diving is a 5 minute game at the end, but first we have to scour the house for all the important elements that make up the vehicle.

Here we have a truck:

It has a steering wheel, wheels on either side (cushions), bricks in the back, and a CD player so that the driver doesn't get bored on long journeys. Ian is non-descript cargo.

This (note how it is totally different!!!), is a tractor:

It's key features are small wheels (2) at the front (stickle-bricks), large wheels at the back (tiger feet), a steering wheel, and a sheep (Ian) in the trailer. What, you didn't identify the animal from the face it's pulling?!!

There is also a train, which has no steering wheel, but has two different levers, a funnel, two carriages and passengers.

All are made up of a stool and two chairs, but the exact arrangement of the furniture is key. Woe betide the parent who puts them in the wrong place - "No Dadddy - that's a truck. Making a tractor now!".

Unexpected benefits

2011-03-07T19:49:00.001Z

Last year, we took charge of the Steiner toddler group bulding blocks over the summer holidays. They were kept with our toys and were played with all the time to make bales of hay, sheds, churches and all other important items. Differently to most sets of building blocks, the toddler group ones are made out of oiled hard-wood and are random shapes. They are harder to use if you want to build a standard tower, but great if in fact you are trying to build a realistic gothic cathedral (which we often are!).

I had a good look around the internet before Nathaniel's birthday for some similar blocks, but unsurprisingly, they were few and far between and rather expensive.

So when the builders left us a great pile of off-cuts from the roof (intended for someone's wood burner), we were rather pleased. It may be soft wood, but there are some pretty brilliant shapes, and let's face it, I was never going to get around to identifying, buying, cutting and sanding wood.

Over the weekend, I got together with the sander (if I was a true Steiner parent, Nathaniel and I would have done this together, by hand, over many winter afternoons - but neither of us have that patience at the minute!), and finished off a pile of "windmill pieces" (so that's what we are going to be using them for!).

I am inordinately pleased!

Outside

2011-03-06T19:48:00.008Z

Today was properly spring. It was the sailing club clearing day (or stand-around-and-gossip day, as it is better known), so we bundled up in our waterproofs and wellies and headed down to the river.

We endulged in all the standard activities - scraping mud off the boat park, clearing the jetties of several inches of silt, and carrying boats out of the club house. Nathaniel enjoyed the festivities last year, but this year he was in his element! He got involved with everything.

His sweeping was done with an adult-sized broom and was attacked with gusto. He took direction from several club members, and Dorothea even managed to get him to sweep forwards into the pile rather than concentrating on getting an even spread of mud across the whole dingy park!

He took on the role of hose carrier for the slipway clearing and gamely washed mud out of the way, pausing only to put on gloves. This is totally unheard of! Typically, he will not wear gloves in any situation, and when his hands are so cold that he loses all coordination, demands to go home!

He spent some time learning to use pedals on the trike that Neville had brought down to the club last year. This year, Nathaniel's feet reach the pedals!

After watching a bonfire, and having lunch with friends, we came home and attacked our garden. Nathaniel did more sweeping and helped Ian put the prunings into the green bin.

Of course they then need to be squashed down:

And if one little boy is having that much fun,

The bigger boy has to play too!

Heat

2011-03-04T19:48:00.002Z

It is here!

The new boiler has arrived! It hasn't been too bad waiting for it. It was pretty chilly in the bathroom, but the hideous gas fire in the living room has kept us pretty toasty when playing, and my parents' electic heaters (with thermostats), have kept the bedrooms above freezing overnight.

It helps that the new roof is now insulated and the plaster is starting to go into the new rooms, so we are pretty much sealed against the elements.

But it is nice to have real, constant heat, and feel the bricks warm up again. Also, this is a new improved boiler. No more heating up a whole tank of water just so we can do the washing up. No more running most of the Nile down the sink waiting for the hot water to appear. And most importantly, no more putting the heating on, forgetting about it and roasting.

We now have a thermostat! And its wireless! So if you really wanted to, you could carry it into the room you were particuary bothered about and switch on the heating.

I really shouldn't be this excited......

A certain stage

2011-03-03T19:48:00.002Z

There are various developmental stages that you are supposed to look out for in young children. Smiling, sitting, crawling and walking are skills that parents get very excited about.

But I have to admit that I was pretty chuffed to discover that Nathaniel had acheived one of the most important stages - the running-Brio-under-sofas stage.

As far as I can see, this is a pretty important interest to have developed. It means he's got beyond just putting together the track, and moved on to considering the asthetics of the train's journey and of the elegance of the overall design.

This means we must be near the point where we can buy points, turn-tables, tunnels and other fancy bits of Brio, which I have been looking foward to! I have been waiting patiently so as not to overwhelm Nathaniel with complexity, but I have been window shopping on a regular basis!

