PYO

We spent the afternoon at Millets Farm with our NCT (antenatal class) friends! A picnic lunch for the mummies, some PYO-ing and then an afternoon drink for the bubbies - it was great fun. I'm a 'pick your own' virgin and I thought it was great, will definitely be going back. Natalie slept the whole time, but when she's older I think she'll love it too!

I'd totally recommend Millets Farm if you have kids - there's a farm with animals, a PYO field, a maize maze, a farm shop, garden centre and cafe/ restaurant with baby changing facilities, as well as a playground and loads of picnic tables. You could easily spend the whole day there.

Now off to find a recipe for cherry pie...mmmmmmmmm

Slowly getting there....

So, the painting's getting finished slowly, but I'm almost there! Just need to do the face and then a few touch up's and we're good to go. I haven't painted for about 12 years - didn't realise how much I missed it!

Here's how it's looking so far:

Last night was date night and Pete surprised me with Baklava for dessert! Yumyumyum, and from Waitrose (£2.99 for 15 pieces, not bad!)

Anyway, I better feed Natalie before heading off for some strawberry picking at Millets Farm! I'll let you know how that goes tomorrow!

Jingle bells and lots of green paint

I took Natalie to Busy Bees today, a singing & music group for babies. We went last week too, invited along by my friend Lucy who's baby Harry loves it - Natalie was seriously unimpressed. However, today she seemed to enjoy it a bit more - she didn't cry anyway! The annoying thing about the group is that as soon as you get home you cant remember any of the words or actions to the songs - I think the woman that runs the group does some sort of hypnosis to make you forget so you have to keep going back each week! At one point we get given musical instruments - lots of bells, tambourines and rattles. None of the babies were particularly interested but all the mums and dads were shaking the rattles obediently! It's all good fun!

This evening Pete's been doing some uni work towards his final submission in September, so I decided to get the paints out and paint something to go in Natalie's room (that way if it all goes horribly wrong she wont be able to criticise it!). Didn't get very far, but will show you a pic when its finshed...

car vs. gardening....

Well, slight change of plan at the weekend - we ended up buying a new car rather than just looking at them! The process took 4 and a half hours so we didn't get to do much more on Saturday - the car shop was an hour from home so that was the whole day gone! Anyhow, we do now have a nice big new(ish) car.

On Sunday we didn't plant our veggies either because we decided a better use of our time would be to clean the old car so we can sell it (plus we didn't manage to buy any of the gardening things we needed on Saturday). So, instead of pictures of veggies here are some pictures of our garden (it was such a beautiful day on Sunday!)...

Meat, Veggies and Riverdance!

I've had a very lazy day today - slept in till 9 (wow, I never thought I'd ever call 9am a lie-in!) because Natalie was still asleep, and haven't really done much since then except feed my baby and myself!

So, this weekend we've got lots of plans!! We're going to do our quarterly meat shop at meatmaster - it's an amazing wholesale butcher in Oxford where you can buy really low-priced good quality meat. We go there every few months and buy a load of meat to put in the freezer - it saves us loads of money on our weekly shop!

We're also going to look at some new cars - we've succumbed to the reality that our little 3 door Renault Clio just doesn't cut it as a 'family car'. Natalie's pushchair frame fills the entire boot which means that even going food shopping is a struggle for space, let alone trying to pack the car to go on holiday (babies need so much stuff!). Therefore, we're going to try and part exchange our car for a Renault Scenic - the ultimate family car! The boot can be made bigger by sliding the back seats forward (but they're still usable as seats!), all seats have a storage drawer underneath, the back seats can all me individually moved and/or removed, and there's a mirror above the rearview mirror that you can flip down so you can see what the kids are doing in the back! Perfect!

On a completely different note, I just had to go and change Natalie's nappy and it took forever because once the nappy was off she started doing the riverdance on the changemat! I decided to let her get the dance out of her system before putting on a new nappy seeing as she was enjoying it so much! Cute!

On Sunday I'm going to try and plant some veggies in our new raised vegetable plot - I'm strangely very excited about doing this! I'll post up some pics next week.

Dishwasher R.I.P.

I miss you dishwasher, it feels like you've been taken away from us prematurely, we didn't even get to say goodbye.....

As if I dont have enough to do all day, I can now add washing up to my list! OK, so loads of people have to do the washing up and manage to look after their babies without complaining but I've gotten used to having a dishwasher and now it feels like I'm caught in an endless cycle of washing dishes.

Our dishwasher died on us last Thursday night, after we'd had our church community group round and used most of the crockery we own! Bah! And then we had Pete's birthday BBQ on Saturday where again we managed to use everything (luckily our superhero mums managed to do all the washing up for us that day - thanks mums!!) - such impeccable timing!

Oh, and by the way Fairy Liquid - 'the hands that do dishes can feel as soft as your face'? I think you need to add a disclaimer to that slogan - 'if your face is as dry as the desert!'

Right, I've got that out of my system - now on with the day! When I'm feeling grumpy I just have to look at Natalie and she puts me right again:

Happy Fathers Day - from the soon not to be toothless wonder!

I've just had a mammoth weekend of trying to surprise Pete, with Saturday being his birthday and Sunday being Fathers Day! Prior to this weekend Natalie had been sleeping through the night (it was amazing, 7.30pm until 7am!!), but on Friday night her pattern changed again and she woke up at 5.30am and wouldn't go back to sleep, so we started our day then.  Daddy's present from Natalie was a little plaque imprinted with her footprints, and we all had a lovely breakfast with Granny and Grandad before opening our house up to our friends for a birthday BBQ.  In true British style it rained - but Pete was determined to use his new birthday present (a spangly gas BBQ) so people took turns holding up a golf umbrella over the birthday boy while he cooked. 

When Natalie woke up at 2.30am for a feed I told Pete to stay in bed and I went to get her, sneakily changing her into a vest that I'd decorated with fabric pens to say 'I love you Daddy, Happy Fathers Day' ready for Pete to discover when he got her dressed the next morning.  We had a yummy breakfast of blueberry pancakes (I found a 500g tub of blueberries in Tesco for £3.50 - BONUS!) before heading off to church (on time for a change!).  By the afternoon I was shattered, after having a lot less sleep than I'd far too quickly gotten used to - I still haven't quite recovered yet, may need to start taking daytime naps again! 

We think that Natalie is teething - I know, it seems really early, she's only 11 weeks old - but Pete and his brother and sister all got teeth at 3 months, and although I was in denial that this would happen to Natalie, I think that's what's causing the change in her sleep pattern (well, teething combined with a growth spurt).  She's started biting on my finger instead of sucking it now, and she's been dribbling all over the place, as well as being increasingly grouchy, so I decided to try some Bonjella (which is now banana flavoured - very strange!) and it seemed to stop her crying despite the disgusted face she pulled when I applied it.  Oh well, now I've accepted it I feel more prepared, so tooth fairy....BRING IT ON!!

'why purple toucan?' i hear you ask...

I could pretend that 'purple toucan' has some quirky significance, something poetic or metaphorical - that would probably seem a lot more interesting, but the reality is I tried several other blog titles and the dreaded words 'title already taken' kept flashing up.  I was getting desperate so I glanced across the room at the baby gym sitting in the corner and the first thing that caught my eye was a stuffed purple toucan!  I was surprised that this wasn't already taken as well, but it wasn't, and I decided not to push my luck and try to think of anything more clever, so 'Purple toucan' it is!