A Chest of Treasure

On Sunday we finally delivered this wedding present to Hugh's brother and his wife. Only one year late... Maybe we should have just called it a first anniversary present, afterall it was mostly paper (with a bit of chocolate thrown in for good measure).





The chest was bought from a craft shop near us and then me and Coco decorated it with tissue paper, jewels and some pretty off cuts of wrapping paper that had been hoarded away exactly with a task like this in mind...



It was a very fun little project to do with Coco - although of course she was just on her best behaviour as she was angling at getting hold of some chocolate coins for herself.



Quite a nice way to give away a few quid I thought!?

Adventure Aborted

On Friday night with a sunny forecast for Saturday I decided that we should do something a bit different. Inspired by Lou at Little Green Shed's woodland adventures I thought it would be good to go and have a breakfast picnic in Richmond Park - I was imagining warm croissants and a big flask of coffee in the bright autumn sunshine, kicking up leaves and possibly a bit of deer spotting (Coco always insists that the deer in Richmond Park are Reindeer and nothing I say can dissuade her).

This is how the morning played out.

7.12am In that moment when I could have turned over and gone back to sleep (or pretended to at least) I didn't, I decided yes, we would do this and I got up. I showered, dressed, found wellies and coats and put them by the door, got Coco and Henry dressed and coaxed Hugh out of bed.

Partly as we'd discovered our flask was broken and partly as we are townies we decided that we'd get coffee on route along with the croissants. Coco and Henry are cereal fans so I put some weetabix in a tupperware and grabbed some milk from the fridge for them.

7.45am We are all in the car - miracles do happen.

7.48am We (ok, I) pull up at Gails bakery, Hugh convinces them to open early for him and goes in and gets the breakfast.

7.58am Back at the car... and it won't start! We are not in a parking place, I get a royal telling off from my husband for having the fans/lights/radio on and for turning the engine off. No battery power left.

The next 15 minutes is spent with Hugh pushing the car and me steering it (badly - I really let the side down for a bit there) in reverse to a proper parking place.

So no Richmond park picnic for us. Instead we went back to Gails, gave the kids their tupperware cereal and then had a full English breakfast each (every cloud...) then I took the kiddos to our everyday playground while Hugh went back and jump started the car.
We were all back home again by 9.30am.

Oh well, there's always next time... 



Warming up with a cups of milk.



Gails bakery, looking all autumnal.



Yum, hot breakfast.
And below some quite stomach turning Halloween treats not quite so yummy looking at 8.30 in the morning.







PS Coco, in her sartorial wisdom, insisted that she go bare legged for the morning. No to tights, no to leggings. I felt cold just looking at her. I was secretly hoping she'd regret her decision and then I was going to get her to write a note to herself to tell her to listen to her mother next time she was warned that she'd get cold... but she tells me she didn't get cold. So maybe she was right after all?

The Birthday Mantlepiece

I always thought getting older was something that other people did. Turns out I was wrong. But as my Mum once said to me, if I think I'm old then think about how it feels to have a daughter of my age...

For more of our kitchen mantelpiece in all it's various cluttered incarnations you can now click on the label link on the left.

Coco & Teddy

This morning Coco came in to our bedroom and 6.45 with her normal question of "is it morning?" meaning is it time to get up (we really must get her her own clock).

I said it wasn't - getting up is to be avoided at all costs until 7.20am - that, in my book, is an acceptable time to get out of bed. So Coco climbed into bed with us. She cuddled up, shocking my legs with her chilly little feet and then had the cheek to complain about my breath being hot.

Then she whispered:
"I'm going to stay six forever (she is four). I don't want to be a grown up because then I won't be able to have my teddy and I love my teddy, I will always want her."

Then she got out of our bed again and went to get her teddy.

I wouldn't particularly have thought to write this as a down except that I just read the latest post by Emily over at The Beetle Shack, and I thought recording this moment will probably bring a smile to my face in years to come. So I did.



This is Coco and Teddy back in the day. Coco was three weeks old here and teddy was fluffy.

Last of this years Flowers

About ten years ago I had an operation and an old friend came to see me when I'd just come out of hospital and bought me a bunch of flowers her Dad had picked for me from his garden. I really remember that small posy - it felt so nice and so personal. I quite often think of it when I cut flowers from our garden... now I have grand aspirations of giving people beautiful bunches of flowers and saying "oh, those - I just put them together from the garden"!



