A little bit sick

Well its been over a week since we posted, and the smell of disinfectant is lingering in the air. This can only mean one thing – we have had an ill baby in the house. Tess was sick on Saturday night, and spent an unhappy night being cuddled by either mummy or daddy. Even more of a pity was that it was Great Grandpas 90th Birthday Party on Sunday, and so she (and daddy) were quarantined in the house. She was ill again on Sunday, and so missed nursery on Monday, when we had a visit from Great-Uncle Peter.  She seems to be well on the mend now though, but she was an unhappy bunny throughout, not being able to eat much, and certainly no milk!

So apart from Tess’ first non-cold illness, we have been having some fun. Tess is now enjoying crawling up the stairs and trying to walk more and more. She is slowly getting steadier on her feet, and is able to let go of her support for a few seconds. She is also starting with recognisable words, and we have heard “Mama” and “Dada” (the standards) and “Lala”, which was “water” or possibly just “that”!. Becca has also heard Tess say ” ‘ess ” while she was looking at herself in the mirror.

Eve is getting more and more chatty, and is starting full sentences and is very able to tell you what she did that day at nursery, and who she did it with. So she was able to tell us that on Friday (when they had a fruit tasting session), Nicole gave her Mango. I think that the highlight of Eve’s week, last week, was being put to bed by her Auntie Louisa, who came to babysit on my birthday. For the next day or so, she would keep on reminding you that “Auntie Lou read Paddington”.

A few pictures below, from the last couple of weeks. There are a couple of Tess climbing the stairs, and one in bed. The one of Eve was taken looking through her “Happy People” house!

Shiny, happy Tessy

Fee Fi Fo Fum

Made it!

Tess nearly at the summit

Sorting clothes

just a quick post. eve is being very cute and helping me sort the clothes hanging on the airers. she is able to tell me which ones are dry, but less good at folding…

Climbing the stairway

Its been a week since we last blogged, but it feels like a lot longer, as we seem to have been kept on our toes a great deal. So what to report.

Last weekend, Grandma and Granddad looked after them for the night, so that mummy and daddy could get a full nights sleep! We also took advantage of this time to watch a long film, being able to start early. A long film is anything over 2hours these days, and it doesn’t often happen so it was a bit of a treat. By all accounts they had a great time, and even managed to sleep through the night without waking once. In fact this has been a bit of a theme of the last week – Eve has been a lot more settled in the middle of the night, and sometimes even sleeps till 6am! Tess has been even better, and has sometimes woken up at 7.45am. This does mean that she sometimes doesn’t have a morning nap, but you can’t have everything.

Something we hadn’t mentioned previously was that my Granny (Eve and Tess’ great-Granny) died about 2 weeks ago. She had been very ill and in hospital, so it was expected, but sad nevertheless. Her memorial service was yesterday (Wednesday 27th) and we all went down to a memorial woodland, with “chapel” and reception area, for a simple ceremoney of rememberance. Eve and Tess were incredibly well behaved throughout the ceremony and didn’t make too much noise, or cause a fuss. We were really very proud of them. They then had a great time at the reception afterwards eating all the food, and meeting various friends and relatives, sometimes on purpose, and sometimes by accident as they crashed into them on one of their circuits of the dining room!

Tess has been making get strides (pun intended) with walking and crawling. She has now done a full ascent of the stairs and finished to a big cheer from Eve, who takes great pride in her sisters achievements. Her walking is also coming on, and she will happily cruise along the furniture, even letting go for a few seconds on occasion. (just looking back, Eve did this at about 10 months as well! http://evepage.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/where-evies-dare/). She has also been ok at nursery still, so finger crossed we won’t have too many problems.

Eve is also developing her character and emotions. This morning she came running into the kitchen to tell me “Daddy. Mess”. So I followed her back into the front room, and found she had dropped her bowl of raisins on the floor. When I was sweping and then mopping teh floor, she insisted on getting her broom and mop and helping. She’s a good girl.

No new pics today!

Daddy Days

Well we have had a couple of “daddy days”, days that I have off work, to look after the little ones. I haven’t had many of them yet, so they are still quite a novelty, but so far they have been fun. The routine tends to be similar to the one that Becca has described previously, so I won’t go into that, and I can’t remember much of last week, apart from making a den for Eve (picture below), so I will concentrate on today.

Tess has had a couple of events today. First of all she stood on her own for a few seconds. Not long, but much longer than either of us have seen previously. The second was when I had nipped upstairds to see Eve who I was trying to get to have some sleep. I had only nipped upstairs briefly and had never had to worry about Tess before, but when I started back down the stairs, there whe was a couple of steps up! We will have to be extra vigilant from now on.

