The Weekend

With Mrs J busy this weekend, I took G to London for a bit of a road trip and to catch up with some friends. To break the journey on the way down we stopped off for a swim at the Hathersage outdoor pool. Despite G's slightly apprehensive look before going in, the water was pleasantly warm. Or at least much warmer than the last time we went.

G didn't much fancy going to sleep in a strange room on the Saturday night, so ended up clambering into bed with me. This was fine for her, but I soon realised she was taking up the majority of the single bed, forcing me right up against the wall. It was like being a student again. Only, you know, with a toddler.

The following morning, she did her best to look completely blameless in our friends' kitchen:

We went to a nearby playground. G enjoyed running around the various equipment, but the dress Mrs J had given me to put her in was proving problematic. So, as you can see from this picture taken on the slide, I had to tuck the front of her dress into her nappy so she wouldn't trip over it going up steps. Classy.

We moved on to a barbecue being hosted by some other friends, which was doubling up as a joint birthday party. After a nap in the car on the way, G was on very good form by this point, and ate lots of the food. This was her attempt at eating a burger, although in typical style she showed more interest in the bun rather than the actual meat.

She didn't sleep much on the drive home, but thankfully for both of us I had a portable in-car DVD player with us, and a stack of Charlie and Lola episodes. I can now confirm that the portable in-car DVD player is one of the all-time great inventions. She was very tired but happy enough when we finally got home at about 10:30pm, and celebrated by sleeping for a good 12 hours.

"Don't want to get up" she said drowsily when I tried to rouse her at 10:30am this morning. Like I said, just like being a student again.

Haircut

G had her first-ever haircut today. For a while her hair's been growing at an alarming rate. Where once there was just a bit of fuzz, now there's a big blonde mop, so much so that the easiest way to pick her out of a room full of little ones is to look for her hair, which is much longer and thicker than everyone else's.

So I took her into the Northern Quarter salon where Mrs J was having hers done this afternoon, and sat with her on my knee as the hairdresser gave G a trim. She sat quietly throughout, and looked more puzzled than anything else. G's reward is that she now has a fringe, which also means her hair isn't constantly in her eyes and I don't have to fidget around with hairclips, so it's good news all round.

Later we went along to Oldham's Twestival, a charity fundraising event with various child-friendly entertainment on offer. G was particularly pleased with the balloon which the clown modelled for her, even though to me the pink "flower" looked decidedly more phallic than anything else.

In fact, G liked it so much she refused to let it go, even when she met a new friend, Oldham Athletic mascot Chaddy The Owl:

The mascot seemed very taken with my little girl. But given Oldham's current form, meeting G may be the first thing Chaddy has had to smile about in quite a while.

Christmas Party

We took G to her first Christmas party last night. The three of us went over to Leeds where a couple of our friends were laying on their annual festive feast, which has grown over the years to be so big there were 20 people packed into their living room for a share of this turkey and an array of other treats.

Mrs J went out the night before for a 30th birthday, so we decided that she'd be designated driver yesterday and deal with G if she started playing up. This meant I could get on with the serious business of drinking beer and generally making a prat of myself. We put G in a Christmassy dress but she wasn't in much of a party mood, and managed to ignore the noisy crowd of drinkers and drift off to sleep early in the evening.

After dinner came the party games, and we split into two teams to take part in a variety of activities including electro-shocking tanks (I lost), speed mince-pie eating and Xbox karaoke (Mrs J stormed to victory). The final tiebreaker involved three people from each side trying to down up to three pints of ale out of a comedy horn which had been bought (on the Internet, of course) for the occasion. Despite having to do an extra half pint because of our poor performances in most of the earlier events, my team came within four seconds of winning, although this photo reveals that my technique may need some work.

G was upstairs and (mostly) asleep during all of this, but I'm sure when I tell her about it when she's older she'll be very proud.