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.

Just messing about at home

The last couple of weeks we've been having lots of fun at home and out and about doing our usual activities too! Everyday Isla cuddles and kiss her sister lots. Evie loves watching Isla and always smiles when she sees her face.

Evie enjoys looking at toys and watching us a lot more now. She is happiest when she is having a cuddle watching Isla playing. She also spends time on her playmat looking at toys.

Isla has been colouring in her Cbeebies magazine and sticking stickers too:

Isla also has been doing some gluing with sparkly shapes and gems making different pictures:

We've been doing a lot of baking. Chocolate cornflake cakes were delicious, although Isla prefers the mixture to the finished cakes. We also made lemon and white chocolate muffins from a Jo Wheatley recipe but jooshed them up with some lemon butter icing and sprinkles of course. 

A very exciting package arrived last week from New Zealand! Isla loved unwrapping the gifts from John and Jude. It felt a bit like Christmas! The customs labels on the parcels describing what was inside brought back memories of parcels under the Christmas tree from Grandad, Quita and Nana from New Zealand when I was young. Though of course I never peeked to read the labels......! Isla loves the teddy bears inside the package and plays with them a lot. 

Isla wore her kilt one day with cute tights now that it is colder here. She likes building a tower with cups and pretending it is a lighthouse and then making boats to sail around it. They sometimes crash into the lighthouse though! Evie gets a bit concerned when this happens.

Painting has been requested a lot this week, and is fun to do when it is raining outside. We also tried doing some bubble paintings by blowing through straws into a mixture of washing up liquid, paint and water and then putting paper on top of the bubbles. We got some really nice pictures by doing this. Isla got a bit of a shock  though when she sucked on her straw by mistake ending up with blue lips and a worried mum. She just helped with stirring after that! 

We had a nice meal out with Grandad David and Granny Margaret the other weekend.

Back home, Isla insisted on having a photo with her friend Gadget one morning:

Evie had a lovely bath and ended up with a cool hairstyle:

Evie has a great personal trainer during her tummy time sessions:

At pre-school, Isla is learning about environments (which seems to mainly consist of walking like a penguin). She likes polar bears as she has a Kinder egg polar bear toy and so we decided to pretend to be polar bears for a change of continent. She wore her little fluffy waistcoat and also a muslin as a polar bear hat. We looked at videos of polar bears swimming on the iPad and also drew some pictures on coloured paper, making use of our white crayons at last (they don't get much use normally). We looked for the letters 'p for Peter' and 'b for bear' in Isla's alphabet puzzles to complete our polar bear session!

We saw a beautiful rainbow one afternoon. Minutes before I took this photo, the rainbow was the brightest I have seen, and stretched right across the sky. Isla loved it and keeps asking if we can go upstairs to look for rainbows now. She also said that she would like to be able to fly and thought that it would be nice to fly to work! 

Various cuddles:

Foxy Loxy bouncing in the garden:

Just after blowing out the candles on Andrew's cake: