This is Hallowe'en

Arya is spending Hallowe'en (or rather Samhain) at the other house; I will not be in attendance as I am neither a pagan nor a drinker, and thus fail to qualify for most of the planned activites, and because I have a dental appointment at 9.30 the next day.

I had a plan for a Hallowe'en costume for me and Arya, but I doubt I would have had the patience to paint myself as a tree, even if I had managed to persuade her into a raccoon costume and arm her with Mummy's Nerf guns.

Hannah asked about Hallowe'en costumes last night. Specifically she asked 'what do Cthulhu cultists wear'? I think the answer is pretty much what anyone else wears. Or robes. I then tried to find a pattern of the yellow sign for her new embroidery machine; I failed. Again, the costume would likely have fallen down on the basis that she wouldn't have stomached wearing a mask, let alone learning to claim not to be if asked to take it off.

I am glad to think that she will probably never have to wear a shop bought costume, since I can't bear the thought of my little girl wearing one of those godawful 'monster/children's fiction character/serious professional, if they were a shameless whore' costumes that seem to be all that they sell for girls over the age of fifteen. I want her to wear awesome costumes and be awesome.

Also, she has to stay at least six inches from boys at all times, and discreet barbs sewn lovingly into her costumes are a good way to maintain this.

Commercial Hallowe'en costumes bring out the angry dad in me. I'd act surprised, but they have done since before I was a dad.

Daddy, someone broke the time!

And how much for the baby?

Man, it's been a long weekend, not least because it has actually been an hour longer than normal and Arya is old enough to notice now.

I think Arya arrived tired, possibly due to a bug that seems to be plaguing her with tummy troubles. Hannah was definitely tired, and so was I, so it was not the best ever recipe for a weekend.

On Saturday we went out to pick pumpkins. We chose a place quite close by which also had a maize maze and advertised a reasonable cafe/restaurant. The food options turned out to be pumpkin soup, bbq meats and doughnuts, and the maze was super pricey, which was disappointing. In retrospect, as Arya fell asleep in the car, we might have been better off travelling an extra half hour to the other site that offered its maze and other attractions for an all-in fee, but conversely it would have been hell getting Arya back.

Helping!

On the upside, Arya woke up and - after a slow start - seemed to really get into choosing pumpkins. I think at first she just wasn't sure where she was, but eventually really got into running around the field of large orange things. She was keen to help with the wheelbarrow as well, which is part of her love of things that she can push around (if they have wheels, it's a great plus, but unwheeled things like standing toys or parents are fun too!)

Finally, one her size!

The pumpkin patch was oddly full of Americans; well, surprisingly full, but it makes sense after some thought. I guess they were mostly from the airbase, and pumpkin carving remains a more American thing than British. I'm pretty sure that pick your own pumpkin isn't something that has been around for long in this country.

We picked up three pumpkins in the end: A large orange for carving, a medium sized white for cooking, and a small glow in the dark for shiggles. I totally failed to check at any point over the weekend just how glow in the dark it was; that's how tired I was.

Helping!

In the end we opted not to go for the maze, and we had a bit of drama when another little girl tried to trip Arya as we walked around the craft stalls. Fortunately the little girl's mother leaped into action before my Papa Wolf brain could claw its way past my residual teacher brain and bite off a foot or anything equally regrettable. The little girl was given the choice of going straight home or apologising. She refused to apologise, and was taken home. I feel sorry for the parents, but I hope a lesson was learned. I have certainly found a new resolve to make sure that if Arya ever acts out like that - and I hope she won't; the girl was at least four or five, rather than Arya's age - I don't allow sentiment to get the better of me.

We went home and spent a fair amount of time watching Sarah and Duck. Neither Hannah nor I feels good placating Arya with TV, but once we'd played around a bit and built a Duplodocus and gone shopping a time or two to get her some air and exercise walking across and pushing a trolley-basket around, and she'd ridden Lola the rocking dragon to exhaustion, we were all pretty much done in. She put me to bed and crashed out on my chest in minutes; then it took me about twice as long to manoeuvre out from under her without waking her.

On Sunday, time broke. Poor Arya got up at her normal time, then we insisted on doing everything too late (we adjusted meals by about 30 minutes, but swimming was of course a full hour late by her internal clock.) It was a long and frustrating day, but we shopped some more and discussed the etiquette of DVD handling. She was both clingy and gassy throughout swimming, so I think she definitely had a bit of a tummy bug, which won't have helped.

All in all, however, it was a good weekend. An exhausting, slightly tantrumy one, but good. Pumpkin picking was a bit of a wake up call to how nice it is to do stuff as a family in the open air. I want to do more of it.

The Curse of Ipswich Station

This weekend I again spent the Friday night in Ipswich and brought Arya back on the train. For added funsies, en route I missed a train and, having time to muse, called 111 and described some symptoms I had noticed. Two hours later I was in Ipswich hospital being diagnosed with hand, foot and mouth disease!

