Month 21 - August 2011

Dear Lovely-Scrummy-Yoghurt-Face,

So August, huh? Well the first thing I'd like to say is that you have been MUCH less cross. Well done!


(Of course there have still been patches of crossness, but nothing like July!)

As you will be able to see from the pictures of this month, we have done a LOT of things that begin with the letter p - pig tails, parks, playdates, parties, Peppa Pig, puzzles, painting, paddling pools, pHolland...well, they can't all begin with p but you get the idea...


Swinging


Playdate at Sarah and Joe's new house: Sam, Georgie, Maya, Amy and Georgie


You guys are great at finding shade at high noon in otherwise shade-less parks




Puzzles


Potty-training (your idea, not mine)

We've had quite a few poos in the potty and toilet and you often try to take off your nappy but to be honest, quite selfishly, I'm not ready for you to be ready to potty train, so I haven't gone the whole hog with knickers and continual trips to the loo to see if you need to go. I'm happy to let you have a go now and then but I do not have the necessary patience to potty train you fully at this point. I've watched some of my friends do it, and I'm not saying its wrong, but I just know that I couldn't hack it. You'd be fine :-D



Aaaaaaaargh! The pig! The pig! I slept through most of Georgie Peppa pig obsession because I was very nauseous and tired because I was pregnant with you while it was going on. But I'm fully aware now. Ouch. That pig. Smug mummy. Dappy daddy. George. Mr Dinosaur.Ugh!You would watch it from breakfast until bedtime if I let you. Sometimes I'm tempted to let you. For most of the month you wouldn't watch anything else. I could have made you but then all our heads would have exploded. Georgie watched Scooby Doo in the front room and we watched the pig in the playroom.


Baby Jake

Then Baby Jake reunited us, albeit five minutes at a time. Even I quite like Baby Jake and Georgie likes it almost as much as you. That was the turning point and so now I'm pretty optimistic that September will see the gradual reintroduction of other series though - in fact I know it because a) I can't take much more of the pig and b) yesterday you said "No pig. Baddamory!" which could have been the most surprising and most exciting words said to me all month. (Yes I do know how sad that is !) Baddamory is Ballamory. Lately you have begun to tolerate Mr Tumble and the occasionally Show Me Show Me, so


Paddling pool hijinks in Holland with Holly

We went to visit Cherry, Andy, Holly and Sophie, who were spending the summer in Holland in order to escape the heat of summer in Dubai. There was a lot of soft play, swimming and general amusement, which you loved. You didn't settle at night until we were about to leave, which was a major bummer for me, but you had a whale of a time, and that's the main thing.


Ah, chocolate cake!

Charlotte's 4th Birthday Party



I bought this dress for Georgie to wear to Amy's christening but as it happened, she never got to wear it - I thought at the time that she had been exposed to chickenpox and so I kept her home. It's first outing was on Lexi to Charlotte's party in Muswell Hill, which was more Ps - Pirates and Princesses!



Face Painting



I was blown away by the patience you displayed on this day - you sat in the car and tolerated to long car journey, even slept, which was very convenient. You joined in the party pretty well and then you just sat and sat while a complete stranger (talent, lovely but still a stranger to you) painted your face. I just kept clicking away with my camera because I couldn't believe what I was seeing!







Sisters



Oh Lexi, you are so lucky to have Georgie for your big sister, she looks after you so well. Don't get me wrong, she's not a saint or anything, she's only four years old and so sometimes she gets cross with you, takes things away from you and occasionally hurts you (but almost always by accident, to her credit.) But she loves you, and her exasperation with your babyness never lasts for long. (As if it could, how could she resist you??)



Lately she has been playing with you beautifully and you have repaid her in turn by being a delightful playmate. Most of the time. This is made easier by your burgeoning command of the English language. Actually everything is made easier by that. Once again, well done!



If Georgie is crying, even if she's crying because she's been told off for doing something to you, you immediately find her Spencer bear and bring it to her, and then cuddle her and make soothing noises. You are a sweetheart.



More and more often these days I look over and I see you two, thick as thieves, cuddled up together, casual but close and it makes me smile. I hope it lasts, a sister can be a life-long ally, a major asset, I have one, so I know. You love her too, and have named her Shisshie - everyone in my little family calls her something different, Elizabeth, Liz, Izzie and now Shisshie.


Mutual toothbrushing sessions

I picked this poem because I like Pablo Neruda and because like him, you like things; in your case mainly naming them, licking them and hiding them. Enjoy...

ODE TO THINGS (oda a las cosa) From the collection - ODES TO COMMON THING By Pablo Neruda

I HAVE A CRAZY
Crazy love of things.
I like pliars,
and scisssors.
I love
cups
rings
and bowls -
not to speak, of course,
of hats.
I love
all things,
not just
the grandest,
also
the infinite
ly
small-
thimbles,
spurs,
plates,
and flower vases.

Oh yes.

Love to you my darling, and have a lovely September,

From your Mama xxx

Month 20 - July 2011

See-Sawing with Mummy in Chiswell Green Park

Dear Lexi Loo,

This month you have mostly been super cross. Don't get me wrong, you have had your fair share of giggles, but you have been markedly annoyed of late. Some of that can be put down to teething, some to your sister tormenting you, as sisters do - but a good proportion I lay at your door. It's a nice door. A slightly cross patch door at the moment. But I'm always happy to stop by.


