More new books for Olive

We caught up with Olive's uncle on the weekend and as usual he had some lovely gifts for her. She's really lucky, he takes his uncle duties very seriously and is always on the look out for books that she would like.

The Happy Lion by Louise Fatio and Roger Duvoisin.

This one is charming! A lovely story about a very happy lion who has lots of friends, until he finds the zoo gate open and decides to go for a walk. Wonderful illustrations. I think it's over 50 years old, and part of a series. Provoked lots of questions from Olive about why the villagers were afraid, and why the little boy wasn't.

The Biggest House in the World by Leo Lionni

Olive loves this book because she is The Snail Hunter, a little botanist in the making! She's obsessed with bugs, snails and spiders and likes nothing better than to hunt for snails in our garden. My mum recently sent her a bug glass which goes everywhere with her. This story is about a snail who wanted the biggest house in the world and what happened when it grew too big. I'm still very wary about telling Olive stories which have death or anything scary in them, but she seemed to handle this tale pretty well. I've been avoiding a lot of Hans Christian Andersen for this very reason, perhaps we'll give them a go, but maybe not at bedtime!

Hula dancer

Olive all dressed up for her Hawaiian summer party at nursery.

Happiness is:

An Amazon delivery for Olive:







With big thanks to We Heart Books for stopping by and providing lots of lovely inspiration!

Firsts

Last night was Olive's first night in her big girl bed. She is quite the monkey at bedtime (think of Lola saying "I am not tired and I will not go to bed" and you have the measure of bedtimes in our house) so we have kept her in her cot for as long as physically possible. But overnight she went from still being comfy to being unable to roll over and banging her head on the sides so it was time. She was so excited when it arrived yesterday and all her toys helped test it out. She loved having her story in bed, and after only a small amount of procrastination, snuggled down and went to sleep. Matt and I kept popping in and out to look at her, snug as a bug and fast asleep in her big girl bed. Our baby, in her big girl bed! And there she stayed until 7am when she yelled "Mummy! Is it time to get up yet?" What a star. I will post some pics of her room when it is all sorted. We have to paint the bedframe this weekend, and I've ordered a gorgeous Marimekko bedspread and some fairylights. Her cot is still in her room, and we're not quite sure how we are going to get it out of there. Olive is a world class hoarder, already. Rebecca (who knows a fellow hoarder when she sees one) witnessed her carrying the empty plastic bag her freebie Carluccio's jigsaw came in from lunch on Saturday all round Canary Wharf, as well as 3 my little ponies and her Dougie, before handing it to me saying "Save this for later". She still has it, it's in her toybox and if I dare to throw it out it will not go unnoticed. She told me that we can move her cot, but only in to our bedroom as she will "Be needing it later". I really want to have a big clearout of all her baby toys but she will no doubt be "saving them for later" too.

Some more firsts today too. First time she scootered all the way to nursery. And pointed at the school building and said "That's where I'd going to Big PlaySchool mummy, with all my friends" which is brilliant as she is moving up to there in a couple of weeks and has been fervently ignoring this fact "unless Sarah is coming too". Sarah is her current key carer who she just loves more than anything so it's a big step for her to acknowledge that she is moving.

I just can't quite believe how grown up she is getting. It's terrifying how quickly the last three years have gone by, I really wish I could go back for one day to when she was a tiny baby and just sit on the sofa and hold her and look at her all day long. She's changed my life beyond belief and I never knew I would love her so. Or experience so much joy, and guilt and frustration and exhaustion and all the other stuff that comes with becoming a mother, but that's another post and one I have been writing in my head for a while now. Instead, I'll just finish with a pic from my big little girl at a friend's party on the weekend.

Isn't she lovely?

Time for a first for me - I'm off to the gym to try PowerPlating - anything that promises 2 hours worth of exercise for 20 mins worth of effort sounds good to me!

Oh, PS please no-one say it sounds like it's time to have another one 'cos that's another whole big dilemma too!