Eve also had a first today. On our first trip to the swings this year, she managed to get thunked in the head by Tess on the swings,  and had her first nose bleed. Poor thing, no major harm done though. Tess enjoyed herself though.

Eve hides in her den under the table

Tess shows mummy and daddy how to use the laptop

Getting in the swing of things

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks working out how our new weekly routine will work, and settling into it. Tess still seems to be enjoying nursery so far, she is pleased to see Anton when he picks her up, but she’s been quite happy being ‘handed over’ to Katerina in the mornings. Eve is also getting used to Tess being there – when Anton picked them up yesterday, he took Tess into Eve’s room. All Eve’s friends rushed over to say hello to Tess. Eve however headed over to her peg, got her bags and her coat and tried to put them all on.

The other ‘new’ part of Eve and Tess’ week is Anton’s day with them. I’ll leave it for him to talk about how that has been so far, but they all seem to enjoy it!

Tess is standing up and cruising around the furniture now, in fact, this is her favourite activity. She really wants to walk. She has also been pointing a lot recently, including today at her water cup, and at her favourite books. She is starting to be more and more ‘verbal’, and we’re starting to recognise bits of babble – she seems to say ‘hey-lo’, and is keen to try and repeat things back, although at the moment everything sounds like ‘bababababa’, although we have noticed a couple of attempts at ‘mama’ and ‘dada’.

Eve is by turns lovely and charming and then challenging and grumpy. She seems to have completely given up her daytime sleep when she is at home now. She does still sleep most days she is at nursery, but as that is only twice a week, she really isn’t getting enough shut eye. She is also having some disturbed nights, so all in all she is a very tired and grumpy little thing a lot of the time. If she would just sleep for an extra hour or so in the mornings (till 6.30 or 7) we’re sure she’d feel so much better. Being tired doesn’t help when she is cross and we’ve seen some stonkingly good tantrums recently. I feel sorry for the neighbours. When she isn’t being grumpy though, she is very affectionate and helpful, bringing up nappies and wraps when we’re changing Tess, for example.  She is starting to understand some complex concepts like days of the week and age, and can now mimic pretty much anything we say. She talks constantly, telling us what has happened, either to her or in a book, and also sings LOTS of songs.

Eve and Tess are also really starting to interact together very nicely (most of the time…), they seem to have private jokes that we don’t understand, and play peekabo at the kitchen table.

Let it snow let it snow let it snow

Actually, don’t, we are thoroughly bored of it.

Friday was Tess’ last settling in session at nursery.  We really didn’t want to miss this as it would have made this week very difficult, plus it was already a long time since her first two visits. So we checked the nursery was planning to be open, then set off on foot carrying Eve and Tess. We thought we might need to walk down the hill to get the bus, but after we’d been going for a few minutes one came past us, so we managed to get on that at the next stop. The number 17 runs all the way to one of the entrances to the University – albeit the one furthest from the nursery. Eve and Tess seemed to enjoy the very snowy walk across campus. When we got to the nursery we found it very empty, but open, and Tess’ key worker had made it in. We left Tess for about an hour and a half and when I picked her up, she seemed happy and cheerful. Mission accomplished.

Monday was her first full day and she seemed to do very well (Anton got them both there on the bus on his own). She was pleased to see Anton when he picked her up, but she’d eaten well and slept for an hour, so she can’t have been too unhappy. She was particularly pleased to see Eve, and Eve was pleased to see her too – when Anton went into Eve’s room at nursery with the empty back carrier she pointed at it and said ‘Where’s Tess?’ looking very concerned. It’s nice that they are concerned about each other!

Getting out and about has been quite tricky in the snow, particularly when there is only one of us and two of them. We’ve mainly been trying to keep ourselves entertained at home, but there has been some grumpiness by the end of the day.  Today Eve and Tess and I decided enough was enough, and despite a further 2 or 3 inches of snow overnight, set off to visit some friends who live on the other side of Tilehurst. We tried to go by back carrier and buggy, but the buggy just wouldn’t go over the ice and slush, and so many helpful people have cleared their drives and dumped the snow on the pavement, so we went for plan B – getting the bus half the way and Eve walking the rest. Eve was really good and walked almost the whole way there and back.

Xmas Pictures

A few pictures from Xmas. Don’t miss the snow post below!

Tess enjoying her Xmas lunch

Eve on boxing day

Eve shows that the wrapping is as much fun as the toys

Tess and Grandad.

Tess decides what to eat next

More fun in the snow

As you may have noticed we have had a  bit of snow. It mostly fell on Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning, and we have had about 20-30cm (8-12 inches). This meant that I had a long walk in to work, but did mean that we got sent home a bit early, meaning that Becca and Eve were able to build a nice snowman, while I looked after Tess. Pictures below.

