Daisy's first digital camera

Daisy amongst many other things, got a Kid-Tough™ Digital Camera for her Christmas present and she absolutely loves it.
Or should I say loved it, it was her favourite present until we opened the Pandora's box of baby paraphernalia that came from Grandma Bonjour which consists of a buggy, a highchair, a baby travel cot, a baby carrier and another baby to add to the collection of which i think currently stands at five (six including this new one) and that doesn't include the three that I have squirreled away in the box for charity.
And i hasten to add, that WE have only bought her one dolly, when Iris was born, which is apparently what you are supposed to do to stop your toddler throwing the new baby down the stairs.

If anyone is reading this who is at all likely to buy Daisy or Iris a present in the next 20 years, please don't buy another dolly.
I just know my dad's going to be laughing his socks off at this because he constantly threatened us three girls (i have two sisters) with a 'Billy Goat Machine', which was an invention in his mind where a machine came in and ate up all the toys that were left lying around on the floor.
In fact his constant talk of his precious 'Billy Goat Machine' led me to go out one Christmas when I was about 12 and buy him a dustpan and brush with a homemade label on it saying 'DIY - Billy Goat Machine'.

Anyway though, yes Daisy loves her new baby dolly set, we even let her push her buggy to the park and she did push it all the way to the park, and she then proceeded to let her dolly go on the slide, the see-saw, the roundabout etc…

But back to my original point, whilst she did love her digital camera, she took lots of photo's and here are some of them:

A trip into London town

Today we went all the way into London town. This is the first time i've been into town in a long while, i don't think i came in at all whilst i was pregnant with Iris cos i was either a) too tired or b) couldn't be arsed quite frankly, but i really enjoyed it today.


We went to Covent Garden and it felt very Christmassy indeed, there was an old fashioned 'Merry go round' there which we both took Daisy on, she loved it and wanted to go on it again and again but twice was enough.

There was a huge Christmas Tree up down the other end of Covent Garden but it wasn't dark so I don’t think we experienced the true beauty of all the lights, but it was nice all the same.



We also went into daddy's work and met all of daddy's work mates, they all seemed very nice and the offices are very posh. The office has it's own astro turf corner with plastic daffodils coming up out of hidden plug sockets, it also has little furry plastic bunnies and caterpillars which were a huge hit, Daisy kept organising them all into lines facing her, she is obviously queen of the bunnies.




And here is Iris, on the same day, doing what she does best at the minute, suck her thumb. She has taken to sucking either of her thumbs at every opportunity, although her left is probably a little more of a favourite. When you try to prise her thumb out of her mouth, to dress her for instance, she moves her head to try to keep the thumb still in her mouth, so sweet.
I must take more thumb photos quick in case she looses interest in her thumb.

Bouncing with Lulu

Here is a video of Daisy and Lulu bouncing on Lucy's sofa (Lulu's mummy).

You can just hear the 'wack wack' of Pingu playing in the background.

Lots of photo's of Lulu somewhere on Flickr, i just havent' worked out how Flickr actually works yet.

and i thought i understood technology.

Funny old Daisy

Mostly today Daisy has been an angel, she has not wee'd herself, she has amused herself in her room with her baby Flossie (aka Baby Born), she had read books to her Chicken (seen under her arm in the pic below) and she has been very helpful and loving towards her little sister Iris.

She has also been very very funny today, like insisting on wearing her piggy mask to bed with her as you can see from this photograph.
Bless.








We have been learning Christmas songs at 'Musical Bumps' this morning.
This one is currently favourite:

When Santa got stuck up the chimney,
He began to shout:
"You girls and boys,
Won't get any toys,
If you don't pull me out!"

"My beard is black,
There's soot in my sack,
My nose is tickling too!"

When Santa got stuck up the chimney,
"Aaachooo, achoo, achoo!"

Once she is completely word perfect then i'll video it, so watch this space.

Here is a little photograph of Iris looking a bit surprised, i think her nose is a bit yellow because of the flash, or at least it doesn't look yellow in real life.


