Finishing the necklace

Isla finished making her pasta necklace by threading the pasta onto some wool and gluing sparkly sequins on!

Evie had her first ride on the fire engine:

while Isla played with her 'doggies':

Monty has been up to his usual tricks:

As high as a rainbow

Last week, Evie got a bit worn out watching Isla and I cutting out a paper lantern with Isla's special toddler scissors that cut only paper:

"As high as a rainbow" - how Isla described flying on her dad's feet this week! 

We've had lots of interesting discussions recently. In the car one day, I had to put the windscreen wipers on a little and Isla asked where they had gone when I stopped them. We also had a discussion about what campervans are, she found it very strange that a van should have a ladder on the back. "It would be nice to go camping in a campervan" and I'm sure we'll do that one holiday. Another day Isla said "it would be nice to go and see some frogs" and so we talked about where frogs live and that they are all hibernating at the moment. 

Pob had a little sleep on the sofa beside Isla one morning, which thrilled her! She cuddled him a lot after that. Pob had lots of attention on Saturday as Isla's cousins came to visit and he was the star attraction at one point. Archie seemed delighted to see such a huge cat, probably the biggest he's ever seen and is ever likely to see. And he has a very nice tail to pull on.

Isla has really enjoyed playing with her happyland people and village over the past few weeks. We make up little stories about the little people going to the vets with their cats and dogs, and people always seem to be "bonking their knees" and having to go for an x-ray with the polar bear doctor. Postman pat and Mrs Goggins feature heavily in our happyland world. Also people are always falling in the pond and needing to be rescued. Today I popped out to start dinner (in the real world) and came back to find a whole line of ten little characters helping to pull someone out of the pond.

Isla made funny faces at me while she was enjoying painting in her new magic water painting book:

At the weekend the weather was suddenly cold. Feeling a bit Christmassy, we went to the local garden centre to visit the reindeer (Moonbeam and Starlight) and see the amazing Christmas lights and ice rink. Isla had never seen an ice rink before and had been asking what it was, so we looked at the people with skates on zooming around on the ice. She had been asking what noise a reindeer makes, but unfortunately they were too busy eating their hay to make much noise. We looked up deer noises on the internet later on. At the garden centre, there were mini trolleys for children with 'trainee shopper' signs on them and Isla enjoyed pushing one around the place.

Today Isla enjoyed pre-school in the morning, after we had watched a very exciting Octonauts episode featuring a huge crab submarine/vehicle and lots of grumpy fiddler crabs. In the afternoon we painted some rigatoni with blue and yellow paint. The plan is to thread the pasta tubes together to make a necklace and glue sequins on to make it sparkle. Isla found that she could paint with the pasta on a piece of paper and liked doing some finger painting too, although this proved a multi-tasking challenge for me when Evie wanted feeding at the same time. Never breastfed and painted pasta simultaneously before whilst wiping painty toddler hands but actually it was easy. Later on, grating cheese over gnocchi (which didn't get eaten anyway) whilst breastfeeding baby proved more tricky.

Evie, mid-raspberry, learning how to paint pasta:

A bit later on, Isla made a beautiful leaf picture. A couple of days ago she had picked a few bright red acer leaves from the garden, one clematis leaf and one keria leaf. We dried them, and pressed them between two sheets of paper in a hefty tome (actually Delia's Christmas recipe book!) and squashed it with Nigella, Jamie and more Delia. After being VERY patient for a couple of days (Isla had wanted to check on them about a half hour after putting the leaves in) we looked and found some lovely pressed leaves to glue onto some card. The red leaves were pretty impressive!

Scottish dancing

"As tall as a giraffe" - This is apparently what it feels like when Isla is flying on her Daddy's feet!

Over the past couple of days we have been VERY greedy and baked a delicious apple cake with a HUGE Essex cooking apple (using the marvellous apple recipe from Waitrose), and also chocolate tiffin. We had a yummy apple and bramble crumble too from Granny Ilene! Luckily Isla has been keeping us busy so we have burnt off all those extra calories. Evie has been trying out Archie's old bumbo chair and having fun with a hair brush as well as gurgling and dribbling quite a bit. We all enjoyed a visit from granny Ilene and Grandpa. They were kept busy making houses out of Lego, doing some gluing, playing shopkeepers, giving baby cuddles and being dribbled on. 

Isla and Evie have been doing lots of cuddling, dressed as themselves and also as scottish highland dancing girls:

Owls eat bagels

Doesn't time fly. Since my last blog, our days have been filled with Evie blowing raspberries constantly and chatting goo goo gah gahs at us, and with Isla bouncing about like a tigger.

Isla has been painting with autumn leaves, and making butterfly paintings:

 and washing up the paint pots:

We've been going for lots of autumnal walks:

and doing gluey craftiness:

Evie sometimes wears proper tops and bottoms during the day instead of just sleepsuits:

Isla chose a princess sticker after having her teeth checked at the dentists, and we had a yummy lunch out to celebrate no fillings:

Evie at tummy time:

Evie has a quick go in the door bouncer for the first time:

We made some 'snow dough' (4 cups flour mixed with 1/2 cup oil) which amused Isla for ages. It is like wet sand and was good for making castles and scooping up

Pirate Isla entertaining Evie with Jess the cat:

Isla and Andrew's den:

Evie's curl:

On Halloween, Isla and I pretended to be owls flying round the garden. Apparently owls eat bagels so we had to pretend we were catching and eating those. She enjoyed watching Spooky Buddies, a film about puppies dressing up for Halloween.

We had a mini firework display in our garden in two instalments. Isla wasn't sure about them. We moved inside to watch from the dining room with Isla on my lap. In the second instalment, Isla's face lit up when we watched the catherine wheel from the living room. We also saw our local firework display from our house, it was quite impressive with big bangs. When we go to Tumble Tots we all sit in a circle to talk about what we've been doing at the weekend at the beginning of the session. Isla explained to everyone how we had watched the fireworks 'with help from mummy to see them from inside' and how they went 'boom'. Everyone thought her description was very funny! I was very proud of her speaking out in front of the whole group. She also was brilliant at climbing a very high 'pirate ladder' and going on the rest of the equipment.

We had a trip to the park this week to go on the swings. We met a friend with lovely dogs which Isla stroked and played ball with. We saw a little boy dressed as a bat. We joined a Rugby Tots session at the pre-school. On the way home, Evie was famished and the only place to stop was the local church for a feed and an apple. Isla liked the 'echo' in the church.

We had a long-awaited trip to the library this week and chose some new books. So far we have read 'The Highway Rat' but have several more to look at. I found a 'Make with Maisy' craft book with ideas in it. Isla helped Andrew make some bread rolls and we also made some krispie marshmallow bars too! We had a visit from Isla's friend D one afternoon. The two girls played with Happyland, play dough, drawings, aqua doodle and started playing 'shopping list' in the two hours together, interspersed with checking us all (mums, toddlers, babies and snugglers) at the doctors with a stethoscope, and racing up and down the hall with the buggy!

Today it has been rainy again and Isla and Andrew went swimming together. This was VERY exciting for Isla and she was zooming around the pool with her arm bands like a little speedy duckling.