All the family on Christmas Day

All the family on Christmas Day, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Things to spot in this photo:

• Sofia's fabulous Christmas stocking, courtesy of the Nanny
  
• Mallowpuff the polar bear (star Christmas present of 2007, now slightly off white)
  
• the last recorded sighting of the intact London double decker bus, before Jules stood on it while trying to avoid some other debris later in the day
  
• Sofia's delight over Grandma's present, clutched firmly in both hands. Tragically the little sheep are still a bit big to be worn this year but they are getting lots of airtime as toys anyway!
  

Our daughter was a model citizen at Alison and Stefan's traditional Canadian turkey dinner, remaining cheerful all evening and sitting in her chair for the entire main course. After that she did admittedly get to her feet, bellowing for ice cream, but luckily there was some on offer so we got some excellent quiet baby bird behaviour at dessert time too.

It really felt like we were proper grown-up parents this Christmas. Jules was kept busy preparing our Christmas duck on Christmas Eve and then taking Sofia out on the bike to the park on Christmas morning, so I could make the pavlova and buche de noel I was taking to Alison's for dessert. For one nasty moment it looked like the pav was going to disintegrate completely before I could get the greaseproof paper off the bottom of it, but somehow I managed to upend it onto the plate without smashing it to bits and smother it with enough whipped cream to hide any minor collapses!

Anyway it was very nice to change out of the clothes that were all covered in icing sugar and cocoa and shut the door on the debris-strewn kitchen to go and eat somewhere else. I suspect I may have eaten too much of Alison's wonderful turkey plus all trimmings (even though eating for two!) as all I could manage was one slice of pav for dessert. I blame B2 for occupying valuable space that could otherwise be used for stomach expansion.

New regime mark 2 starts on Monday - once we've eaten the trifle, the remaining mince pies, the Christmas pudding and the ham!

Jules and Sofia ride past our house

Jules and Sofia ride past our house
Originally uploaded by Racmol

The bike came out of its shed again at the weekend, and there was great rejoicing.

It's now parked in the communal hallway and every time we go in or out the front door there are shouts of 'Fia's bike! Dad's bike! Fia and Dad's bike!'

A very merry Christmas and a fabulous new year to everyone from all of us here in London. See you in 2009.

Love Rachel

B2 at 32 weeks

B2 at 32 weeks, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Well, I promised a photo so here it is. It's pretty poor though - the sonographer didn't charge me for the photo as she couldn't get a good shot.

The important stuff though - he's growing well, all measurements within the normal range. Estimated weight: 1.878kg. Abdominal circumference is not quite as average as it was, but still normal. That's the one they were really looking for, as that shows whether there are any problems with growth. Also the placenta appears to be functioning properly.

And dammit, no urine test! So I might as well have had a fruit mince pie for breakfast after all, instead of sensible porridge...

Comments - should I just disable this feature or what?

Doesn't anyone have anything to say about Sofia's stage debut? And by the way I have a scan tomorrow and if noone comments on the fabulous 32-week photo of B2 I shall be posting afterwards I really will disable comments.

Noone has said anything for the whole of December. Which is a bit disheartening, really.

The nursery nativity play (extended version)

Sofia is the white sheep with ears sitting next to the more major players, the gold and silver stars, on the far right.

A stray sheep in the Chaston Nursery Nativity Play

Here is our daughter making an unscripted appearance as a stray sheep in the Chaston Nursery Nativity Play last night. I'm also uploading a longer video on youtube - you can see Sofia sitting off to the right in her sheep costume, next to some more major players (the silver star, the gold star, Mary and the donkey). 

You would never know to look at her that the night before she was down at the hospital again getting more antibiotics for another ear infection. I did actually consider skipping the play, but she was so excited watching me make cupcakes for it that it seemed mean not to let her go. So I strapped her into the pushchair and forcibly administered the antibiotics and some nurofen and off we went. 

As you can see, she had a great time. Several people said to us afterwards 'Your daughter is so smiley!' and 'what a happy little girl you have!' Next year will be interesting - the kids in the big kids room (where you go when you turn two) had actual speaking and singing parts. Some of the boys in particular were very good actors and singers - we were very impressed (when we weren't howling with laughter...) 

A busy Sunday in the garden

Post-gardening tantrum, originally uploaded by Racmol.

We had a frost on Saturday night and a beautiful clear sunny Sunday. About 4 degrees, mind you, but still.

Tasks accomplished:
Leaves raked up and binned (both of us)
Garlic planted (Jules)
All remaining tulips, daffodils and crocuses planted in tubs, the lawn and the borders (me)
New gumboots worn in and trike ridden up and down the lawn (Sofia)


And then Sofia had a tantrum because I wasn't running to carry her down the steps. This photo was taken as the tantrum reached its peak! You can also see Jules planting the garlic and Sofia in her party dress after Saturday's party on flickr.