These are the last of the flowers from our garden, cut a few weeks ago now (in fact they can be seen in a rather more sorry state on the mantelpiece in this post).
All these glass jars were found around the house/garden during our renovations - the jam jar was in the loft and the rest in the garden.

I do want to do a full post about our garden - from overgrown, knotweed invested junk yard to ... um, garden, but it means trawling back through the last three years of photos though, so it might take a bit of time... but it would be good to get it all down while it's still fresh(ish) in my mind.

Cute Boy, Cute Top

Henry is 20 months and 2 weeks.
And, in my humble opinion he is uber-cute.

Of course I should be keeping a more regular update of what he is like* but the time flies and I never quite get around to it and then the moment is passed. So instead I'll just give you a snapshot of today - one rainy morning at the beginning of October 2012.

We biked to school to drop off Coco and Henry reached out longingly when we past the playground, too wet I told him, "bit wet" he says back. When we got home he wanted to ring the "bell" this has become a bit of a routine... then he quickly got distracted with Coco's scooter which is just outside the front door, so I let him have a little 'scoooooot" up and down the road in the drizzel. He got frustrated when I wouldn't let him go all the way to the end of the road. I told him he could do the bell again, so he eventually turned back willingly.

Back at home he insisted on helping to carry the scooter in while I got the bike inside. He asked me to take off his bike helmet by saying "click click" - then he tried to take mine off for me.

As it was raining properly by this point we ended up just hanging out at home, we did lots of shape sorting, he can say most shape words, but mostly in a parrot fashion after I tell him what they are, the same with colours. He loves the nesting barrels, unscrewing them especially, when he can't twist them shut he asks me to "peas help". He played with the duplo cars, linking them together and pulling them along, we built a tower out of the stacking boxes and he did his best dirty laugh as he knocked them down again - after pointing out a few of the animals drawn on the outside.

He spent a long time 'cooking' up various little bits of plastic - that was before he helped with some real cooking - our resident health and saftey expert likes to point out everything hot and hangs around my ankles while I'm cooking a lot. I let him pour some milk into the sauce I was making and help (in the loosest sense of the word) grate some cheese - he mainly ate it. Then he played with a load of dried "'asta" on the floor - which I quickly regretted as the thing he seemed to enjoy most was spreading them all over and laughing...

He disappeared off to my 'work room' and I caught him sitting at my desk (like a mini bond villian in my swivil chair) with my pens, some pink on his face as normal - this boy loves to suck a pen, and he carried around Coco's bag and shouted 'CO CO' (he can produce serious volume when he wants to). Then he reset the washing machine dial, even as I stood there telling him not to. He cannot resist a switch, or knob or button.

After eating about half the lunch I gave him (and a lot of complaining about it being too hot, and saying "uh-oh poo" in the middle of it) I gave up and let him have a banana, which he scoffed so fast it looked like he inhaled it. By the end of lunch he was rubbing his eyes, so we went upstairs where I put him in his sleeping bag ("pop, pop, zzzzzip" - he says) and we read a couple of books over and over "again". He has only just started sitting still and looking at books in the last few weeks but is fast developing a few favourites. Current obsession is 'Where's Spot', he knows most of the animals, although insists the lion is a frog every now and then. He likes to tell me when it's "the end", and although he didn't do it today he has started to say "night night" as he knows what is coming next. Into his cot he goes with his "gwent" - an old grobag that he cuddles, we have no idea why he calls it gwent.
I shut the door and he mumbles away - if he gets too noisy or stands up I talk to him through the monitor (his very own big brother) and tell him to ssshhhhh or lie down, which he often does. He didn't do it today but he quite often points to the monitor trys to say it and then says "Daddy" instead.

Then it's an hour or so of peace for me. Phew.
So that's it - our morning - not the most thrilling; but precious, as this little boy is changing so fast, it's rare that we just happily hang out together and it was nice.

Oh, and the top, it's from Tootsa MacGinty Coco chose it when we did her school uniform shopping trip (which we actually ended up doing a few days after she started, typically)! I think it's the cutest top that I've ever bought. I found £1 in the mouth/pocket the other day too... although, I'm guessing that might have come from my purse.
 
*I love reading the updates that other bloggers write about their kids. Abigail writes about her little boy Theo who is about the same age and Sarah's little boy Stanley is quite similar too sometimes I feel I could just copy and paste their updates!