A Very Slow Walk

We were away for the weekend, at a pre-Christmas get-together with friends in Shropshire. Being the only little one among two dozen people meant that G was often the centre of attention, which unsurprisingly kept her happy.

One less happy event was our attempt to get her to the nearest pub for lunch on Saturday. At last year's event, I had used a back carrier to get G there through the snow. But she's too big for that contraption now, so we were left with little choice but to take her pram.

I gave up routinely using G's pram months ago after she made it clear that, as a big girl now, she'd rather walk. This is fine for toddling about our local village where distances are short and we've rarely got to be anywhere in a hurry anyway. But walking a couple of miles is a different matter.

Saturday's trek to the pub started off well enough with G in the pram, but after a while she started fidgeting and whining and asking "Walk?" until we finally got her out and let her toddle. The picture shows G taking a close interest in one of the many puddles we encountered at this point.

But no matter how much fun it was watching G splash about, the facts were that it was very cold, and the pub was still some distance off. G refused point blank to go back in her pram, so I picked her up and started carrying her down the road. This led to a tantrum, accompanied by wriggling, sobbing and more cries of "Walk?" as I hurried along as quickly as I could. The tears stopped as soon as we reached the pub, and G realised there were lots of people besides mummy and daddy to dote on her.

It wouldn't have been so bad, but we went through exactly the same process on the return journey too. I'm looking forward to when she can walk a bit faster.

Yoga For Toddlers

I've written before about G's favourite TV programme, In The Night Garden. It's actually one of two that she particularly enjoys. The other is Waybuloo, and it makes up the first part of the CBeebies Bedtime Hour each night, an hour of increasingly valuable calm-down time which helps get G ready for tea, bathtime and bed.

The picture shows G in action during an episode of Waybuloo. The show features four computer characters who zip about a colourful fantasy world, and spend much of their time doing a form of yoga which is easy for little ones at home to copy. A few months ago, when Waybuloo started being shown as part of the Bedtime Hour, I had no idea she was taking any of it in until I looked up one day and spotted her sitting down and touching one of her feet, just as the characters on the screen were doing.

Now, the toddler yoga is as much a part of the nightly ritual as the Upsy Daisy dance and the bedtime story. The move that G is doing in the photo is called the Windmill. Whether this will help her become as bendy-legged as a gymnast when she's a bit older is hard to tell. Having been a born a decidedly sturdy 9lbs 15ozs, subtlety of movement has never been one of G's strong points. If she grows up into a dainty little girl, I may well have Waybuloo to thank. Or blame, whichever you prefer.

Shopping Bag

Keen to get out of the house today despite the cold weather, I ended up taking G over the Pennines to Slaithwaite, to pick up a few bits and bobs from the Green Valley Grocer. I gave G the basket as I scoured the shelves for something for tonight's tea. When I put everything into the shopping bag, G insisted on carrying it and took it down the street, as shown in the picture.
Predictably, this didn't last very long. The bag was a bit on the heavy side for her, and we were making very slow progress on what was a freezing cold afternoon. So I ended up carrying both G and the bag back to the car. Soon she'll be too heavy for that. But, unfortunately for me, not quite yet.

Blow The House Down

Here's G on the swings at the playground in Uppermill last week. It was the day of the public sector strike, so it was unusually busy, although many of the children were being looked after by a selection of harassed-looking grandparents.

Now that G is at nursery two days a week, we don't go to the playground as often as we used to. Neither of us seem to mind too much, the slides and roundabout would get boring if we went every day, after all. But I'm increasingly becoming aware of things that G is picking up at nursery, which she then surprises me with at home.

The other day G woke up early. Not really that early as it happened, but it was a weekend and me and Mrs J didn't fancy getting up, so G came and sat between us in bed. I could hear her chatting away to herself, before she clearly said: "Big bad wolf... huff... huff... huff... house down!"

I looked at Mrs J: "You haven't taught her that have you?" She hadn't. G had obviously been hearing all about the Three Little Pigs at nursery.

I suppose I could be upset that I'm no longer responsible for everything G learns. But I'm really not. When you've read The Gruffalo as often I have, I'm grateful for anything that's even slightly different. And with G's mind expanding all the time, I'm glad for other things to help stimulate her, whether that's nursery or even CBeebies, the electronic babysitter in the corner. Keeping a curious toddler entertained is a team effort.

Day Out In Saltaire

We went to visit some friends for a day out yesterday. The three of us drove over to Saltaire, the workers' village established by venerable mill owner Sir Titus Salt. Clearly proud of his creation, he named it after himself, but I suppose as a mega-rich Victorian entrepreneur that was his prerogative.

His mill is now a complex of various things, and the picture shows G at our lunch table before we went for a walk around the village, a walk which included a ride on a little old tramway up the valley.

We were with our friends Penny and Sam, who had been at a wedding in Saltaire the night before. Penny is the person responsible for introducing me to Mrs J more than 11 years ago. This means that G basically owes her entire existence to Penny, so it was just as well G was generally very well behaved during our day out, although she did repeatedly insist that Mrs J had to carry her everywhere when she got tired of walking.

This might have something to do with the fact that G sees a lot more of me, and so whenever Mrs J is around, I am immediately a bit old hat. Yesterday, after a lot of "Mummy carry! Mummy carry!" Mrs J eventually gave up, protesting about sore arms. When I then picked G up she immediately burst into unconvincing tearful whines, wanting her mummy. This forced us into a quick pitstop for afternoon tea, a few mouthfuls of scones enough to cheer G up again. It's clear that the way to earn G's favour is still through her belly.

Mean Girls

G was on the receiving end of some hilarious playground-style bitching at a parent-and-toddler group this morning. I overheard one youngster saying, as she pointed very deliberately in G's direction: "I don't like that girl." What G had done to irritate her remains a mystery. Anyway, she rose above it and carried on playing, perhaps plotting her revenge for another time.

Playing Trains

Christmas came a bit early to the Jones household over the weekend. G's grandad was up to visit, and he brought a train set for G to play with. We saved opening it until she got up on Sunday because, given that she'd recently shown how much she enjoys trains, we knew she'd be far too excited to want to go to sleep if we'd let her have it the night before.

So, with a cold and foggy day outside, and the lights on inside, Sunday morning felt rather like Christmas with G playing trains on the living room rug. She quickly developed a habit of commentating on herself: "Train... train... toot toot... train" followed by the inevitable "Crash!" then the equally inevitable "Daddy help!" until I put the carriages back on the tracks. If she keeps playing with it as much as she has been so far, I'm sure it won't be long until she's announcing details of the buffet car menu.

Sore Eyes

Having got through more than two years with nothing worse than the odd cold, G's ox-like constitution has finally given in to something slightly more serious. I got a call from her nursery yesterday to say she'd woken up from her nap with gunky eyes, which is apparently the technical term for conjunctivitis. And so here she is on the sofa today, seemingly happy enough even though she's stuck with me and away from all her new friends at nursery.

We went out to see the doctor this afternoon and he prescribed some eye drops. I had conjunctivitis as a little boy, and I can certainly remember not being very co-operative when my mum tried to prise open my sticky eyes to put some drops in. In fact, I may have screamed loud enough for the neighbours to hear. So it was with some trepidation that I got the little bottle out of the packet, perched G on my knee and tried to get it somewhere near her eyes.

It didn't go very well. I can now confirm that trying to keep a wriggly toddler subdued with one hand while squeezing liquid out of a bottle with the other is hard. When you have to try to open said toddler's resolutely-shut eyes at the same time, you could really be doing with an extra hand, which I didn't have. So after a bit of Clockwork Orange-style prising open, and a couple of drops in the general direction of the lower eyelid, I gave up and let G calm down in front of the always-soothing CBeebies. Apparently I have to do this every three hours. Might wait until Mrs J gets home before trying it again.

Stew

I made some beef stew and dumplings for tea last night, and these before and after shots show what G thought of it. The second was accompanied by the inevitable question: "More?" Just as well I made plenty, really.

Sleepless In Stamford

We took G to Stamford in Lincolnshire for the weekend, to visit some friends. On Saturday afternoon we went along to Burghley House, where G enjoyed meeting a very sociable deer, as the picture shows.

Saturday night wasn't nearly as successful, as we suffered through G's worst night for sleeping since she was a little baby. After waking up after midnight and spotting us in the room with her, she didn't seem inclined to go back to sleep. This isn't unusual when we're away with G, and after a while we got her up and let her play with Mrs J's phone for a bit, in the hope she'd want to go back to sleep soon enough.

But she didn't. Attempts to put her back in her travel cot were met with whining, crying and, after an hour or two, wholesale screaming. At one stage I took G downstairs whereupon she howled for her mummy, huge fat tears plopping down her cheeks, and got herself so worked up she started struggling to breathe. I went on a mercy dash to the car to pick up an In The Night Garden DVD, and after a couple of soothing episodes she finally went down to sleep at about 6am.

This was bad enough, but Mrs J and her friends were due to run a 10k in Sherwood Forest later that morning. After three hours sleep Mrs J not only managed to get to the start, but completed the course in her best time ever, while I joined a tired but surprisingly not-too-grouchy G in cheering her on from the sidelines. I drove home afterwards though. G slept all the way.