I'm not very good with these built in flashes i tend to turn them off straight away but i'm beginning to realise that they are necessary if you don't want all your photographs blurry.

Iris is huge

Look how big she is, this pram is supposed to fit her until she is 6 months old but i don't see that happening seeing as she is nearly filling it and she is only 3.5 months old.

She had been trying to lift her head a lot whilst laying down in the pram, so i thought she might be ready to go into the bigger seat. I swapped from the pram mode to the seat mode last week for a couple of days but her neck seemed to flop forward when i went up and down kerbs, so i've swapped it back again and she actually seems happier in it.

Once she starts kicking her way out of it which will probably be in January some time, then i'll swap it back to the seat.

Daisy thought it was brilliant that Iris was sitting up cos she could see her, strangely she hasn't noticed that i've swapped it back again.

stuff and stuff

Not much to report really, both Daisy and Iris have been ill over the past month, both had coughs and colds, unfortunately Iris's cough and cold developed into Bronchiolitis which was a bit nasty, she was basically sick after every feed and lost a little bit of weight, but i'm sure she's put it all back on again now, she's huge.

Daisy is now much better but Iris after getting better, now seems to have another cough and cold and is beginning to be a bit sick again, oh dear.

Roll on the summer.

Happy Birthday Grandad-by-the-sea

Today it is Grandad-by-the-sea's bithday.

He is a whole year wiser than he was last year.

Here is a photograph of him taken in June at cousin Lucy and her husband Paul's wedding.

What a spring chicken he is.

NCT girls and boys round for lunch

Here is a photograph of some of the little one's from NCT classes when i was pregnant with Daisy, I didn't bother having them with Iris cos i figured i'd remember what to do.

From left to right is: Daisy, Iris, Cambell, Ruby and Lila (Delilah). Mums on the other side of the camera were Shonagh (Cambells mum and soon to have another one due end of Dec), Elenor (Ruby's mum and soon to have another one due Feb) and Emma (Lila's mum, not soon to have another one because she's sensible)

Here is a video of what they were doing in the above photograph, watching Toy Story. The only one who moves is Iris, they others are all completely transfixed.

(may take a while to upload onto youtube)

Auntie Emma and Uncle Paul

Auntie Emma and Uncle Paul 'the newly weds' came up to visit on Friday night through to Sunday afternoon, which was very nice.


On Sat we had a bbq'd guinea fowl which was bloomin tasty, then on Sunday we had guinea fowl pie, yum yum.

Here are some photographs to prove they visited.


Here is a photo of Daisy with some glasses on her ears.

Paradise Park

We went to Paradise Park and saw a few animals: tigers, lions, jaguars, red pandas, aligator, camels, zebras, and many many more.
It was quite a rainy day but we were prepared with rain coats and hats so it didn't really matter, in fact it was to our benefit cos the park was practically empty, horay.
it might be nice to go back another day when it is sunny though.

I didn't take that many pics of animals mostly cos it was raining too much, here are a few pics of animals, the grey blurry animal i can't remember the name of but it was quite cute.






















Oh and there was a nice old fire engine.

My brave brave girl

Yesterday (Sunday) was Marc's birthday but the girls were poorly so we couldn't really do anything to celebrate. Both girls were/are snotty and have a chesty cough, they sound like they've been smoking Lambert & Butler's for 40 years.
So anyway seeing as they seemed a bit better today, we went down to The Tate Modern this morning to look at Carsten Höller's slides.
I had to give Iris a feed so Marc took Daisy off to look at the slides and he discovered that children could go down as long as they were over .9 of a meter and Daisy is 95cms so she could go on.
Marc went down first leaving the safety lady at the top to help Daisy down, she had to get into a bag and lie down and then be launched off by this lady, and Marc said she looked a bit surprised at the bottom.
There are two identical smaller slides on the first floor and this is one of them, Daisy actually went down the other one.


Once Iris was finished i had a go down one of the these smaller slides and the drop is very steep, you shoot down very quickly so i'd say pretty scary for a two and a half year old. However Daisy said she wanted another go, so Marc went down first and then i lauched her down and her little face looked terrified as she went down, Marc said she did look a bit scared when she came out at the bottom.
She's such a brave little thing, i think she wanted to go because she loves slides but she'd never encountered big slides like these before.