Swinging in the rain in Fleetville

Things that can bring down your wrath upon unsuspecting onlookers include:

* Singing "Have you any wool?" when you sing the line "Baa baa back shp" and then stop.
* Being Daddy when you want Mummy
* Being Mummy when you want Daddy
* Being Mummy or Daddy when you want Nanny
* Being Mummy, Daddy OR Nanny when you want Gwandad...you get the idea...
* Brushing gently past you.
* Offering you the milk you asked for.
* Existing.

It's been a LONG month....!


Snacking in the shade at Clarence Park

Hair Today.....

You've had enough hair to put up for some time now, but only recently have you shown any interest in having it done and allowing it to endure for any length of time. Now when I brandish a brush and announce "Time to brush our hair!" you run towards me, rather than away, shouting "Me! MEEE! My preeettty!" like a much cuter but perhaps no less obsessive Gollum.

You tolerate hair bands better than clips, so I've developed a partial bunches stylee that allows the shorter back parts of your hair to stay down (rather than fight their seemingly undefeatable ability to wiggle free of hair clips). Georgie insists on 'matching' you, and sports a similar look, although on her it looks a bit odd - still pretty (because it's still Georige - yes, I know I'm biased) but distinctly odd. Still, who cares? Anyway...

When it's (finally) Georgie's turn, you like to scramble onto the sofa and stand behind me, holding on to my shoulders and pee-bo-mummy-ing over each of my shoulders as quickly as you can until you fall off - I do catch you though xxx Too too cute xxx


Swinging Sisters, Fleetville Rec

The Verbal Runs

You still talk a lot of nonsense but there is a lot more sense in there these days than non...if you see what I mean. You delight in your ability to communicate verbally and virtually glow when you realise that you are making words that other people can understand.

It's particularly sweet to hear you and Georgie chatting - I don't know if you actually understand most of what she says to you, but you respond as though you do know, and not always in Georgie's favour, so I'm hopeful that you have noticed that although she is lovely, she's not always proposing game plans that have your best interests at heart. There's my smart baby.

What is cute is to hear you calling out in the morning over the baby monitor and, because we are lazy bad parents who try to steal a few more minutes, we can hear Georgie get up and come and see you, and hear the chatter and play pre-breakfast, which is really sweet and totally unfeigned, I think, because neither of you seem to grasp that we can hear what you are saying in the room.


Yet another park, this time Long Acres - thank goodness St Albans has a lot of parks!

We lost your bunny earlier this month - looked everywhere - I knew it was around because I unwisely allowed Georgie to carry it from the car but once she crossed the threshold, bunny fell off my radar and was lost to us. Neighbours came to help, such was the caterwauling. I ordered another bunny, and presented him to you full of trepidation...but you just grabbed him, contemplated the newness and then set to, chewing on his ears to make this new bunny as gross as the original bunny.


The bunnies

We found old bunny last week, under the mattress of an old dolly pram that stays in the garden. You saw him and said "Ugh! Diirrty!" and that was that. Old bunny is in the dirty washing pile now until I do another whites wash. In the mean time new bunny is tucked up with you. Thanks for not being quite as fussy as some people [Georgina].


Sporting an off the shoulder new party dress, courtesy of Auntie Izzie

You're taller and you are losing the remnants of your babyish characteristics hearbreakingly quickly now. Obviously we want you to grow up and pass your developmental milestones, but you might be my very last baby, and even if you're not, you're my one and only Lex, and I only have baby Lexi for a limited time. As annoying as a baby can be, with continual demands and fearless forays into mortal danger, babies are also the proverbial buttons of cuteness, and to me, Lexi Loo, you are an exemplary baby button, and it pains me to see the babyness fall from your features.

Having begun this post with a list of things guaranteed to send you into paroxysms of rage, I feel it only fair to sign off with a short run-down of things that always seem to make you happy. Then I'll pop in my poem of the month and we'll be done and dusted for July, my baby x

* Peppa Pig
* Ritz crackers
* Bunny
* Planes
* Upsy Daisy
* Nanny
* Gwandad
* Cars
* New dresses (Preeety)

I picked the Plath poem below for a couple of reasons; firstly it reminds me of what it was like during those first few months with newborn-you, which I find particularly poignant this month as I (once again) note your fading babydome; and secondly because I love love love the first line of the poem, a line that came to me often when I was pregnant with you and with your sister:

"Love set you going like a fat, gold watch."

I am endlessly satisfied by the way that sentence tick-tock-trips off the tongue, how perfectly it captures the expectant clock watching of my pregnancies, which eventually produced baby-shaped bombs that duly exploded on contact, shattering my life before into a million glittering pieces. I'll spare you anymore of my A Level poetry gush and get straight back to Plath...

MORNING SONG, Sylvia Plath

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety.
We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses.
I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Here's to August, and surviving the summer holidays!

Love to you now my baby Lulu,

Your Mama xxx