It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I put up our Christmas decorations yesterday.

While I know that it is still only November (for a few days), as G/S/N so kindly pointed out to me this morning, but December starts on Thursday and I’m out Thursday night and probably wouldn’t feel like doing it Friday evening so wouldn’t have gotten to it til Saturday evening at the earliest and I didn’t want to miss out having Christmas decorations for the entire month of December, so I rounded up.

Kate, of course, is behaving true to form…..she saw the tree, went,”Woooow” and promptly walked up to it and started pulling ornaments off and handing them to Uncle Robbie, myself, etc. to show us. I think G/S/N will have a time of it this month – I should get her a little basket so she can collect them throughout the day and I can re-hang them every night. That should be fun fun fun! If I give her the basket tomorrow morning it should get old by, oh, say 10am?

I will, of course, be playing Christmas music in the house beginning Thursday.

All the kids’ Christmas gifts arrived last Thursday too (I ordered everything off the internet this year). So the next thing is to wrap them and put them under the tree so I can make G/S/N’s life even more exciting as she tackles Kate all day long to prevent her from ripping open all the gifts!

Comparisons

Uncle Robbie’s friend came to visit over the weekend with her daughter. James and I went off for a weekend of R&R and some good lovin’ and left Uncle Robbie in charge. His friend’s daughter is a month older than Kate, and about 3-4 inches taller (she is a tall girl!). Of course the first thing James tells me over drinks on Saturday evening is that Bella (name changed to conserve privacy!) can say, “Yes” and “Thank you” (well, “Ta”). So I said, yes, but a lot of other kids Kate’s age can count to ten and say their ABC’s, as well as say basic sentences (see Karen’s blog). He was shocked that his prodigy daughter isn’t surpassing others the same age! But I also added that she finger paints incredibly well, with an amazing knack for colour combinations, and she can draw some basic pictures while other kids her age can’t even hold a pencil. She is also haemorrhaging new words on a daily basis, like rain, plane, hair, nose, mouth, cheek, breakfast (two syllables!), outside….these are all hard words! I told him that kids develop different skills at different times but that by the time they are three years old they should all be at about the same level. Look at me, all Baby Whisperin’.

Time is A-ticking

We are cutting it really close with the house purchase. We ended up pulling out of the flat purchase because of 1) length of time it was taking, 2) lack of clear answers from the seller and her solicitors and 3) misinformation from the estate agents at the beginning of it all. Conveniently, a colleague at work was selling his house, which is about a 5 minute walk from ours....for the same price as the flat! So we are now in the process of buying his house.

BUT - we need to complete the purchase by the first week of December as we are going to have visitors at any given time from the 10th of December through the end of the year. And with 5 people currenlty living in our house, we will not be able to accommodate 7-10 people in our house! So the race against time is on.

What's holding it up is the mortgage company (hmmm, deja vu). They took two weeks to respond to us once we gave them the check to do the survey, then took another week and a half to actually do the survey. Now we are waiting for their report and the mortgage letter so we can move move move on it.

Bloody hell.

Ode to Uncle Robbie

I had a couple of great photos of Kate with her Uncle Robbie and wanted to post them up here. Those two have really bonded since Uncle Robbie moved into her room (over two months ago now! I am getting really frustrated with this (now) house purchase). When Uncle Robbie does finally move out, I think they will both be sad.

When Uncle Robbie moved into Kate's room, Kate was a little suspicious but took it in stride (as she does with everything). When he left for work in the mornings, we'd tell her to give Uncle Robbie a kiss goodbye....and she would obediently stick out her cheek and 'allow' him to kiss her (she does that for just about anyone that we spend over an hour with). After about two weeks of Uncle Robbie playing with her in the morning when she woke up, she realised what a good thing she had going! I realised what a good thing I had going at about this time as Robbie always finds her 'Baba' (bunny) for her in the middle of the night! Nowadays Robbie brings her up to our room on his way out (they have him working like a dog!) and Kate runs to give him a kiss goodbye (big, slobbery lips all pursed and everything), and then chatters down the stairs after him when he leaves.

What a change it will be when he goes, and how boring for Kate! Hopefully they will keep their close relationship as she grows up. I'm sure they will if he will only just stop dropping her on her head!

Dancin' with Uncle Robbie

Havin' a good time

Making bubbles in the bath for Uncle Robbie (and I don't mean the bubble bath!)....note the lovely hairstyle Uncle Robbie has created for Kate

Unmotivated

You know how some days you just couldn't be arsed? Today is a day like that for me.

I've got loads to do.

It's 4pm and I'm seriously thinking about leaving work right now.

Might as well, since it's not like anything is going to get done between now and 5pm. Or 6pm.

Plus I've got this waiting for me at home:

How does one sneak out of work without people noticing, in the middle of winter? How does one conceal one's coat and bag? Summer's easy - just pretend you're going to the loo. But the Safeway is closed now, so I can't use that as an excuse, and there is nowhere else to go around here with a coat. Hmmm. Think. Think. Think. Think.

What a Gal!

OK, as promised - a picture of Kate's ferocious Shark Face....

It is providing us with unending hours of comic entertainment. However, we tell Kate that it's a ferocious and scary face. I don't think she believes us as that statement usually follows about 30 seconds of loud guffaws from everyone in the vicinity. I think she finds it equally entertaining as she enjoys a laugh with all of us each time she does it. Yesterday she and I spent about five minutes in front of the mirror after her bath, making shark faces.

It's amazing how much she has turned into a proper little girl over the past few months. Her slouching on the sofa would rival any teenager's....

Picture of Kate hypnotised by Winnie-the-Pooh

.....and after I took about four pictures pretty much identical to the one above, where she didn't flinch at all, finally a reaction!

While still on the subject of Kate - remember how I mentioned she is fingerpainting? Well! Here is what she has been creating....

Turtle, shmurtle!

TurtleArt

The turtle pretty much smears paint all over a canvas.

It is clear that this is the work of an artistic genious.








I mean, really - just look at the concentration and focus that goes into one of these masterpieces!

Shark Face

This weekend is the big fireworks thing commemorating Guy Fawkes. It's the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot so everyone is putting on the show of the century. Last year we took Kate (well, I did - James was off trying to find his friend who was coming over but got caught up in all the traffic) and she was completely entranced by the whole thing ('gormless expression on her face' is actually the phrase that comes to my mind). She was actually there the year before, too - doing somersaults in my belly when the fireworks were going off. I think this year will be marked with 'Ohhh, woooow' being repeated again and again. Kate will probably be impressed again too.

We're in the middle of having most of the inside of our house painted. I have to say, Mike/Mick (he goes by either) is one of the most professional guys we have ever used. He showed up on time to give a quote, got us a quote within two days, arrived EARLY on the day he started, has shown up right on time every day, has done a wonderful job so far, and will probably finish up EARLY! I feel like the planet just shifted slightly to the left.

Poor G/S/N has had to take Kate on outings every day to avoid 1) paint fumes, 2) ladders and other assorted painting materials and tools and 3) Kate carving her initials in wet paint. Yesterday they went to the Aquarium. Apparently Kate was taken a bit off guard by a ray....it snuck up and popped up right in front of her. Watching G/S/N imitate Kate's flapping arms was probably as humourous as actually seeing Kate do it first hand. But don't tell her I said that.

Kate learned to make a new face while at the Aquarium, too. I'll post a picture later on once I've downloaded it from my camera. It is too funny. Um, scary, I mean. It's her scary shark face. Raaah.