What with all that excitement she decided she wanted to do a wee, so here she is eating a box of raisins and pulling a lovely face sitting on her travel potty of which she didn't actually do a wee at all.
In the background you can see the tallest slide which apparently takes 90 sec's to come down.
We didn't go on the bigger ones because the queue was too long.

Iris

Here is a photograph of me and Iris about to go out for a walk, she is in a borrowed snow suit that fits her very snugly at the moment.

And another photograph of Iris sitting up with the help of my hand.

Stripey girls

Here is a photograph of Daisy and Iris in matching stripes.

On yer bike

Daisy had a ride on Lucy's bike, and she really loved it.

Random shots

Here are some random shots taken over the last couple of days.
Daisy in her fairy wings refusing to look at the camera.
Iris on her tummy, and a rare shot of me with Iris.

Sparklers

On Sunday we went over to visit Ged, Roni & Ruby, Lisa & Florence in Forest Gate to watch the firework display, it was happening directly opposite Ged’s flat. It was pretty good actually, lots of noise, flashing lights and where we stood it looked like they were going off above our heads.

Daisy and Daddy held a sparkler or two, the second one was more fun than the first.
Iris slept through the whole thing in a sling.

A visit from Grandad Tony

Here are some photo's from when Grandad Tony came to visit

Today's pretty dress...

...is a trouser and dress combo, dress was donated by Ged, it is Ruby's old one and Daisy seems quite attached to it.

One little speckled frog

Here is Daisy singing 'One little speckled frog', she actually sang it over and over and over again, fortunately for you i've only video'd it once.
(may take a while to upload on youtube.com)

Smiley baby

Here is the beautiful smiley Iris, giving me a lovely big smile.
She really is a darling.

Pretty Dresses

Daisy has a current obsession with pretty dresses, she wants to wear one every day, and quite often we run out of pretty dresses cos they are in the wash.
This is one i ran up on the old sewing machine.

Daisy's throne

Here she is sitting on her throne, whilst reading her Alice in pop-up Wonderland book. She absolutely loves this book, but it fills me with dread whenever she wants to look at it because it is so fragile and it's so lovely, i'm convinced she's going to pull all the pop-up bits off cos she can be a bit rough with it. I usually hide it for a while and then get it out again to see if she's more careful with it.

Asda & Peek-a-boo

Here are two recent shots of the girls.

The first one is proof that shopping trolleys do exist which accommodate both babies and toddlers. Since Iris came along, whenever we've/i've been shopping, I've been checking out the trolley situation in both Asda and Sainsburys and i've never seen these trolleys in the trolley queue. This time I asked a trolley man if he had one and he didn't understand at first he kept pointing at the trolleys with double baby seats, and I had to literally show him Daisy and say 'too big' at which point he then smiled and walked off, I didn't know if he had understood and we were about to plan our route into Asda whilst avoiding the Bob the builder's 'Scoop' ride which costs 50p, when he came back dragging two of these trolleys.
Hooray, much easier than carrying Iris in a sling in the supermarket, the poor thing has nearly ended up in with the meats a couple of times whilst I've bent over to choose some bacon.

The second shot is of Daisy playing peek-a-boo with Iris on the sofa, not surprisingly Iris didn't really get it, but hey that didn't stop Daisy from playing p-a-b for a good ten minutes.

What have we been up to?

Hello there world
It seems a while since we last posted some pic's up here or wrote a little note, and all i can say is that we've been a bit busy.

So here is a little catch up.

This week Daisy in on her third week at nursery. She now goes Tuesday and Friday mornings and so far so good, she seems to really like it, a few days she has said she doesn't want to go but that seemed to be related to the fact that i'd just said no to her watching her Dora DVD or to her wearing her bridesmaid's dress to nursery.

