Playdate

We had a trip up the road to Aberdeen last week, so G could see a couple of friends, including her first meeting with a baby boy over from Australia. It's a long drive even without a recently-potty-trained toddler in the back, so I was prepared for a lengthy and miserable journey. But G's new-found love of Thomas The Tank Engine helped no end.

After a bit of a snooze on the way up, she managed to use the potty at a service station then spent a couple of hours quietly watching Thomas chuff his way about Sodor (the DVD I'd brought was mostly from the Ringo Starr era, obviously). So no trouble at all.

The return journey on Friday evening was even more successful. I hoped a night-time drive would help her sleep, and sure enough she dozed off in front of the DVD before we'd even reached Dundee, not waking up again until we were passing Lancaster. "Where's Thomas?" was the first thing she said, rubbing her eyes, as I'd unplugged it as soon as I'd realised she was asleep. So she got an extra half an hour or so of train-based fun before we finally made it home.

You might consider all this TV to be a bad thing, and I suppose it is, but it's infinitely better than a long drive on your own with a whining toddler. And for that reason, the portable DVD player remains one of the great inventions of mankind.

Our actual stay in Aberdeen, cold and surprisingly snowy even though it's only October, was well worth the trip. G is a couple of years older than the little ones we went to see, but she managed to play nicely and share the toys without too much persuasion. However, as the photo shows, she preferred to get me to join in with even more ludicrous games of hide-and-seek.

Thomas

G has been through a few favourite TV characters recently. She's had a long-standing interest in In The Night Garden, and was also obsessed for a time with The Adventures of Abney and Teal. But after a weekend away at a wedding, all it took was a small new toy for her to change her affections to a rather older favourite, Thomas the Tank Engine.

G's grandad got her a little battery-powered Thomas to go on her wooden railway set. And the picture shows what she then spent the greater part of the weekend doing. Round and round the track he went, until we rebuilt the track to put some more tunnels in, then round and round he went again. His battery eventually ran out, so I think I'm going to have to stock up on plenty of them to get through the next few weeks.

She's always enjoyed playing with trains, but the Thomas toy may well have taken this to a new level of fascination. On getting home last night, we let her watch a bit of TV as a reward for a well-behaved car journey. "I want to watch Thomas!" she said, excitedly. Our TV's on demand section has a whole load of them, so we're in luck as far as that's concerned. Although it's all the new series, so within two minutes of watching one episode I realised I have no idea who half the characters are. There's even a Thin Controller now, presumably to encourage the Fat Controller to attend his Weight Watchers meetings.

As it finished, G said: "I want to watch Thomas again!" I'm going to have to get used to that, for a while at least.

Potty Training Wallchart

G has been potty training. We've waited longer to do this than we might have done, largely because of our recent move and her change of nursery. But I had a couple of weekdays at home just over a week ago, and thought it was as good a time as any to finally get started.

Being a stubborn sort of girl, G had steadfastly refused to go anywhere near a potty before then (on one occasion at nursery she was shown one, and responded by kicking it across the room, no doubt accompanied by a teenager-style pout), so we agreed that we would resort to bribery from the off. This took the form of giving her a treat every time she sat on the potty, either a biscuit or a chocolate button.

At first, I'd pretend to sit on the potty, then I'd put her favourite Teal doll on it. After a while of cheerily watching me eat biscuits, G got the idea that she could have a biscuit too by doing the same, and we started to get somewhere.

Mrs J then introduced a sticker wallchart, as shown above. G spent last week collecting stickers every day for different achievements. Not just using the potty properly, but also staying in bed all night and eating up all her tea (less challenging for her, admittedly).

G quickly learned to expect not only a chocolate but also a sticker for sitting on the potty. By midweek, she'd become a bit blase about it, so on Thursday morning after sitting on it in the bathroom and coming downstairs, my offer of breakfast was met by an insistent: "No! I want my sticker and my potty treat first!"

By the weekend, G had filled up each row with stickers and qualified for the various rewards shown on the chart. The lesson is: bribery works.

Hide-and-seek

Hide-and-seek is one of G's favourite games. Although she actually insists on calling it "hide peekaboo", and this could offer a clue as to why she is, well, no good at all at it.

The video shows a typical game. I think it's fair to say she needs to work on her tactics a bit.

Third Birthday

G was three yesterday. We continued the tradition we started on her first and second birthdays by taking her to Chester Zoo. Having made it pretty clear the other day that giraffes are her favourite, we made sure to head there early on:

G was also looking forward to the elephants, although she seemed to enjoy this one even more:

Before leaving, G had opened one of her presents, a child's first camera sort of thing. I'd actually assumed it wasn't a real camera, but as Mrs J demonstrated to both G and me, it takes pictures just as well as anything else. So we stuck a memory card in and took it with us.

G was extremely excited about this, and took dozens of pictures as we walked around the zoo. Mostly, these were of the floor, or her own feet. But she did manage to almost capture a zebra in this one:

Afterwards, we made it home in time for cake. I'd made my first-ever attempt at a Victoria Sponge, and although it turned out ok, the structural integrity of the top layer was a little bit suspect. Thankfully, Mrs J came to the rescue by covering it all in icing.

