Merry Christmas Everyone!!

We're off to stay with my brother and family for Christmas, but just before we go...

 

Have a good one and hope to catch up with you all soon!!

The challenge of Christmas-ifying the house...

For those of you reading last year you will know that I love Christmas. The rules of Christmas are that it can't start till after my birthday in mid-December, but as soon as possible after that the tree goes up.

Last year the supreme being was pretty much oblivious to the whole affair. Christmas happened for her in between naps and feeds, and there was little to view apart from some blurry lights and faces. Come to think of it, that sounds pretty much like my Christmas most years, so am not sure if I should have raised her expectations any higher this year.

All that said I was determined to try and infuse my festive spirit into our family once more, and we set off on the great annual ritual to collect "The Tree". It was going to be the start of Emily's first Christmas proper and I was convinced it was going to be a magical event. Reality often has other ideas however...

Problem 1 - Van still in garage, need to resort to car to collect somewhat large tree.
Problem 2 - Weather miserable, pouring rain and brutal north wind.
Problem 3 - Emily very late for nap, loaded with cold.

Emily looking decidedly unsure at Daddy's Christmas gusto

You can probably see where this is heading, but in short we arrived at chosen tree depository with me dashing out to choose tree, then trying to squash it fairly unsuccessfully in the boot with seats down (mainly due to poor preparation by myself), Emily starts screaming at massive input of green pine needles into her life, Mummy agitated by screaming child, boot refusing to shut, Daddy getting soaked, finished off with drive home in miserable silence etc etc etc. All in all a roaring success.

My Christmas spirit is not so easily defeated however and, one power lunch later, Emily was down for nap and I coaxed Mummy into Christmas-ifying the house. And she was soon in the spirit. So much so that by the time the supreme being woke up, she got out of bed to find a whole new world of fairly lights and tinsel created in the lounge. She even managed to continually point at the once terrifying tree with total delight.

 Mummy back in the festive spirit

 Emily determined to help out

 

Wanting to wear the fairy lights

And so a total Christmas nightmare was averted. In fact, a few carols and a glass of mulled wine later, and the whole morning's disaster was forgotten and Emily's first Christmas proper began. Now bring on the rest of the festive season...

Finally ready for the joy of Christmas

House Training...

They say it's important to teach children to help out from an early age. With that in mind the supreme being has been learning how to tidy up after herself. I should stress that there has been no coercion involved in mastering this feat. She wanted to do it...honest. Next week she will take on stowing the dishwasher and laundry.

Videoclip: One less job for us to do

Scribbling is amazingly freeing. It is good for letting frustrations out, like physical exercise. They say scribbling is good art therapy, you should scribble without reason and with abandon. Emily has just completed her first scribbling masterpiece. It's a wonderful creation...just a shame it was on the wall and not paper. Note to self: Toddlers get up to all sorts of things when you are not looking.

 Graffiti - the early years

Loving getting all the books out...not so sure about putting them back

Her new found walking freedom is also giving her so much excitement. It's also giving us a new added dimension in worry as she totters around pulling and pushing at everything she can reach. On the plus side its good for our fitness levels as we are constantly running to try and catch up with her. I suspect this is only the start however, and the reality is we will now spend the next 20 years trying to catch up with her. For now though, there's just another important note to self: Toddlers can move at an alarming rate.

Videoclip: Making a run for it...

And there you have it...

Today has been momentous. After months of 'assisted' walking, and weeks of 'I can't believe she's still not letting go', tonight the supreme being finally cut loose. It was the bizarrest thing. I came home from work around 5.50pm, did the usual storytime and then she decided, (and I mean SHE decided), that tonight was the night to walk. By 6.20pm she was doing a few steps, by 6.24pm I clocked tonight was different and called Mummy through. By 6.27 it looked like this...

Videoclip: Taking it in her stride

A few minutes after that there was no stopping her. It was like she had been walking all her life. She tottered round the whole flat looking pleased as punch, and by the end she was running. Oh how life just changed...Thank god she hasn't learnt to properly stand up yet but watch this space!!

Tonight I am one proud Daddy. 1 year and 17 days and my girl is strutting her stuff. Life truly is amazing...Love it :-).

Videoclip: And off she went...

A celebratory yoghurt was called for

Autumnal adventures...

Looking back a year ago, and the blog seems to report we were tramping round Glasgow in the rain with the supreme being. A year later and it appears not much has changed in that respect, except the supreme being is slightly larger and the tramping is becoming less dynamic as the weeks go by.

Emily is still demanding her daily constitutionals come rain or shine, only now she's beginning to demand that she actually walks some of it rather than getting carried, driven or pushed. The emphasis of our walking activity has started to become much more about the quality of the walk and nothing to do with quantity. Last time we were in Banchory I managed to sneak out and climb 5 munros and walk 40km in a day. My recent vision of my future that's unfolding before my eyes, is more that if I manage to climb 5 steps and walk 40m it'll be classed as a major achievement for the day.