A family day out at the Christmas market in Winchester

All the family in Winchester , originally uploaded by Racmol.

We've just spent a lovely relaxed Friday at the Christmas market surrounding Winchester Cathedral with our friends Adam, Angeline and Millie.

We took the train from Waterloo on a groupsave 4 ticket, which took about an hour. It was a bitterly cold day but the market was lovely - with more than enough mulled wine, hot chocolate, fruit mince pies and Belgian waffles to keep everyone happy!

We bought a few small presents and three Christmas decorations for our Christmas tree. We're hoping to pick up a tree tomorrow at the farmers' market as advent starts on Monday.

Sofia and Millie had a lovely time running about at the market and as it was in a big enclosed courtyard with no cars, they couldn't come to too much harm. Sofia is tall enough now to help herself to the free samples of cheese, jams and so on - but she still ate a big lunch when we finally found somewhere to eat.

There are lots of big dogs in Winchester - Old English sheepdogs and big shaggy black ones, for example.

Only one complaint - the cathedral toilets didn't have a nappy change table, which seemed like a massive oversight when you consider how many pushchairs there were at the market. At only 5 degrees celsius, Friday was not a good day for changing nappies on the concrete floor!

I fell asleep on the train on the way back. Sofia sat on Adam and lifted up his jersey saying 'baby' and 'tummy' - I think he was a bit offended!

Today Jules went to the rugby at Twickenham and Sofia and I went to the post depot to pick up a parcel - containing one very beautiful Christmas stocking from the Nanny. Jules said: 'I guess we're responsible for filling that for the next 20 or 50 years'...so I suppose we'd better buy some more items than just the Upsy Daisy socks that are hiding in my wardrobe.

A Jules and his fish soup - the new regime week 1

A Jules and his fish soup, originally uploaded by Racmol.

We had an impromptu dinner out at the pizza place on the corner (aka Pomodori e Baci) tonight, just to celebrate the fact we both still have jobs despite gloom and doom everywhere in London. It was a lovely one hour and ten minutes, with Sofia on her best cafe behaviour for once, as you can see on flickr.

In other news, I took Sofia for her first swim since St Lucia this afternoon and it was a roaring success. She blows bubbles brilliantly now and even submitted to having her hair dried with the hairdryer afterwards.

Oh, and for anyone following Jules's new regime or competing with it, I think the fish soup and the forgoing of a tiramisu may be the start of a seachange in our eating habits. Or not. Watch this space...

28 weeks pregnant

28 weeks pregnant, originally uploaded by Racmol.

We suddenly realised we haven't taken a single photo of B2 yet so here he is, better late than never!

For comparison, see when I was six months pregnant with Sofia.

In other news, Jules is aiming for a(nother) lean Heath Christmas. The new regime starts tomorrow!

Snow in October?

IMG_2083, originally uploaded by Racmol.

First time in London since 1934, apparently.

Sofia's artwork

IMG_2073, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Sofia's portfolio

We've brought Sofia's "portfolio" i.e. artwork home from nursery to 'show the family' so I took some photos as I have to take it all back tomorrow.

We're quite impressed with the amount and variety of art she's done at Chaston Nursery. Bebi, her key worker, is very keen on painting, which definitely helps.

Yesterday when I picked up Sofia, I asked her what she did that day and she said 'Painting! Stars!'

So she's having a good time, which is the main thing.

All the photos of the artwork are now up on flickr.

Ruby Wedding

Ruby Wedding, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Autumn review - the novice gardeners' first season

Well, it really is going to be a lean Heath Christmas this year, or at least it would be if we were trying to be self-sufficient from our garden! I can't help noticing that our entire autumn harvest fits into one Abel and Cole weekly organic mixed box, with space to spare...

So, to recap, in the Spring we got two raised beds and filled them with topsoil from Norfolk. In one I sowed spring onions, carrots and leeks. The spring onions were smothered by the carrots but, after the carrot harvest, we seem to still have about 10 leeks. Hurrah!

Being short on space, we also squeezed in a butternut squash plant into the corner of that raised bed. 'Apparently, your butternut squash needed to go in in March,' said Jules the other day having somewhat belatedly read up on it on the web. Me (snappily): 'Yeah, well you didn't buy them until May...'

In the other bed we had a big patch of salad leaves, some broccoli and two courgette plants. The salad leaves were a runaway success - we didn't buy salad leaves at all this summer. The broccolis did produce some very small calabrese broccoli and we did eat one or two of them before they flowered but they weren't great. Maybe we overcooked them.