One of the first bits that we need to get hold of is a bridge with supports (Bridge set). Nathaniel saw one at a friend's house and has been demanding that we build a "railway" (don't know why he calls it that), ever since. We have bodged one using the church, but it's not quite the right height and requires both sides of the arch to elevate the track. Nathaniel likes to drive his trains around the track and then park them on the "railway" and instruct everyone to look at and admire them!

Internal Destruction!

2011-03-01T20:56:00.003Z

We have windows and a door on the outside:

But we now also have a distinct lack of interior walls - the corner of our house now appears to be held up by some pipes...!

We do have a big space in which to put a kitchen:

And of course, somewhere to put a toilet...

The exciting thing is that most of the destruction is now done, so it's pretty much time to start putting the place back together so it will soon start to look like a house again.

Then we can fill it with things like this:

General chaos

2011-02-28T22:26:00.005Z

Last week was really rather easy. Yes, we had builders wandering through our house all day. Yes, our kitchen was a black hole (half of it was boarded up and the windows had been demolished), and rather chilly.

This week started by having to entirely empty our study (which equals a storage facility for boxes of things that haven't been opened since we moved, piles of bits of paper that ought to be filed, enough stationery supplies to put paperchase out of business, and videos dating from 1982). Then the fun really began.

Here is what the kitchen looked like the day the builders arrived:

Today it looks like this:

Our larder is here (dining room):

Our boiler is non-existent which means no hot water and no heating. The BBC forecasts tonight temperature as 0 degrees. Our oven is sitting under a dust sheet gathering dust nowhere near a gas supply. Irritatingly, our camping gas stove regulator packed in this evening, so here we are cooking our supper:

There are some surpisingly large holes in the side of our house!

A new roof

2011-02-25T22:21:00.001Z

It has tiles and everything!

It's actually a great improvement on the previous flat roof, both in the fact that water runs off it and that it looks pretty.

This also means that we now have an "inside". Here is a first look at half our kitchen. The other half is still on the other side of the wall on the right.

There are interesting bits of metal in position to stop our house falling down.

We appear to have lost our roof

2011-02-24T22:18:00.000Z

It's convenient that the sun is shining!

Monday

2011-02-21T19:51:00.000Z

Almost a door!

Friday

2011-02-18T19:50:00.001Z

Walls!

Spot the difference

2011-02-16T13:25:00.001Z

Unsurprisingly, both Ian and my reactions when we got home were the same: "Why are we rebuilding it? Look how much garden we'd have!"

And so it starts......

2011-02-15T09:30:00.000Z

It’s been an interesting morning. By 7:30 there were people walking around our garden and sun room and Nathaniel had lost all interest in eating breakfast. He got dressed with no fuss whatsoever (usually this is the sticking point in our morning), and was standing on the kitchen step watching radiators being removed by 7:45. A skip was lowered onto our drive (by a “big lorry with crane on top!”), and by the time Nathaniel and I set off for nursery, sludge-filled guttering was being ripped off the wall by a group of very cheerful builders, and the back door was being unscrewed.

I have no idea what we are going to come home to this afternoon!

Boredom is not an option

2011-02-14T14:15:00.002Z

Remember that building work that we have been talking about for a year? Well suddenly it is about to happen.

Tomorrow!

Yes, we were a bit surprised too. But when there is an opportunity, you have to take it!

Say goodbye to the lovely (leaking) sunroom.

Drawing

2011-02-11T14:07:00.000Z

Nathaniel has never been super-keen about drawing. In fact, over the last year, he has spent more time demanding that trains and tractors be drawn for him than he has spent drawing himself.

But now that he has started to develop some control of his drawing, he has become much more enthusastic. And he is doing some pretty amazing drawings.

Yes, we still have to draw a lot of trains (though now he asks for bullet trains or stream trains with red wheels), but now he has started to help.

Ian drew the "body" of this steam train, but the wheels, funnel, window and steam were put on by Nathaniel.

Bliss!!

2011-02-10T14:14:00.000Z

Aspirations

2011-02-05T21:48:00.000Z

We didn't really have much idea what having kids would be like before we had them. But somehow I always expected, and looked forward to, days like today. This must have been what my toddler-dom was like.

It's been a drizzly, bleak, but relatively mild day. Perfect for taking an inflatable ball on to the windy moor. Gather some children (borrow one if necessary), and then romp!

Equipment includes several large sticks.

Become fascinated by the antics of over-excited dogs.

After everyone has got thoroughly chilly and damp, return home for hot drinks and snacks and then retire to the kitchen for some cooking. Who says that raw biscuit dough isn't delicious?!

A hint of spring

2011-02-04T14:20:00.004Z

A blustery south-westerly wind has blown into York, buffeting the house and making cycling in any direction other than north-east an exhausting activity. Although I feel certain that winter has not left us, it's nice to have the wind feel warm against your face, and I can almost smell the green in the air.

Our garden is now full of branches, both substantial and twig-like, so yesterday Nathaniel, "Aun Minnie" and I went and collected them to make a Winter tree for our dining table.

Like all best laid plans, it didn't go quite to plan. Nathaniel enjoyed cutting all my decoration shapes in half, and the picture above is of him systematically unwrapping each one after we had officially finished the activity.

But it's very pretty. I'm sure that if we were a proper Steiner family it would have needle-felted snowdrops on it, but Nathaniel likes stars and moons, and so that's what we've got.

CDs

2011-02-03T15:34:00.003Z

Poor Nathaniel doesn't get to watch television except for the occasional viewing of our DVD of Camberwick Green (we enjoy the anti-capitalism subliminal messages). So instead he has become very interested in listening to CDs. He got a CD player for Christmas, and has a selection of things to listen to ranging from Rupert Sings an Hour of Nursery Rhymes to Mozart's Requiem.

This morning, while I was pottering around, he sat on the floor and listened very carefully to the Little Red Train on a CD that came with the book. It's read by Richard Briars and has accompanying music with interesting modulations, so many repeats are fine by me! It's nice to see that although mostly Nathaniel has to run around at all times, he can sit still and concentrate if he finds something interesting enough.

I tried to get a picture of him being totally engrossed, but he noticed me putting the telephoto lens onto the camera and so that ended that game. Here he is listening (notice he has got out two CD players!), whilst absentmindedly poking his big toe through a CD:

Not ready for alligators yet

2011-01-22T20:07:00.002Z

As those of you who had their houses dismantled over Christmas will know, Nathaniel is rather fond of making obstacle courses across the living room. He likes tunnels, bridges, chairs to climb over and cushions to bounce on.

Today we made a fine offering with a bridge.

Nathaniel was enjoying it until I, thinking I'd add some excitement to the occasion, picked up the Spaniel and the Beagle, placed them on the floor, and told Nathaniel that they were fierce alligators, waiting to eat up anything that fell into their swamp. Nathaniel gave me a slightly perplexed look. So I elaborated. "They are very hungry alligators, and will gobble up anything that falls off the bridge".

I realised too late that this wasn't the perplexed look, it was the "I am totally unsure about this look".

"Would you like to do the obstacle course?"

Silence.

In an over enthusiastic voice: "Ready, steady, go!"

Silence. And no movemnet.

"Shall I take the alligators away?"

Nodding.

I picked up the unwanted creatures, and Nathaniel hurredly took them from me (they had obviously morphed back into something that could be safely touched), and placed them face down on the table. They couldn't cause any trouble from there.

And then we were free to have lots of obstacle fun.

New books

2011-01-20T13:38:00.002Z

Its all very well just getting presents at Christmas and on birthdays, but sometimes it is very exciting to get an unexpected present. While in a joke book shop (the sort that sell mainly very similar cookery books with the recipes disguised to look like new ideas), Aunt Nimmy stumbled on something rather wonderful.

Last year, she happened across Tremendous Tractors, a book about tractors and the things that they do. Now I wasn't the biggest fan initially - I don't really like the style of the pictures, and I'm not a great one for anthropomorphism of animals (the tractors are driven by a mouse, a rabbit and a freakishly overweight green bird). But the whole book is in rhyme, and it is good, convincing and reliable rhythmic rhyme. And the content is superb! We've learnt all about the harrow and the different parts of a seed drill, and what in order all the bits of equipment are used. Its a great little book.

So there was much excitement when Aunt Nimmy produced a series of these books housed in a cardboard truck. We've not been dissapointed - Nathaniel has learnt useful words like articulated lorry, and understands how points work on railway tracks. And we haven't even opened Super Submarines or Roaring Rockets!

This morning, Nathaniel climbed onto the sofa with a warm towel from the radiator and his book truck and anounced that he was reading a bedtime story. He then sat, totally engrossed, for about 15 minutes, reading 5 of the books, his little lips silently whispering something.

Then he put the books away, declared that bedtime story was over and that he was now going to sleep.

Marvellous.

A big improvement

2011-01-12T21:50:00.002Z

Its been a tedious week. Post-viral Nathaniel involves a great deal of inexplicable crying. Our only clues to the sources are garbled words muffled by sobs; "Mummy not move trains", "Not want a nap", "Not Tuesday. Is Wednesday!". Its all been rather tiresome.

But then today, when he came home from nursery, suddenly everything was better. Nathaniel marched to the fridge, removed a box of eggs and declared "Want eggs for supper please". On closer questioning he revealed that they should be scrambled, and he got out a pan and tried his hardest to crack the eggs. He helped me stir them on the cooker and then proceeded to sit an eat the whole lot as well as most of a slice of toast ("cut in triangles please"), before politely requesting that I go and scramble another egg.

He's like a new child!

Nathaniel with his scrambled eggs

He declined to smile, favouring the serious look!

Plague

2011-01-08T15:40:00.002Z

Nathaniel has greeted 2011 by getting something flu-like.

Fortunately, after two nights of not much sleep and a day of being wrapped up on the sofa and being cuddled by Ian, he is feeling "better today".

Hasn't stopped him taking a three hour (and counting) nap today!