First Boyfriend

This week's big news is that G has her first boyfriend. They met in the old-fashioned way, at nursery.

Mrs J first became suspicious a couple of weeks ago, when she arrived to pick up G, who wanted to take an Octonauts toy home with her. "You can't take that with you, it belongs to nursery," said Mrs J. "But N said I could take it," pleaded G. The nursery leader let them take the toys as long as they brought them back, which might say something about G's negotiating skills.

Since then, Mrs J has noticed that G and N are usually the last children left in the group when she goes to collect G. Clearly, romance has blossomed during this time alone together. In the car on the way home on Tuesday, unprompted, G announced: "N is my boyfriend. And I am a girlfriend". When she got back and Mrs J relayed this news, I asked G what N was like. "We play with toys together!" she said, excitedly. All very sweet, but I suppose I'd better be ready for her to come home inconsolably upset one day, just in case.

I took this picture yesterday, during a walk at the lake at Clifton Country Park.

North East Weekend

We were in the north-east of England over the weekend, visiting G's granny and then another friend of ours. My mum lives in Washington (the original one), so on Friday we went for a walk around the Old Hall, the ancestral home of George Washington's family.

They'd long gone by the time George was born, but no matter, the historical connection is maintained. Not just through the hall, available for weddings (such as one that was about to take place when we visited), but also in the American War of Independence-themed names given to various housing developments in the 'new town' bit of Washington. However, with all the roundabouts, I doubt old George would see much of the Concord he knew in Massachusetts in the north-east version.

I've been coming to the area to visit family for years. So long in fact, that on taking G to the Discovery Museum in Newcastle on Saturday, I realised that I'd actually been there as a child myself. These days there's a huge water table at toddler height, demonstrating the bridges and traditional industries of the Tyne. Here's G having a go at a bit of crane operating:

Later, we took her bowling. It had been a while since I've been, and Mrs J was alarmed to discover that technology has moved on in recent years, so you no longer have to use inflated bumpers in the lanes when children are bowling. Bumpers just pop up and down for certain players.

So, inevitably, G ended up beating her mum, although the balls were a little bit heavy for her to manage on her own:

Changing Kit

Quick change... vine.co/v/bFzjtwxldEK

— Lorraine Jones (@raynejones) April 13, 2013

I've written before about how G now goes to ballet and then football on Saturday mornings. There's not much time between the two classes, so a quick switch of outfit is required. Mrs J captured it yesterday using Vine (it's the new app from Twitter that lets you record six-second videos which play on a loop).

This is basically the pre-school equivalent of Superman changing in a phone box. Only with the additional knocking down of a few gender stereotypes.

Scarred For Life

There are many sounds which are regularly heard around a house with a toddler living in it. Three in particular usually come in sequence: the sudden crash, the brief silence, then the wailing cry.

The longer the silence, the louder the cry, the more serious the accident. So it was last Saturday afternoon, and we rushed through from the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs to see what scrape G had managed to get herself into. Scrape being the operative word, as she was lying at the bottom of the stairs with a big red mark where the skin of her nose used to be.

She'd actually only fallen onto the stairs rather than crashing from the top all the way down, so at least we didn't have to take her to A&E. In fact, she'd more or less forgotten about it within five minutes. But she's been walking around all week with a big scab directly between her eyes and it still hasn't entirely healed, because the cut at the top is actually quite deep.

This has left me wondering whether she'll always have a little mark there. Will she be late for an important date/job interview/her own wedding because she's still splodging make-up all over it, cursing the day she tripped over in the hallway? If so, at least now she'll know exactly when that day was.

On The Merry-go-rounds

Mrs J took a day off work so the three of us could go to a family fun day at Red House Farm, just down the road near Altrincham. There were various attractions including live performances from assorted CBeebies favourites, but G was only really interested in going on the rides. We had the bus first, then inevitably the train:

Then it was the bus again. G went for several goes on the top deck, a seating preference she'll undoubtedly keep throughout her teenage years:

 

There was one of those chair swing rides too. When I first tried to put G in one of them about a year ago, she sat down happily enough then burst into tears just before it started going. No such problems this time though:

It was a good day out, but pretty cold in the relentless wind, especially as G kept insisting on playing outdoors. So by mid-afternoon we were quite keen to get into the warm. But to get G to leave we had to promise that I'd do some baking with her once we got home. Here she is, all set to measure out the flour: