Birthdays, trips away and a Chicken named Delia!

Last weekend, we FINALLY made it to Grandpa Peepoos house – you may remember that our last attempt to do this ended with us sleeping in the car (which really isn’t easy when you have 2 small people in tow!) then abandoning all hope of ever getting and arriving back home roughly 13 hours after we had left!!!

Saturday was Mummy’s birthday and she is still waiting for the Wisdom that apparently comes with age to kick in!!! We had a lovely day – in the morning, Mummy had a Dress consultation with one of her Brides-to-be so present opening was delayed until after lunch! The rest of the day was spent lounging in the garden drinking Pimms and then feasting on the luscious BBQ food that Grandpa Peepoo had whipped up……..the weekend was made especially nice due to the fact that not only was Aunty Jecca there, but Aunty Catherine came up from London for the weekend so fun and frolics was bound to ensue! Sunday saw more lounging in the garden, visits to see Daisy, Doris and Delia (the newest members of the Radcliffe household – they are Chickens in case you were wondering…….) to see if they had produced any eggs and a wander into Upton to have a nose at the Water Festival that was taking place over the weekend! On Monday, mummy had another Dress consultation (this time with a different Bride-to-be) so Isabel and Daddy went off in the car to do a bit of Geocaching whilst Molly had a snooze (it’s a hard life!!!) – sadly, their searches proved fruitless (that’s not strictly true, they did stop to eat a few wild Blackberries on the way!) but Daddy hopes to go back next time and see if we can find what we were looking for! All in all, a most productive and enjoyable weekend!

This week has proved to be pretty quiet – having mastered the fine art of sitting up and eating solid food over the weekend, Molly has spent most of the week developing a very unorthodox yet highly effective crawling technique!!! If she sees something she wants and you put it out of her reach she goes straight after it!!! A good example was her urge to get Isabels sparkly Peppa Pig stickers this morning – after removing them from her (though not very far) several times, Isabel was getting cross………Mummy made the point that she’d have to put them somewhere that Molly couldn’t reach them if she didn’t want her to have them – with that, she thought for a moment and then hurriedly stuffed them up the leg of her jeans that were on the floor…….a cunning plan if ever I saw one!!! We are expecting Molly to be truly mobile any time now – this adds the whole logistical nightmare that is stairgates into our everyday existence…….we were fortunate that when we moved here, Isabel had pretty much mastered the stairs so we didn’t need them but they will soon become a necessity!!!

We are now gearing up to go on our holidays – lots of washing and packing to be done which Isabel is bound to help with………Mummy bought her a new swimming costume on Wednesday which, once we got home, she was encouraged to try on for size – she liked it so much, and was so proud of it that she refused to take it off for the rest of the day…….lucky then that we had been and done the jobs we needed to as people may have looked at her a bit funny!!!! She is, needless to say, very excited about the impending trip and I’m sure she will talk about it and what we got up to for many weeks to come!

Injections, stickers and Wailing Banshees……

We had a lovely time the weekend before last in Devon – it was nice to get away for a few days………a change of scenery is always a welcome thing, and Isabel is always happy when she has a garden to play in and furry creatures to chase!

Last weekend we had a quiet time at home – the weather was a bit hot for Mummy’s liking, so a gentle stroll to Costa Coffee, a drool in the window of Ernest Jones (for Mummy anyway!) and the home to watch the rugby was a much as could be mustered! We had the usual upset from Isabel whilst Daddy (justifiably) shouted at the Referee during the Rugby – lots of “Isabel too scary!” meant that we had to try and explain that Daddy wasn’t cross with her and that the ref. was just rubbish but I’m not sure she was convinced! Sunday was much the same, though we swapped rugby for Cricket and Golf and generally attempted to recharge our batteries in time for Monday!

This week, Molly has been busy exercising her vocal chords and working on her crawling – she spends her days alternating between screeching, blowing raspberries and “Da da da”ing (and sometimes combines the 3!) whilst also getting up on her hands and knees and rocking backwards and forwards…….this afternoon, she got into the all fours pose and proceeded to pull herself forward a couple of inches – this was great until Mummy frightened the what-names out of her by clapping and yelling “Clever Moo-moo!” which caused her to fall flat on her face! She is still an expert at navigating her way round the room on her back and, like her sister, is developing a selection of Yoga poses – whilst Isabels preferred pose was the “Downward Dog” Molly favours the “Crab” which is very impressive……particularly given that Mummy and Daddy couldn’t do it, even if you paid them!

Isabel has got wind of the fact that we are (hopefully, provided it doesn’t rain too much!) going to Grandpa Peepoos house for the Bank Holiday weekend though that is apparently not soon enough – she has got up everyday this week and announced “Daddy home soon! Big snuggles, go Peepoos house in car!” (the fact that Daddy is either still in bed at this point or has just left for work seems to be a little lost on her!)……I’m opting for the tactic of telling her we aren’t going today but we are going “soon” – by the time we do go, I fear she may have got bored of waiting and will no longer want to go!?? She’s also taken to telling Molly “No Molly! Not yours! Leave alone!” or “Molly! Stop screaming!” – I wonder where on earth she might have heard that before??!! The only trauma to have occurred in the world of Isabel just recently is that she had to have an injection at the end of last week – she was quite happy until she realised that SHE was having the jab and not Molly, and this was only when she looked down and saw there was a needle in her leg! Luckily, she was instantly placated by stickers – and was even allowed to keep the whole sheet which is virtually unheard of!! (The nurse must have been feeling generous – either that or they had an excess of “I’ve just been Vaccinated!” stickers………I was a bit concerned that they might have been intended for the local vets, but Isabel didn’t seem to mind!)