She is also now almost completely potty trained, the first week of her nursery she saw that all the other children were using the little children's toilets so she wanted to, too, and refused to put on pull ups, she wanted to wear pants, but all Daisy's no 1's went down the legs and none of it went in the potty.
Then i bought some Bright Bots training pants which are still cotton like pants, but a bit thicker than pants therefore a little more absorbent, and she suddenly got it.
We have had hardly any accidents this week so far, only one this morning at Music and i think it was because we had to go quite far to find the toilet, but she still managed to go more when we go to the toilet.

Iris is now in with Daisy, she's sleeping in Daisy's old cot opposite Daisy's big girl bed (not sure if this is permanent or not) it is possibly only temporary whilst we sort out the office, but who knows.
Tonight is the second night and so far so good, last night she went down easily but then cried for quite a while even whilst being picked up, burped etc... but eventually after five mins of crying she dropped off.
Tonight however she fed and fed and fed and then vomited it all up again which she hasn't done for a while (she used to do it every night for about two / three weeks) i think she was just being very greedy. After vomiting she was quite happy, she had to be changed again, then i tried to cuddle and burp her but she cried loudly whilst Marc tried to read Daisy a story so i fed her again and she quickly dropped off and is still asleep three hours later.

We have all had nasty colds for what seems like forever but actually all started on Friday night for me, very quickly we all seem to have caught them and i even thought i'd gotten rid of mine but now it's back, horay.
Roll on summer.
Lucky old Sarah V and Rachel & Josh out there in NZ about to welcome in summer time.

and here is a video of Iris talking.

Click here if it doesn't work.

Lots and lots of photo's to come very very soon.

No wee wee's in the potty today

Nope, instead there were lots of wee wee's in my pants.

hmmm, mummy isn't so good at keeping the smile on her face when i do it, she says through gritted teath that it's ok, it's just an accident but i can tell she's cross.

She keeps trying to get me to wear pullups, but i keep insisting on pants, and unfortunately i kept weeing.
I wee'd twice at nursery, oops, i had spare pants and skirts though, but i wee'd into my boots and i didn't have spare boots so i had to borrow somebody else's wellies.

Then i wee'd at home too.

poor mummy.

oh and Iris woke up twice last night, poor mummy again.

oh and daddy is out tonight so mummy has to put us both to bed, poor mummy again.

Daisy x

Poor Iris has her first wound

Yes, poor Iris has had her first wound to the head, i am sure it is the first of many.
At the Sally Army Leccy Lou was swinging a book near to mummy and Iris and the book slipped from her fingers and the corner of it scrapped across Iris' temple. Leccy Lou didn't realise she had done it so she was as concerned as us as why Iris was crying.
Leccy Lou like Iris a lot, i think she wants Iris to be her sister, but she can't she's mine.

Ooh did Iris howl, she cried and cried until mummy fed her and then she forgot all about the pain.
Now she just has a red mark on her temple as you can see in these pics.

But you can also see that Iris is still smiling.






And i stupidly put my fingers into Winnie's mouth and Winnie bit them, doh what was i thinking, i won't do that again in a hurry.
I had bite marks and everything.

Daisy x

Stop Press, Wee wee in the potty alert

Yes indeed stop that press, i insisted on pants this morning at 8.30 and we went to the Sally Army and i didn't do a wee all morning, despite mum taking my potty with us (so embarassing, does she think i'm going to wee in front of everyone!!)
When we came home it was time for my snooze and mummy put a Dora the Explorer pull up on me but when i woke up i still hadn't wee'd, mummy was getting worried.
I put my pants back on and it wasn't until about 5pm that mummy sat down next to me on the potty and i eventually did a wee wee, horay.
Mummy gave me a piece of chocolate as a prize.

Lets see what tomorrow brings as it's my second day of Nursery tomorrow.

Daisy x

Iris is only waking up once in the night

Mummy is very pleased and she's keeping her fingers crossed that it is the way forward, because Iris is going to sleep at about 8pm and only waking up for a feed at 4am, and then waking again at 7am, how brilliant is that?

Mummy is happier now.
Daddy is happier now too, he doesn't get up for Iris cos he doesn't have any boobs but he is woken up when mummy goes to feed Iris.

Daisy x