Getting Bigger is very hard work!

After the excitement of our attempted trip to Grandpa Peepoos house the weekend before last, things have been a lot quieter in the life of us Winchursts – something we are very thankful for!

Yesterday I discovered that Molly’s teeth have FINALLY decided to put in an appearance, with the sharp edges of the front 2 at the bottom beginning to poke through – we are hopeful that this will mean that some of the excess grumpiness will begin to subside……..and that the torrential downpour down her chin will also start to dry up a bit! (Molly in dry clothes – imagine that??!)
This morning she has been busy putting the world to rights by shouting “da da da da da” almost consistently and VERY loudly – according to Isabel “Molly is a noisy Baba!”……I couldn’t agree more! (though I was excited at the same time as this was the 1st time she had said it – shame it was “da” not “ma” and that she had to say it quite so much………)

Isabel has continued to entertain us with her creative play – this morning, she put her plastic movie camera over her shoulder and declared that she was “Off to work Mummy! See you later! Kiss please!”……..her choice of work related equipment would suggest that she is succumbing to the influence of both Aunty Jecca and Uncle Ken – and perhaps a bit of Mummy if she continues to want to go out in her heels and oh so fashionable bag?! Mummy has also been having a job to persuade her of the joys of tidying up – this morning, I put a large pile of toys away and went to the kitchen…..when I came back she said “Look Mummy – toys back!” and sure enough, the pile was back in its original position! After failing miserably to explain to her that the toys were much better off IN the box, I opted to incarcerate her in the highchair in the hope that the toys may at least stay put away for more than 30 seconds!

This weekend, we are heading to Devon for an en mass gathering of the Winchurst Clan – it will be a long weekend as Dan has managed to wangle both the Friday and the Monday as days off!! All we have to hope now is that the weather continues to be nice! Fingers crossed……..

New gallery

For those that haven’t already spotted it, Kate has added a new gallery of photos. There is no particular event or occasion behind them – they are just a selection of the more recent photos Kate has taken. We hope you enjoy them. As always, click the photo below to go straight to the gallery.

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A somewhat Dark and Watery Adventure!

We were glad to get home yesterday after finding ourselves on an unexpected adventure whilst being stuck in amongst all the flooding chaos that has hit UK – we were attempting to get to Hotel Radcliffe for the weekend as Uncle Ted and Jenny were making a visit to the UK and we had been hoping to see them. What should have been an hour and ¾ in the car ended up being 7 hours of driving for Daddy and not even getting close!

We’d been listening pretty closely to the local radio for traffic updates as we had been going at almost no miles an hour for a very long time and we were pretty confidant that once we were past the point in the road we were on that was flooded, we should be ok! We were partly right – once past the mini lake that was creeping across the road, we picked up speed and sailed through…….until we came to join the motorway and found a rather enormous queue of stationary traffic! Thinking quickly, we reprogrammed “Turn Lest!” (as Isabel calls it, the rest of us think of it as the Sat Nav!) to take us to Pee-poos house avoiding the Motorway – very cunning idea till we found that the roads we wanted to go down were shut and Police vehicles towing boats were coming past us whilst we were in yet more stationary traffic! Had we had a good old fashioned paper map, we might have stood a chance of navigating a route through but we were totally reliant on the Sat Nav and nobody tells them when roads are shut! (or under 6 feet of water!)

By this point it was after midnight and we were, not surprisingly, very tired! We tried a Travellodge on the off chance they had a room available – they probably would have had a million other people not had the same idea! Once we had found a very obliging pub who let Mummy in to wash bottles and top up with water to make formula (and where we were later to discover that Mummy had left her purse and involved us ringing just about every pub in the local area until we figured out which one it was!), we ended up sleeping in the car from 1.30am to 4.30am (Isabel on the back seat and Molly stretched out on Mummy!) then tried to have another go at reaching our destination – at this point it was 5am and when we found ourselves on a roundabout we recognised we decided to call it quits and headed home! It ought to also be pointed out that poor Grandpa Pee-poo was also stuck in all the mayhem – he had been to our house on Friday to pick up 2 of our armchairs as a space making exercise and had left at 5pm………it was 8am the next day before he made it home, and we are very sorry that he had to go through such horribleness!

Upton-upon-Severn (or perhaps that is “under-Severn”?!) is now cut off completely by the river bursting it’s banks and the water board is thinking of disconnecting mains water as it might have been contaminated whilst the army is apparently bringing in food by boat – needless to say, Grandpa Pee-poo is now very glad that he had stocked the fridge and freezer in preparation for a family invasion that never happened……he now has plenty of food for him and Granny Rosie as Granny Pies has stayed on with her friends in Leyland (she had originally been due back on Saturday!) and Aunty Nanna never made it from London!

Here’s hoping the water levels drop soon!

Molly has her half Birthday!

Even though I am finding it hard to believe, Molly is exactly 6 months old today! She marked the occasion by going to bed at 10.30pm and not waking up until 5.30 this morning – by my count, that’s 7 hours in a row and pretty good by anyone’s standards!?

She is now thoroughly bored with this baby lark and would very much like to be able to follow her sister on the great adventure up the stairs, but that isn’t going to happen for some time yet – we have just about sorted out the sitting up unaided (though someone still needs to be in grabbing distance!) and she can get to anything she wants by rolling……..you can almost see her figuring out in her mind which way she needs to go in order to get there!

She has cheered up considerably in recent weeks – she’s a lot more relaxed with people and not so reliant on having Mummy on hand…….having said that, we do occasionally have moments when only Mummy will do and she will scream her head off until she gets what she wants!

Though there is ridiculous amounts of dribbling and chewing going on, we still have no physical evidence of any teeth – given how much she enjoys chewing on my fingers, I am slightly relieved by this fact but it would be nice for some to actually break through so we can past the grumpiness and on with some serious teeth nashing!

We don’t think it will be too much longer before she figures out about crawling – and then we will really be in trouble!

[Note: to celebrate her half birthday Mummy took some photos of Molly and has posted them in a gallery. To access it, click here.]

Bedtime adventures!

Yesterday, as expected, saw the arrival of the Big Bed!! (Although it isn’t actually that big but, compared to Isabel, it’s pretty big!)

So, Mummy spent about an hour putting it together and putting the bedding on (which had proved to be quite an event in itself with both sets having to go back to be exchanged because there were bits missing!) and just as the last of the poppers were being done up on the duvet cover, fairy footsteps could be heard stomping up the stairs! As soon as Isabel saw it, she shot over and jumped in – we took this, and her refusal to get out even for chocolate, as being a good sign for later on when we would actually want her to be in it!

Two or three trips up the stairs to see her new bed ensued during the course of the day until eventually it was time for bed! As predicted, because she could get of bed she did but it wasn’t as bad as we had thought – she was in and out whilst Mummy was collapsing down the travel cot (with the occasional shout of “Oh no Mummy, tent broken!” coming from the Girls room!) but once that had happened and we had obliged her by bringing some milk, she settled down for the night. Trips in to deal with Molly during the night found Isabel at all sorts of angles but she still slept through until 7.25 this morning – Mummy was doing her best to stay in bed as long as possible so was listening to what was going on but refusing to get out of bed……..until Molly started to cry! Once in the Girls room it was discovered that Isabel had got out of her bed and had gone and climbed in with Molly – which would probably have been fine had Molly been awake when she did it!

So we are hoping that things continue to go smoothly and that we don’t have too much trouble getting her into, or persuading her to stay, in bed – now if we could just persuade Molly to sleep through the night, we’d be laughing………