The snow has stopped, but the freeze continues. We will have to see what happens with Tess’ next nursery settling in day, scheduled for tomorrow (Friday), and whether the nursery is open, and whether we can all get there.

The view down the street

Becca and Eve’s marvellous snowman

Eve up to her thighs in the snow!

Festivities

Eve and Tess have had a lovely Christmas. Tess obviously doesn’t really get it, but Eve seems to have grasped the idea of Father Christmas, presents, Christmas trees, ‘the Snowman’ film, advent calendars, and carols (she can sing ‘away in a manger’ pretty well).

After our last post we had even MORE snow, so the week leading up to Christmas was a bit boring for Eve and Tess and me, as getting out of the house with both of them was tricky. On Christmas Eve we drove down to Bristol to stay with NanAnne and Grandad, and then on Boxing day moved on to Grandma and Grandad’s. On Christmas Eve we put out a mince pie and whisky for Father Christmas and a carrot for the reindeer, and Eve was impressed in the morning at dasher et al’s toothmarks in the carrot.  Tess liked opening her presents but Eve was a little overwhelmed by it all and just wanted to play with the first thing she’d opened. 

 Tess unfortunately slept through Christmas dinner (at about noon we thought we’d get her to bed for a sneaky nap before we ate, but she decided to have a looooong sleep instead and didn’t wake up until after 3) but Eve put away a startling amount of turkey. Tess made up for it a few days after Christmas by polishing off a whole mince pie with custard. 

We came home on Monday and since then have been trying to get out a bit, although the wet weather has rather defeated us. We did manage a lovely walk in Pangbourne on New Year’s Day. We didn’t get all that far as Eve only has little legs, but she does love to ‘run around’. Yesterday Auntie Lou and Uncle Dom came for lunch and Aunty Frances, Uncle Ashley and Abigail popped in on their way home from Bristol.

Eve is now talking in proper sentences, bossing us around and reciting books. She has started calling Anton ‘Anton’ sometimes, just like the ‘daddy’ ‘homer’ episode of the simpsons.  She has even been brave enough to talk on the phone a bit more, telling all her grandparents that ‘Gruffalo bit scary’.

At the moment Tess just wants to stand and is pulling herself up on any piece of furniture, parent, or big sister that comes to hand. She has even let go a couple of times. She is still commando crawling, and can get up to quite a speed, so we suspect she won’t do ‘proper’ crawing now.

They were both pretty good sleep-wise while we were away, the first night they both woke around 3.30 but that was partly because Tess’ travel cot tipped off the bed roll. Tess continues to be a sleeping super-star, she does have the odd ‘bad’ night where she takes a while to go to sleep or wakes up but these are very rare. Eve’s cold(s) before and after Christmas have meant that she has forgotten that she’d been staying in her room/bed until her light came on at 6, so we’re back to her waking up sometime after 5, and are currently trying to help her remember to wait for the light. Before Christmas we’d stopped putting the travel stairgate up at her door as she didn’t seem to need it. I tried putting it back up again a couple of days ago in the early morning to stop her hurtling up the hallway and waking Tess up. She didn’t like that idea AT ALL, and within 5 minutes had vaulted the gate with a loud thump! Last night we also took her bed guard off.

Eve is back to nursery tomorrow, and Tess has her last settling in visit on Friday, before starting for real on Monday the 11th.

Photos to follow

A congested week

We’ve been hit by the lurgi this week, or rather Eve and Tess have.  Eve started coughing at the end of last week, and this rapidly descended into her being in bed by 4.30 last Saturday night with a temperature of over 40 degrees. She was pretty ill until Monday night (she didn’t go to nursery on Monday), after which she got a lot better. However she still seems to be under the weather, snotty and coughing, but also very tired and grumpy at times. Tess caught the cold a few days ago, but so far hasn’t had the fever that Eve had, which is good.

This messed up Tess’ planned nursery visits a bit – she’d been scheduled to go on Monday and Wednesday, but as Eve was ill on Monday and Anton needed to be at work, we rearranged to Tuesday. The first visit went well, we met Tess’ key worker, Katerina, and Tess made herself at home in the babies room. On Wednesday Tess had started to get the cold, and also hadn’t slept before the visit, so she was a bit more grumpy. I left her for about an hour, and although she was a bit upset when I left, she soon settled down and was happy and cheerful by the time I came back. Our last visit is after Christmas, and then Tess starts properly on the 11th January.

Finally, yesterday Eve and Tess had fun playing in the snow. Eve was quite excited, but Tess was less sure…