I suppose I've got another year to have a few more attempts and get it just right. But no doubt by then she'll be demanding something much more elaborate.

Picture Of Daddy

Another wet afternoon, and short of original ideas for things to do at home with G that don't involve TV, I settled for traditional entertainment in the form of paper and crayons. G likes drawing, although unless she's doing a rainbow, most of her artworks involve some kind of blob. These are usually adorned with a smiling face and arms and legs poking out in various directions.

Today she produced several, then went back over a couple of the blobs putting dots everywhere. "It's a giraffe!" she said proudly, then "Look daddy, it's another giraffe!" Given that she had already insisted on wearing her giraffe t-shirt, I think she's now dropped some strong clues about what her new favourite animal is.

Then, G drew another blob. As shown in the photo, she added a couple of stumpy feet at the bottom, arms and fingers, and a little tuft of hair. "Look, picture of daddy!" said G, excitedly. I can't really see it myself.

Clashing Colours

This is what happens when you let your two-year-old daughter pick her own clothes. I've never been one to pay too much attention to fashion. Clearly, this is something that G has inherited.

It wouldn't have been a problem in the past, but G is now old enough to insist that she has to wear whatever she has chosen, no matter how much I try to persuade her that three different shades of blue and two clashing flower patterns probably don't make the most coherent outfit. The alternative is suffering a massive tantrum.

If the worst that happens is I get a few sideways looks from mums down at the shops because of what my daughter's wearing, I'll take a tantrum-free day anytime.

In Praise Of Abney And Teal

G has long been a fan of In The Night Garden, the colourful pre-bedtime programme which soothes toddlers across the nation on CBeebies. But there's no doubt that her favourite thing to watch on TV is now The Adventures of Abney and Teal. It's on just before the CBeebies Bedtime Hour, although since she worked out that On Demand viewing means you can get it anytime, even on your phone, it's almost always the only thing G ever wants to watch.

I can't really complain too much about this. The two eponymous characters are friends who live on an island in the middle of a city, and get up to various mini-adventures often involving discarded bits of rubbish, all fuelled by regular bowls of porridge. Created by illustrator and author Joel Stewart, Abney and Teal has a sort of instant classic feel about it, a bit like the programmes (Bagpuss, Clangers) once made by the late Oliver Postgate. I imagine it's the sort of thing second-rate comedians might well find themselves pretending to remember on a clip show in about 20 years' time.

Apart from looking and sounding great, the thing I like most about it is that the female character, Teal (curiously enough, voiced by the singer from Noisettes), is resourceful and rough-and-tumble, rather than the sort of pink Disney Princess I've been trying to make sure G doesn't turn into.

The picture shows G tackling this month's CBeebies magazine, which is an Abney and Teal special. She was beyond excited when Mrs J came home from the supermarket with it the other day. Not quite excited enough to be interested in having a bowl of healthy porridge for breakfast herself, but there's time to work on that.

Holiday In France

We've been in France for a few days, visiting friends Andy and Heather who run the Alpine Ethos ski chalet in Meribel. This was actually my first time in France since a school trip to Paris in 1996, but if I was delighted to find that French breakfasts are still all about bread-and-chocolate in various combinations, you can imagine how G felt about discovering it for the first time. Some of the evidence of this can be seen in the photo above.

In an attempt to compensate for those breakfasts, we tried to do some of the outdoor activities you can do in the Alps when it's not snowing. Such as lake swimming. Despite snow still being visible on the peaks, the lake in Bozel was plenty warm enough to paddle around in, although G wasn't keen on doing anything more strenuous than a bit of splashing, as shown here (that's Mrs J's leg, in case you thought I'd developed a fetish for nail varnish).

Andy and Heather's greyhound Benny is one of the most pleasant and docile animals you could come across, which may offer a clue as to why his racing career never really got out of the stalls. G took to stroking/pestering him at every opportunity, even holding several one-sided conversations that he didn't really seem to engage with that much. Perhaps behind those eyes lies the mind of a competitor, still burning over how he could have been a contender, if it wasn't for that photo-finish in the 5:27 at Catford.

Talking of epic sporting contests, on a trip to Annecy, G played her first-ever game of crazy golf. She actually got straight into it, cheerily knocking the ball through all the obstacles and shouting "I did it!" whenever it eventually went into the holes. She also switched between the right-handed and left-handed styles, which may indicate a level of natural ability far beyond what us non-golfers can even begin to appreciate.

All very impressive for a two-year-old, although I chose to ignore her blatant cheating at every hole. Next time we'll play under real rules.

Appetite

We may have moved to new surroundings, but one thing that hasn't changed is G's interest in food. Picking her up from her first day at her new nursery last week, I asked how she'd been. "Oh fine," said the nursery nurse, "she's just eaten three plates of chicken curry for dinner." So there.

Mrs J has been poorly for a few days so our new house bottle of champagne went unopened until last night, when we drank (some of) it along with a Sunday roast which I knocked up in our new, and thankfully much larger, kitchen. G had two plates of this, too. Didn't offer her any booze though.