Dark like rainclouds

Oh I'm fed-up today! I don't think I realised until I became a mother how much the weather affects me. And all this rain this summer is getting me down. Olive is like me, she likes to be outside as much as possible and this rainy summer makes us feel cooped up, cranky and irritable. Our Victorian house is complaining too, one of the sash windows is letting in water, our ground floor kitchen feels a bit damp and gloomy today and I noticed this morning that the brickwork really does need re-pointing. We can't even bring a teensy weensy bit of the outside in by throwing the patio doors wide open because of the sheets of rain pelting down from the skies. Every time I open all the windows it starts to chuck it down and I have to rush around, slamming them shut. I feel hemmed in, not helped by the mounds of damp washing draped on maidens in every room instead of flapping on the line outside. Ugh. I'm restless. I wish we hadn't booked our summer hols so early in the season, and I wish we'd had two weeks on a sunny beach somewhere instead of rain, rain and more rain.

What else is bugging me? All the depressing news - the Guardian today was full of misery. The war in Georgia, increasing inflation, the cost of food, predictions of rising unemployment and how bees are dying all over the world. So much unstability and heartache for so many people.

Added to this M had a bad day at work yesterday with stocks in freefall. City life is so precarious at the moment, despite months of this no-one knows yet how low it's going to go and whose jobs are going to be cut in the process.

I'll feel better tomorrow, today I'm just having a mope.

Stomp!

Christmas down under

We have finally plucked up the courage to fly long haul with O for the first time and are going to spend Christmas in Adelaide with the in-laws. Having gotten over my nerves about the flight, I was starting to look forward to the prospect. Hitting Boomer beach, lunch at the Flying Fish, taking O to feed kangaroos and pet Koalas in Clelland Park, wandering down Norwood Parade for gelati and iced coffees, buying goodies from the Central Markets, barbecues, lots of lovely Barossa valley wine and just generally chilling out in my in-laws newly renovated lovely house and garden. Not to mention catching up with our favourite, favourite friends Nick, Sheree and Jack.

But then we took a trip to Austravel, and horrors of horrors my favourite airline, Singapore, is fully booked already! I am quite a nervous flyer, but have had so many good flights with them, I would have felt really reassured that flying with them would make O's maiden long haul flight as comfortable as it could be. Argh, what to do! It's looking like we are going to have to go with Malaysia. We've flown them before, and they were ok, service not quite up to Singapore, food not as good but not bad. My main beef was that the planes were older and a bit tatty. And they didn't have on-demand tv. The travel review sites do still award them a 5 star ranking, and the customer reviews aren't bad. But I'd still rather we were able to spend our money with Singapore!

Does anyone out there have any recent experiences of Malaysia long haul? Or any tips on long haul with pre-schoolers?

Listen to

Fags, Mags and Bags Thursdays, 6.30 on Radio Four. It's hilarious!

My favourite line from this week "Why do I get the finger of fudge? I wanted the duty free sized Toblerone!" from Sanjay when given his prop for the Cornershop Keepers Calendar shoot. This show makes me laugh out loud!

A very cruel story

I've just finished reading the most cruel story I've read in a long time - The Outcast by Sadie Jones. I bought it in WH Smiths Liverpool St Station as part of a buy one get one half price, (well, I was hanging around waiting for Matt to leave the office) and plastered with Richard and Judy stickers no less. (When I worked in publishing in Sydney we used to often buy the US version of a title as the covers suited the Aus market more, but always with strict instructions that they would not arrived stickered with Oprah's Book Club labels otherwise the indies would not take them for love nor money.)

But I digress. This book begins just as the WW2 is ending and is about a little boy who is very close to his mother. Things change when his father arrives home from the war, but just as he is adapting to having his father back, his mother drowns in a tragic accident. From then on every page is just filled with torment for this little boy as he grows into a man and he starts blotting life out by self harming and drinking. The mother in me was just aching to reach out and give him a hug, as every new horrible thing happened to him I was just yelling, no, someone, please just love him! It takes until the final page for you to feel that things are going to get better for him, but even then it's a brief glimmer of happiness on a train platform before he has to leave for national service. Did I enjoy this book, hmm not sure. Did I stay up until gone midnight to finish reading it, yes I did.