World cup warm up

Sylvia watched the first half of England vs Hungary last night - not a great ad for the game as the first 40 minutes were a featureless wasteland of boredom. But we honed up a few basics: she now knows England play in white, that the referee blows the whistle when someone does something "naughty", and that goalkeeper has a different top. She doesn't get the idea of us both supporting the same team - she thinks we should take one each. Also, I was naming the players for her and when I said "Ashley" (Cole) she said that's a girl's name, thought for a moment, and said "and maybe a boy's name too".

The second half was much more fun but we were reading Mr Men by then (so I taped the game and watched it later).

Sylvia's off to Edinburgh today with her mum, to visit Aunty Teresa and her family.

home sweet home

It certainly felt like home sweet home after a three hour plane delay. But it didn't spoil anything. Sylvia was great and we passed the time playing snap with her clown cards.

The second half of the week was spent largely on the beach, where we dug "baths" of water near the edge of the sea. I had to sit next to them while sylvia took a long run up and jumped in them, giving me a big splash. You can see some video of Sylvia hopping in and out of waves here.

We went to the Poble Espanyol and the Sagrada Familia, though Sylvia wasn't mad about either. We had a very nice dinner at the Salamanca restaurant, where the waiters made a huge fuss of sylvia and gave here a huge handful of sweets. They also gave Ciara a bright yellow digestif.

You can see some more pictures from Barcelona here.

Flipping great

The zoo in Barcelona is great, with loads of different animals. The dolphin display was v cool, with lots of somersaults flips and waves. Sylvia loved it all, especially mum communicating with the elephants by waving the her arm like a trunk.

Sylvias favourite were the chimps. One little family of mum dad and baby were fooling around near a big glass window so we watched these for a long time. Unfortunately sylvias strongest memory is likely to be of baby chimp sniffing daddy chimps bum. the orangutans were a bit worrying too as the seemed to be about to mate.

But the lions, tigers, wolves, bears, penguins, hippos, giraffes, seals and mountains goats were terrific. And the zoo had a vending machine that makes fresh popcorn for you.

I'm feeling a bit guilty now as when I was trying to get Sylvia to hurry up when eventually leaving, I told her we had to be quick as at night they let all the animals out for a play. She was quite worried.

We had nice tapas on the way home. Sylvia had lots more prawns and liked these sort of savoury donuts. But not the raw salted cod!

Sun, sea and sandals

Three days into our hols in Barcelona and Sylvia has got the hang of adios and gracias, making her the most fluent of us all.

The apartment is very nice, in a maze of old streets right by the beach. Sylvia was a little confused: why is the holiday house so small? Why is there no food in the holiday house? Why is Marta (our contact)not staying in the house.

Sylvia loves the beach, and spends most of the time running in and out of the waves screaming that special scream only kids can do. She likes splashing mum and dad too and does it with a delicious cheeky look.

We ate out last night and Sylvia loved the prawns even though they came in the shells with eyes and all. And she liked the black rice, Paella cooked in squid ink.

Off to the zoo today I think.

Confirmation and cousins

Sylvia went to her cousin Patty's confirmation in Ruislip, NW London, today. She was extraordinarily well-behaved whilst the bishop took 2 hours to deal with 45 confirmation candidates. Apart from losing my car keys.

She had lots of fun at Francis's house, playing with Patty's little sister Sarah and her friend Lizzie. the best game was going down the slide while being showered with pink cherry blossom.

This weekend Sylvia also helped me with more flat-pack furniture, proving enthusiastic and surprisingly accurate with a hammer.

Best moment was her showing us some Tai Chi moves she picked up from the childminder. Given that Anna is also a karate expert I expect to be beaten up very soon.

shoes and sunflowers

Beautiful evening in London tonight - the first really warm day of the year. The sunflowers Sylvia and I planted have come up. The seed shell kind of clings to one of the leaves as it grows, which Sylvia found a bit odd. She's having fun watering them and the radishes we planted in the ground.

Sylvia's been busy with nursery. There's a new boy called Shizan who "shouts sometime but he is the youngest so he doesn't know".

Today's fun question was "do you take your shoes off when you go to work".

She also thinks I won a "surprise" last night - it was in a fact a prize for best magazine website. Which was in fact a surprise!