Pies and butterflies

I came back into the sitting room yesterday to see Isla reading some little Christmas books to Evie. They have been smiling and laughing at each other a lot today, and it thrills Isla when she can make Evie smile at her.

Isla had another little friend round yesterday. They exchanged Christmas presents, with Isla receiving a lovely craft set to make sparkly butterflies with pink glitter and sequins. As soon as she had opened it she said, "can we do this now?" so she really loved the present!

Isla is chief egg-wash painter for our steak pies:

Decorating the tree and the cat

We've all had colds the past couple of weeks, but hopefully getting over them now. We've been doing lots of crafty things as well as decorating the Christmas tree on the 1st Dec!

Evie has got over her cold after a week and is back to her normal gurgly self, although she is blowing fewer raspberries now. She is getting better at sitting up supported in her rubber ring and is much more interested in toys. Her favourite thing is still watching Isla. Isla likes to cuddle Evie at any opportunity and put her finger in Evie's hand for her to grip her finger. Evie likes waving her arms about. One day she was just waving her left arm manically about, and then a few days later it was her right arm which got working and waving about! She likes pushing up with her little strong legs and standing up while being held, looking very pleased with herself. She can hold toys and things now and likes colourful patterns to look at. She shows she is happy to see you or excited about something by smiling lots and kicking her legs. She likes looking at the Christmas cards we get through the door.

There are lots of things to do to prepare for Christmas such as making presents and cards and Isla enjoys helping with everything as well as playing with Happyland and waking her sister up from naps.....! 

Isla often asks what things are made of, and knew that our chimney is made of bricks. We had a look outside to see where the chimney is for Father Christmas to come down, using a bit of magic of course. Isla has been planning what to leave out on Christmas Eve for him and his reindeer. We have been having lots of other interesting discussions. For example, Isla asked the other day about how fish drink and how dolphins drink. She is very into counting things and we often have to think how many legs various animals have. It was very quiet when Isla was poorly with her cold and sleeping in the day. She was so poorly that she didn't want to eat her chocolate from the Christmas advent calendar train. I had a little time on my hands to crochet Isla a snuggly hat and also a little hat for a friend's baby.

Isla and all of her friends were in the pre-school nativity play this morning. It was lovely. All of the children walked in past the audience of grown ups. Mary and Joseph walked in first while we sang 'Little Donkey' as they pushed a little donkey/dog toy along. Then we all sang 'Silent Night' as the angels and shepherds walked in. Isla was wearing her colourful tutu skirt and a sparkly gold tinsel crown whilst she held hands with another little girl as they walked in and sat at the front of the stage. We all sang some more songs including 'We Three Kings', 'Away in a Manger' and 'We Wish you a Merry Christmas'. The children looked so cute and no-one cried! The first of many nativity plays.

Here is what else we have been up to:

One of Isla's drawings:

Isla doing some gluing with some paper pieces we've cut out:

Showing Pob her artwork:

Meeting a new robot friend:

Playing with Daddy's old toys at Grandad and Granny's house:

Evie having a cuddle:

Putting up the tree and decorating it!!

A meal out together. Isla got to feed Peggy the dog a biscuit in the pub.

Exciting post!

Making a house and a dinosaur out of Duplo. We've also had to make lots of postman pat houses with chimneys on. Everything is about chimneys at the moment!

Isla's drawing of a crocodile:

Evie modelling a little hat for our friend's newborn baby:

Isla modelling her new Hello Kitty hat:

Making a space rocket:

Doing some cutting and sticking:

Isla's first nativity play at pre-school this morning:

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!