Thea

Since Christmas, Thea has really become a proper little person. She can understand and react intelligently to pretty much everything you say, though this does mean that she has developed a very clear "no" where she shakes her head and does a sweeping gesture with her hand.

She really loves being outside. After breakfast, the first thing that she does is go and get her shoes, pass them to you, point to the back door and say firmly, "yeah, yeah". In fact, everything she says, she says firmly. She gives the impression that everything has been considered carefully.

Once outside, she likes to be swung on the baby swing which she is getting rather too big for. Otherwise, she wanders round the garden looking for bikes and trikes to get on. They are all still a bit big for her, so she retreives an adult, leads them to it, points to the seat and says, firmly as ever, "yeah, yeah".

She is also a big fan of the bike, and will bring you a bike helmet, pass it to you, point to her head and say, firmly (getting the picture yet?!), "yeah, yeah" and then point to the door. At present she seems happy to compromise and will simply walk around the house with her (or anyone else's) bike helmet on. This is handy as she is really enjoying the ball and mallet set that she got for Christmas, and gets rather carried away with the malleting!

She's an independent little thing and will quite happily just walk off to explore on her own. I'm having to remember this, as I'm not used to a child who is capable of being more than 3 metres away, or can find something interesting to get involved with without having to tell me about it on a minute by minute basis! She really enjoyed the diy shop the other day, and was quite happy to be left to gather important items that she felt were essential to our needs (polystyrene coving was a favourite).

She is extremely fond of Nathaniel and her whole face lights up when he comes downstairs in the morning (yes, she's still doing that 5:30 wake up thing!). She gives him a giant grin and often holds out her arms to, well, I don't really know what. She doesn't hug him. I think she just wants to menace him - stick her fingers up his nose and pull his hair and generally be affectionate!
They play best when they have lots of space. Their favourite place at the minute is the library. They roam around - Thea marching off with a grin on her face and a backward glance at Nathaniel. He follows and two seconds later they are rolling around on the floor together like lion cubs, giggling and screeching. Thea clambers back up and off they go again. This morning Nathaniel wasn't well and so we sat down to watch The Clangers on a DVD and Thea was determined to be involved. She asked to be lifted up onto the sofa and then snuggled down next to Nathaniel to watch, every so often glancing over to him to check that she was doing it right. She was amazed and overjoyed when the clangers themselves appeared on the screen (there's a reasonably long intro featuring shots of planets/moons). She had to stand up and point at them and make happy and astonished "oh!" noises.

Like Nathaniel, she doesn't seem to practise things - just watches other people and then miraculously performs. She has shown no interest in wooden blocks, and just watches me with faint derision when I have demonstrated stacking them. But then today she sat down at the table and flawlessly stacked up her 7 cuboid crayons. I didn't start filming under the third or fourth time when she had lost some interest, lost several of the crayons, and was distracted by what Finn was up to next to her.
She is very intesested in books, but, at present, solely in those with flaps or textured areas. She got very excited about Maisy goes to the Library the other day, but got bored after the first couple of pages. Her absolute favourite is Spot!

She likes to climb. The kitchen stool has to be left by a wall now, otherwise you find her trying to help herself to cereals, turning on the oven or getting into the sink. My current favourite is her getting stuck on a ledge made from two plastic boxes which happens on a a daily basis. You hear a yelp and find her clinging to the edge of the boxes with several "treasures" in each hand which she has rescued from the top. But any apparatus that is off the ground will do.
Most things that she does are done with a cheeky grin. When I get a good photo of it, I'll post it! All in all, she is great fun.

Snow

There's been snow on the ground for a about a week now, but it's been a bit token, and the most interesting aspect has been the ice. Nathaniel has been filling up sawn up milk cartons in order to create interesting pieces of ice to play with and then taking great delight in destroying them!

The snow proper (sort of), came today and so we thought we better go and enjoy it while it lasted. We took the sledge and Nathaniel insisted that he also needed a wheel barrow, which spent most of the outing being a snow-powered train. This necessitated much filling, emptying and refilling.

We found a suitable slope on the moor and prepared ourselves. Thea wasn't desperately interested.

Then Nathaniel gave them a big push off...

And Thea thought it was brilliant!

Of course, it was impossible to take a photo when she was still enough to not be a blur and also pulling her happy, grinny face! So here's another one that's in focus for those who like photos of Ian and Thea.

Thea's reaction to the whole thing was to get back onto the sledge and sit down firmly, which we regarded as a sucess, even if she did do this at the bottom of the hill instead of the top. Nathaniel was pretty happy too, but he remembers the much better snow and much steeper slopes of last year, so contented himself mainly with dealing with the snow-train.

We decided to head home before people started to feel cold, and although everyone was still grinning while they were whizzed up and down the bumps on the way back, we couldn't get a photo with everyone smiling!

Bicycles

The trailer has been wonderful, but there are some times when it would be helpful if we didn't have a giant lump of metal and canvas to lug around. So it was time for Thea to learn about the bike seat.

She didn't look amazed by the whole experience, more the typical solemn expression which hides intense interest!

Our subsequent bike ride would have been most excellent if it hadn't been for me getting over excited and embarking on something that was a bit far for a day when we didn't have gloves and it was starting to sleet!

The new normal

Its been complicated week. It's the first week back to normality after the excitement of Christmas and everything is a bit different. Nathaniel has been attending Steiner chreche as well as nursery, and Thea has started nursery as well. New things for everyone. Colin has been demolishing our bathroom and on Monday I'll be back at work!

So I decided that we'd just keep everything else simple. We walked in the sunshine pretending to be solar-powered cars with spinning solar panels:

We played on funky wind instruments: whizzers, water flutes and train whistles:

We messed around in the garden:

We discovered that Nathaniel rather likes wasabi peas!

It's all been low key and quiet!