After consulting with Hannah and Andrew, I went on to spend the night at the bungalow, and the following afternoon took Arya home by train. We got to the station with her still asleep this time, but then the damned tannoy woke her up by yelling down right in front of the lift. Given that this is the one spot that parents with pushchairs have to pass, putting the speaker there feels like a pretty shit thing to do.

She wandered a lot, but fortunately was less
fixated on hitting the emergency alarm than
the last time.

Still, she was much happier this time, at least until I made her go back into the pushchair. She pottered about, and was only really troubled after she realised that the doors had buttons and stood right up to them trying to reach and press them. She was not happy to be taken away from them.

It was a mixed evening, as she was dead tired and therefore grumpy, but we had dinner, watched the usual Pajanimals and she went off pretty quickly.

On the food front, Arya still doesn't like porridge, whatever yummy things I put in it. Okay, she might go for maple syrup, but that's far too sweet and far too expensive. She can feed that habit from her GF cereal.

On Sunday we went into town before swimming, partly to let her nap and partly to buy a stuffed Toothless from Build-a-Bear Workshop. The one of these thwarted the other somewhat; having previously been in either very early on a Sunday or in the week, the noise in BaB took me aback, and woke Arya, who at least had fun pressing the buttons for the various sounds (girl loves buttons; ain't no doubt.)

She went down alright on Sunday, allowing Hannah and I to catch up on Downton Abbey, but then woke and became upset. When she wouldn't settle, I took her through to Hannah (I was sleeping on the sofa due to lurgy,) thinking it was by now quite late. It was actually about half-one, which I realised only after Arya was snuggled in next to mummy.

Uh-oh!

Arya's emergent language is interesting. 'Mama' means either 'mummy' or 'I need help'. She's able to tell us that she's pooed, and understands when we ask if she needs changing. She waves and cheers when she sees the special something on Something Special (a watch with Father waiting to be written) despite the show's lack of direct prompts. She saw a bike on Saturday and said 'cycle', knows she has to brush her teeth, and she is all about the 'shoes'.

But her words of the moment are 'uh-oh', which used to mean 'there has been an accident/breakage/spillage'. She has a little car with a flywheel that makes it keep going after you let it go. It came in a Kinder egg and falls apart easily. When it does, she says 'uh-oh' and brings it to us to fix. This is apparently such a great game, however, that sometimes she will stand right in front of us, pull it apart, hold out the two pieces and say 'uh-oh!'

So grown up in her little
Gehenna jumper.

"No, Arya! Not uh-oh. That was not an 'uh-oh' moment."

She's unsettled at the moment. She's a bit ill and swimming is messing with her nap times on Sunday. As a result, she's more tired and more irritable.

On Saturday we put her to bed straight from the car seat. She woke up after a couple of hours and I went in because she was crying. I picked her up and she cried louder.

I put her down again, she thrashed about and cried.

I picked her up and she hit me in the head trying to break away from me. I almost dropped her, and not 'I almost lost my grip', but part of my brain said 'you are being attacked; get the assailant as far from you as possible'.

Once Hannah had settled her a little, she went to sleep on my arm, which made me feel better about myself, but only a little. I know it's a reflex, but for a moment I felt like dropping my crying daughter on the floor and I hate myself a little for that.

The next day I overcompensated and bought her unnecessary snacks, although Hannah's disapproval was strong enough that I managed not to just give in an fill her with sugar. (A word to the wise, fruit yoyos are pure fruit; that doesn't mean they're not full of sugar! Fruit, it turns out, is in many ways nature's junk food.)

Pics or it didn't happen

It's getting harder to take photos of Arya; she's going through a phase of being interested in phones. Hannah manages better, largely because her phone's lock screen has what is basically a 'holy crap my baby is doing something adorable just let me take a picture right now' button.

This is not to say that nothing is happening with her. She's growing like a weed, and has had her second dentists appointment, at which she got a little nervous, and was super protective of her parents when our turns came, basically trying to climb up onto our chests to push the probes away from our mouths.

She's been a little grommity overall and hasn't been sleeping so well. She may have picked up hand, foot and mouth from nursery, but here's hoping it's just a cold. She also had a pretty rubbish weekend last when I had to bring her home by train from Ipswich, as a noisy toddler on the bus woke her up 20 minutes into her nap and right before a ludicrously long train journey, followed by sleeping before swimming (again, for about 20 minutes) but not after.

All in all the change in swimming venue has not been a success. If I did have to take her solo due to Hannah's shifts, I could, but the class has to share the pool with rich tossers and it's just completely the wrong time, leading to situations like last weekend. The only thing I'll miss is that she can't climb out on her own in the old pool, which is something she enjoys doing, and which has I am sure improved her ability to climb onto chairs and other furniture.

I need to be better at doing these updates even when I don't have a picture to post, because she's growing so fast and I don't want to miss anything out.