Pretty

Bringing in some of spring. I've not got many daffodils in the garden, so the few that are there are staying there, so I can hopefully enjoy their cheerful colours for longer.

I walk past blackthorn in the hedges nearly every day, and today I could not resist the temptation to pick them and bring them in. They're making the table by the sofa a bit more happy.

These helebores are making me even more happy. There's three or so colours in the garden, taking over a large chunk of a border and flowering profusely. They seem like such big bold flowers after all the delicate snowdrops and crocuses, but the petals are papery fragile at the same time. Normally they're shy and hang down on their stems away from prying eyes, but bunched together and using each other as support, you get to see the delicate patterns inside.

Nice flowers to make your heart sing.

Happy birthday

Happy Birthday Mr! OK so it's a bit late, but this weekend has been a heck of a one. This happened on his actual birthday:

Only a little low speed accident, but enough to need the AA out and a courtesy car (nasty scrapy noises from that wheel). However, as we only have the one car, we needed to ask a neighbour very nicely if we could have a lift - a bit awkward as it was an hour round trip. They were very lovely though and gave us that lift, and it makes me think again how we live in such a wonderful place, both beautiful and with such lovely people!

So, lime green car with us, we headed on to R's Nana and Grandpa, only to get caught in an hours traffic jam. We got there eventually though and spent a lovely weekend there, lots of chatter and time spent with grandparents, some playing in wendy houses (if only we had space and a spare £2000, some were so lovely I would have lived in them!), exploring the garden and staring at cows over the fence. On Sunday we headed home tired but happy, to be caught in another traffic jam! Another hour of trying to entertain a car-seat bound little one whose favourite activity is walking, and worse yet it was dark - she can't see her Mummy or Daddy and so got very upset, despite near constant talking/singing from us to reassure her we were still there...

So um... Happy Birthday (?!?)... may the next year be better than it has threatened so far!

Sunshine!

My husband always says I'm solar powered. I think he's right there, as when it's grey for weeks on end I'm grouchy and tired, but when it's sunny out, I have so much energy. R's sleep is getting better (we think she may have had an ear infection, though there wasn't much to report by the time we got to the doctors) but I'm still feeling that waking up at least twice a night is too much for me, however this weekend, I've been so happy and bouncy.

It's definitely partly the weather. This was the sunset from our bedroom window on Saturday.

Just stunning! Some of my good mood is from the sheer joy in the sunshine, I was happy even pottering about indoors. Some of it is from being able to just go out - shoes on and off we go, no faffing about with layers of coats and scarves, wondering are mittens are needed? No, R shuffles over to her shoes and waves them at me, we pop them on her waggling feet, and then out the door and down to the park, bliss! I've also been able to do a little bit of gardening which I've been itching to do. Nothing much, not enough to satisfy the itch, but a few plants taken from pots and put into the front garden, others put into bigger pots.

Something else that made me happy happy happy: a morning phone call from my Dad asking if we were doing anything much today and if not, would we like to meet up with him, Mum, my sister and her boyfriend? Yay! My sister is currently living in Switzerland, so we don't get to see each other that much, so a chance to see her and catch up was wonderful!

We met halfway, at Lydiard park in Swindon. It was beautifully warm and sunny, and consequently heaving! R spent a fair amount of time pointing out all the interesting things: dogs, balls, scooters, bikes, birds, other small children...

So we didn't get to do much catching up, but R did an astonishing amount of walking, all the while saying Da, Da as she pointed at those Most Interesting Things.

I found some pretty interesting things too (at least to me!) The buds on the horse chestnut on the edge of bursting open,

and the delicate white blackthorn flowers. Yay for sunny weekends and family visits!

A while

It's been a while since I last posted. I can mainly put this down to a lack of sleep. R has had a couple of weeks of waking every couple of hours, so we've been desperately trying to catch up on sleep in the evenings, leaving little time for anything fun. The last few nights have been even worse, with her wanting rocking for hours in the middle of the night. Hence a break from blogging. There has been a lot going on though, so this may be a long post while I record everything!

R is starting to want to climb things, the car seat base being one favourite. She has also been starting to walk! At the weekend she did a couple of metres with me hovering just in front of her, and today she voluntarily walked from the sofa to me (usually we have to trick her by having her start walking using our fingers and then letting go). She also stood on her own for about a minute on Tuesday... and then started crying as she didn't know what to do next! Last week she walked to the park! It's about 250yards so a very long way for little legs! She's started vocalising a bit more too; dog is used fairly frequently, and she can say woof with a bit of a prompt, 'ish is used for fish, and 'iya for hiya. Daddy is a very well used word, but she's only said Mummy once yet.