Thankfully though, the daughter is still loving the bike seat which means we can at least make the park. And the park is full of ducks to be fed and leaves to be tramped in - new found pleasures in my life.

 New joy at the discovery of feeding the birds

Can I have some bread too please Mummy?

Heaven is tramping in leaves

And what to do after a hard day's tramping in the leaves? Well, I like to remember that we also had a life pre-arrival of supreme being, and so we recently invited our good friends D and Khen over for dinner, along with their children Ndu and Nnenda. 

It's kind of special for us when D comes over, as it was just about three and a half years ago that D introduced Tanya and I to each other. Tanya had been at university with D, and I had worked with her in Nigeria, and 'allegedly' she had always thought we would be very suited - not that I can argue much with that allegation. So to celebrate their visit, I recreated our 'first meeting' meal of pounded yam and egusi soup - a Nigerian speciality. Not sure D and Khen were celebrating quite so much when we expressed our gratitude by generously allowing them to show off their pounding yam technique. Come to dinner at ours - we'll make you work for it. That'll teach them to matchmake...

(Seriously though - thanks D!!!)

 Nothing like making your guests sit on the kitchen floor and work for their dinner

Flashback to 3.5 years ago (with small addition in the lime green bib)

Happy Birthday...

Many of you know that Emily's birthday is the 2nd November, and might have been wondering why there hasn't been a '1st Birthday' post up to now. Truth be told, Mummy and Daddy are slightly unconventional, and decided that the supreme being would never notice if her birthday was celebrated a week later when all the family just so happened to be getting together anyway.

More important than this was the fact she had been inundated with 1st birthday parties to attend recently, and, somewhat conveniently, actually had an invite to one on her birthday. Free party? Someone else organising and clearing up? Sounded like a good excuse to postpone for a week if you asked us. Not that Emily did ask us, as her language skills haven't progressed that far yet. Poor thing. We took her silence as tacit consent. Maybe next year she'll be able to ask for a party on her birthday. Besides, by the time she's learnt to read this, Daddy will probably have long given up his blogging career and all evidence of her party being a week late will have been lost or forgotten.

Still, a week late we did muster up a family gathering with Gediks, Gurneys and Rookes in attendance. Emily's 372 days were flanked by this years new addition Shay who was nearly 100 days at the younger side, right up to my parents who have over 60,000 days between them at the more senior end. The supreme being coped with the mayhem very well, mastering that important birthday skill of opening presents and eating cake at the same time. She even won the pass the parcel.

Happy Birthday Emily. And thanks for the best year (plus one week) of my life!!

 New birthday jacket with new (secondhand) birthday dress

 Practising the look that gets Daddy to do anything I want

Daddy now successfully bent to my will

Videoclip: The family mustered up a rousing 'Happy Birthday'

(Photos/Video reproduced courtesy of Big John Photography)

Halloween is halted...

Halloween is normally a time when children dress up in costume and travel from house to house hoping to get treats (often in the form of sweets) from households. This tradition in Scotland, where it is known as 'guising', pre-dates trick or treating and records go back of this practice as early as 1895.

Armed with this knowledge I was looking forward to our daughters first Halloween. We even managed a costume for her (second hand of course). However, one thing I hadn't counted on was just how much Mummy loves her sweets. And so the evening went something like this...

18:00 - Daddy arrives home from work.
18:10 -  Mummy explains that we have already had one lot of 'guisers' round.
18:20 - Knock at door. More guisers.
18:22 - Mummy suggests they sing 'Twinkle twinkle' to Emily.
18:24 - After successful singing Mummy goes off to get sweets.
18:25 - Mummy explains to said guisers that they will need to share limited sweets between them as there aren't many left. Guisers depart. Daddy's suspicions are aroused.
18:26 - Daddy enquires as to why after only two lots of guisers we are running out of sweets. Mummy, after some prompting, confesses that she might have eaten 'some' of the sweets on the basis that we didn't get many guisers last year.
18:30 - Mummy realises there are only 2 sweets left in the packet.
18:35 - Mummy tries to send Daddy out to buy more sweets. Daddy refuses on the basis that it was Mummy who ate all the sweets for the guisers.
18:36 - Mummy panics that there aren't enough sweets for guisers anymore and suggests satsumas instead. Daddy explains that this is 2013 not 1913 and kids expect sweets.
18:37 - Mummy panics further and suggests Daddy does early bath for the supreme being and that the doors get locked.
18:38 - Halloween ends in the Rooke household. Obviously early ending due to small baby needing to get to bed and nothing to do with sweet shortage.

You can see it might not be quite what I had in mind. Never mind, Emily looked very cute as a pumpkin and did enjoy prancing round in her costume....

The wee pumpkin