The courgette plants grew amazingly and had small yellow courgettes. Only two made it to harvest without being eaten by slugs. I put one of them in a vege chilli and it wrecked the chilli - Jules sat there picking pieces of small, hard courgette out of his teeth, which was a bit dispiriting. The other, about the size of a small carrot, we put in the vege crisper in the fridge where it got squashed up against the side and hidden under some apples and then half of it went mouldy and I couldn't be bothered saving the other half - so who knows if yellow courgettes are better than green ones or not? I suspect not - and not worth the bother. Plain green zucchini for us next year.

The apples were moderately successful - apart from the James Grieve which lost all its shiny red apples in about June and was left with maybe one on the tree. More Bramleys than Windsors this year but that is probably because we had the trees pruned in January and the guy said they were well overdue so the pruning was quite drastic.

Some of Jules's 12 sweetcorn that I put in in May survived to adulthood although most were destroyed by slugs and snails. We got one cob and when we opened it up it only had about 12 kernels of corn, so we didn't bother to cook it. Yet again, maybe May was too late.

The tuscan kale (cavolo nero): every leaf eaten by slugs.

Rhubarb: ditto, plant destroyed.

Sunflowers: ditto

Cucumbers: ditto

Garlic: got some bulbs but they were about the size of one normal clove of garlic.

Hydrangea: (bought in desperation when I was trying to think of a shrub the slugs wouldn't like) barely hanging on to life. May see out the winter if the slugs die down before it does.

Nasturtiums: thriving, smothering the struggling hydrangea.

Tomatoes: pretty good - definitely several large punnets of cherry tomatoes.

The compost however is brilliant - about 50 worms to every spadeful. So the bed where the salad leaves and broccoli were has been dug over and I planted mustard seed as a green manure, so we'll see how that goes next year.

The plan from here:

Crocuses in the lawn for February and the new baby.

Pots on the patio: tulips and irises (but will the squirrels eat them, like some got eaten last year?

More daffodils in around the beds at the edges of the lawn (some still left from last year.)

The roses were a success - especially the Ruby Wedding - which we have a cutting of on our kitchen windowsill. The two small pink patio roses were quite prolific too.

Some successes, some failures. Next year we'll have one bed just for butternut squashes. Someone on the web says you can get 32 from one plant - but we're just aiming for 10 squashes overall. We know our limitations...

B2 at 22 weeks

IMG_2064, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Lazing about in St Lucia

Our pool, originally uploaded by Racmol.

I've just uploaded a few of our holiday pics onto flickr - and I can't help noticing that they give the impression that we did very little, which is true!

There was a lot of lazing about on the beach, interspersed with frequent swims in the pool outside our villa and in the sea. Sofia ate far too many M&M ice creams and hot chips and not nearly enough broccoli but seems to have made it home again without scurvy!

We didn't do much sightseeing at all - our sole burst of activity was a motorboat trip to the marine reserve to go snorkelling one morning while Sofia stayed at home with a babysitter. And of course we got a great view of the island during the helicopter transfer from the airport in the south to our resort in the north. It's still covered with 70% rainforest, and where the rainforest has been cleared there are banana plantations instead so it's very lush and green everywhere.

After we had been there for two days we had three days of rain, which caused two large leaks from the balcony of our villa (quite basic, far up on the hillside) into our living room and bedroom. So we got moved to a 'superior' villa down by the beach, pools and restaurants which was a lot flasher and more modern, with its own hot tub and a smallish swimming pool about 10 metres from our front door. Then the weather cleared again for a week of hot sunny days and we settled into a gruelling routine of three swims a day, with occasional breaks for an ice cream or perhaps a nap in the midday heat.

We were due to fly home on Friday afternoon, and we got all the way to the gate of the plane before it was announced that our flight had been cancelled due to the plane hitting a bird as it came in to land. So, in the pouring rain, we were bundled into dodgy minibuses for a 90-minute drive along windy, flooded roads back up to another resort at Rodney Bay in the north of the island - a bit ironic considering all our careful planning of helicopter transfers specifically to avoid that drive!

Saturday was another lovely day, which we spent in the pool (for a change) and then it was back in the dodgy minivan to get on the plane at 11.30pm that night. We finally got home on Sunday afternoon instead of early Saturday morning but obviously Virgin Atlantic had to pay for all our accommodation, food etc so it wasn't the end of the world. Had to wake Sofia up at 8am the next morning though - and she insisted on taking Wom with her to nursery so she was obviously a little bit disorientated! Quite perky again when I arrived to pick her up - apparently slept for two hours after lunch.

This morning we were at the hospital again for another scan, which I will blog a picture of tomorrow. Everything looks normal - and we found out what sort of baby we're having too, which was quite exciting!

Rookie parent

For those with unlimited patience or just nothing much to do today, here is 5 minutes of quality footage of Sofia getting to grips with the new pushchair and baby doll.