The weekend before last was lovely with a visit from P's parents. R absolutely loves having her grandparents, so it was a wonderful weekend all round - R and her grandparents spent some quality time together, and P and I had a bit of a relax! This weekend was great too, a visit from her other grandparents.

We went down to the park on Saturday, and then on Sunday we took advantage of the beautiful weather and went for a walk. It was wonderfully warm, rather muddy, and rather picturesque.

The circular walk took us through Berkeley, along the Berkeley Pill and back up along the Severn. R had a good time in the back carrier, looking at everything, and then having a good snooze.

Well, that seems like a fair chunk of blather, so I think I'll stop here!

Etsy

I've opened up my Etsy shop! It feels pretty good to start getting the info out there, and hopefully get some people to see what I make (and even more hopefully they will buy them). So, here is is: 

LittleFeltedDragons

I'll try to keep it up to date, and try to improve my photo taking skills in the meantime. I think I took some pretty ones outside though.

Hiding in the tulip leaves

This little fella's not in the shop yet. He wasn't behaving very well when I wanted to take his photo indoors, but wanted to say Hi anyway.

And because I need no further excuse, here's one of R in her birthday present, so she wouldn't get a wet bum while shuffling over the grass.

Aquarium

It was half term last week, which meant a couple of friends were off work and wanting to get out and do something. They very kindly offered me a lift (we only have one car and P uses it for work), and so off to the aquarium we went. It wasn't quite as simple as that though, half term meant that everywhere was rather busy. And by busy I mean we spent about an hour trying to get a parking spacce. Luckily the littlies spent most of that time asleep, but R and I got out and walked away from the traffic jam when she woke up and started expressing her annoyance at being in her car seat. At that point we were only two minutes walk away from the aquarium (but the friend had to wait another 15 minutes to get into the carpark!).

We saw fish (well, duh)

Lots of fish

Colourful fish

 

Famous fish

and things that wern't fish at all

And the little one seemed to rather enjoy it. She spent a fair amount of time looking at other children, trying to chase them, trying to get into the fish tanks, working out that glass stops you getting the fish, dragging me off to somewhere else, trying to grab the camera, and at least some time actually watching the fish.

A very lovely day.

Lacock abbey

After R's birthday we had two main gifts that needed road testing and so last Monday, despite (or possibly because of) the weather, we set out.

We had been given membership for the national trust - slightly cheeky as R is under five, so gets in free anyway, which meant that us parents got presents on her birthday! So we had an on line search for a place reasonably close, which we hadn't been to before, and which was open. I was surprised at how many properties were closed, given that it was a dreary half term, you'd have thought that most places would be open to take advantage of parents needing to get out the house to somewhere dry.

The wet weather meant we were able to test another present - her waterproof all-in-one. It did well, better than my coat! (Maybe it's time to get a new coat.)

It was spectacularly windy, wet and cold. Much more extreme and it would have been a blizzard. At least, that's how it felt after being indoors for a party filled weekend. The place was rather amazing though.

This amazing corridor was from the nunnery, around 800 years old. It's stunning, and seemed oddly familiar. We stumbled across a huge cauldron, and with it a sign explaining that the nunnery had been a location for Harry Potter filming - mystery solved.

It seemed even colder inside than out, and I couldn't help but think how hard life must have been for the nuns. They did choose that life though, so we got on with exploring.

This range was huge! And I loved the kitchen workbench/units, very simple but that's all you need. They were really worn too, you could imagine all the people they had fed over the years.

The abbey had been turned into a family home in the Victorian times, and so was somewhat more grand (though only slightly warmer!). In the South Gallery is the famous window where William Henry Fox Talbot took the first photographic negative. There was a bit of history in the museum which we visited after the house, but a certain munchkin wanted to walk too much for me to get more than a very brief history of photography.

We let her run (or walk rather) off some of her excess energy in the grand hall. It was plenty big enough for us all to get rid of that energy, especially as she's not yet mastered the art of walking by herself.

There was a beautiful number of snowdrops on the way to the abbey...

 ... and the crocuses were starting to add some colour too. Oh, how I've been craving some colour in nature at the moment, and these were a fantastic start to a spring we'll hopefully see soon!