A sailing photo, at long last

Jules on Hotstuff, originally uploaded by Racmol.

A sibling for Sofia

Bump 2 at 12 weeks, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Our new little alien, ETA 2 February 2009.

Sofia and Millie on the merry-go-round, London Zoo

Sofia and Millie on the merry-go-round, London Zoo, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Dress-up dragons

Posing, originally uploaded by Racmol.

No, she hasn't eaten too many jaffa cakes - it is a padded suit. Some more photos from today's dress-up extravaganza on flickr.

Gardening assistant

Trying on the gardening glove, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? I've just put some new photos on flickr, including some from our holiday in Tuscany a few weeks ago.

It's all change at our house - I'm heading back to work on Mondays and Wednesdays and Sofia is going to nursery, which she absolutely loves so far. She has been settling in there all this week, culminating in a full day on Friday. Originally I was supposed to start work this Wednesday coming but the paperwork isn't complete so there may be a delay.

In other news, I saw Justin Hawkins from The Darkness on Salusbury Road today and I made my first pav - which you can also see on flickr.

Our garden in snow

Our garden in snow, originally uploaded by Racmol.

First steps - Action movie

Sofia learnt to walk last Thursday, 20 March. Some dodgy camera work, but we get there in the end...

Today we went shopping for her first pair of outdoor shoes - but there was not a great deal of choice for a girl with an H-width foot! Wonder where she got that from?

Handyman Weekend - and the trike's first outing

We've had a very handyman weekend, with the new electric drill in constant use. Friday night - sawing of little round holes to thread cables through underneath the fireplace. Saturday morning - assembly of trike (with helper) and then two raised garden beds (now in place but awaiting topsoil delivery). Sunday - paint samples (many and various) for living room.

Here is the trike being assembled:





And here is Sofia trying out her new gumboots:




The trike's first test run down the hall:




And finally the first outing to the park:

Cake demolition in progress

Cake 3, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Sofia's first birthday

Happy Birthday Sofia, originally uploaded by Racmol.

You know how people always say to children: 'No, you can't have cake now, you'll spoil your dinner'? Well, we fed Sofia cake right before dinner - just to make sure she wasn't too full or tired to appreciate it - and she wolfed down an entire large slice and then washed it down with a full bowl of spinach, kumara and peas. So it turns out the cake spoiling dinner thing is an urban myth and we shall not be paying it any heed in our household.

There is a full sequence of birthday pictures, including all of us in St James's Park at lunchtime, on flickr. But I'll also post the final cake picture, so you can be sure I'm not making this up.

We've all been on a summer holiday...

Well, we've been around the world and home again - swapping the English winter for three weeks of New Zealand summer. Here we are, relaxed and happy on the beach at Whiritoa on the Coromandel Peninsula - just before we left to fly home.

We flew into Christchurch on a Monday night and started the holiday with five days in Akaroa with Nanny and Lolo. Surprisingly enough, there was a small festival of consumption as we got reacquainted with some old friends (mallow puffs, burger rings, fish and chips, Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc etc...) and made some new ones (various local cheeses and wines). Aside from all the eating and drinking, we went on a boat trip around Akaroa harbour and saw lots of Hector's dolphins, went swimming in the harbour and walked along the beach at O'Kain's Bay.



Here is Sofia on the boat trip with Nanny and Lolo.



And here she is at O'Kain's Bay.

After Akaroa, we drove down to sunny Dunedin (no, really, it was quite hot) for a few days with Grandma and Grandad, a visit to the Speight's Ale House and a swim in the salt water pool at St Clair. Here is Sofia enjoying a leisurely breakfast with Grandma and Grandad.



Next on the itinerary was a brief stop in Wellington - highlights: pavlova at Nana and Pop's and a quick dip at Scorching Bay - and then on to Westport for a few days with Jeremy, Ruth, Temo and Caoimhe. And here are all the cousins in the bath together after a swim at Carter's Beach.



To finish up, we flew from Westport back to Wellington and on to Rotorua, then drove to Whiritoa for a beach holiday with Annie. A perfect hot, sunny, beachy end to the holiday - even if I have sustained a sports injury (gammy wrist) from the boogie board. Here is Sofia testing the surf at Whangamata.



A new selection of holiday photos are now up on Flickr, including Red Bear in flight, for anyone who's interested.

Back at home, it is 8 degrees with a severe white frost this morning - but the crocuses coming up in our lawn seem to think spring is on its way, so here's hoping...

Sofia and Caoimhe at the beach

Sofia and Caoimhe at the beach, originally uploaded by Racmol.

How to unwrap a present

If the above is slow to load, here's the link to it on Youtube

New Year's Day pancakes

So that's a pancake..., originally uploaded by Racmol.