Pinnywinkle

Sorry for the lack of posts - busy time at work. Anyway, time to catch up a little now.
Sylvia is off to see Aunty Teresa and Nonna in Scotland tomorrow, which she is quite excited about. She's had a busy week with nursery, ballet and playing with her new bike (pic to come).

She had a bit of a moment yesterday, when she refused to go to nursery, saying she wanted "to stay at home and watch TV all day". With the World Cup on, I can sympathise with that. All is well again now though. But she has worked out that if she shows enthusiasm for watching a match with me, then she gets to stay up late.

One other funny thing, I got a poster with the newspaper of seashells - she pointed to the periwinkle and said it's a "pinnywinkle", which is an even better name I think.

England One

We all went to Andy's house on Sunday for a barbecue and to watch the England vs Ecuador match. There's lots of photo's here.

Andy has two girls, and Johnny who was also there has a girl and a boy, with all of them between two and six, so they had fun, especially dressing up. Watching England scrape a win was not fun.

Here's a couple of little videos too (there's no sound btw). The first is Sylvia going down a slide in Andy's garden, with Andy's Rosa centre stage and Johnny's Lara doing a cameo at the end. The other is Sylvia eating pasta with sauce - something she only does with other kids.

Paddling pool

Clapham common has a really nice paddling pool, so me and sylvia went over their on Sunday. It was pretty hot and sunny when we left but had clouded over a bit by the time we arrived. It didn't start all that well as this video shows (click the arrow to play):


But she was soon up again and running around, and even fitting in the odd ballet move to the splashing:

Party party

So the party went off very well in the end, with no injuries or tantrums (except mine). The kids (all 12, count 'em . . .) behaved like little angels. As long as I sounded excited, they got excited too, and enjoyed that, even if they didn't quite know what they were getting excited about.

Anyway, we played ducky ducky, pass the parcel, musical statues, guess the secret treasure in the bag, mummies (wrap up kids with loo roll) in the garden. Then they got their picnic boxes, full of sausage rolls, mini croissants, tomatoes, fruit and popcorn (top idea of Ciara's as we could make them all up the day before). They were pretty high by this time thanks to the luminous sweets I was dishing out as "prizes", or bribes for doing as they were told.

Sylvia needed a quick change of costume after someone poured juice down her back, but then it was her party, so why not show off the wardrobe.

We then skipped to the park for some running around, including a water relay and me chasing them from one "island" (rug) across the sea to another.

Then back home for ice cream cones and the Winnie the Pooh cake (carefully handcrafted by Marks and Spencers).

Even after everyone had gone, Sylvia was still buzzing. "But what can we do now." So we had a water pistol shootout and played balloon volleyball. But blimey it was hard work and I fell asleep during the Italy vs USA world cup mayhem.

I managed to take no pics during the party so those attached are from after.

Sports day

Sylvia had her nursery sports day yesterday and got two winner's stickers, of which she was very proud. One was for just running (but "very fast") and one was for running while holding hands with a friend - Angela.

The other big thing was getting a toy eyeball, which wobbles and goggles in a very spooky way.

Part day tomorrow - let the chaos begin!

First bunches

Sylvia, as many of you may know, has a major aversion to any kind of bunch, ponytail, plait or trussed up hair of any kind. So it was pretty surprising when she wanted bunches. It lasted two days, but we do have the photographic evidence to prove it.

Party preparation

So there's now 12 kids coming to Sylvia's party on Saturday, which is frankly terrifying. Sylvia is practising being magnanimous: "I won't mind if I don't win all the games - really!". The favourite one I've found is Mummies, in which the aim is to wrap kids up with loo roll.

She also tried to teach me to whistle this evening, as she can and I can't. "Just put your mouth in the shape of an oval and blow." It didn't work.

Birthday girl

Quick post about the birthday weekend. The actual party is next week, so jelly overdoses and tantrums to come.

On Saturday, her birthday, Johnny and Claire come round with Jake and Lara, to have lunch, watch England squeak past Paraguay, then go to the park and back to eat birthday cake (Disney princess cake of course).

S, Ciara and me then went back onto the common later to feed the geese and eat ice cream. A very very hot day.

S liked her little tent, and electronic writing toy thing and a funny face book that she got from us. There's also a completely amazing Cinderella pop-up book and a furry dragon we are saving till next week.

She got loads of lovely things from nanna, nonna and her aunties, which we opened on Sunday (many thanks to you all). She wore one of the new dresses straight out of the wrapper to my god-daughter's first communion today. We went to Beatrice's uncle's house after for scones and strawberries and ice cream. Sylvia had fun and I got a little fatter. I'd cycle it off going to work this week if it were not for falling off (again) on thursday. Only bumps and bruises.

Star of the small screen

For anyone interested, Sylvia may be on Sky News between 7pm and 8pm on 15 or 16 June. They filmed her ballet group as part of a piece on kids and exercise. Sylvia says she "picked some flowers", which is the dainty arm movement I don't know the name of. I don't have Sky :-(

Religious education

Sylvia told me it was RE at nursery yesterday. That's talking about God and Jesus, she says. And praying which is doing this (putting hands together and closing eyes) and "saying nice things to God".

Art and craft

Sylvia is still at her Aunty Teresa's in Edinburgh with her mum, so I've taken a few photos of some of Sylvia's pictures that we put in frames. It must be something genetic about being a parent, but I really like the pictures, though I could imagine that a stranger might see them as random scribbles and splashes.

The two big splodgy ones were done at nursery, the cat in the corner of one at Anna's. The other photo is of the some of the earliest faces (daddy left, mummy right), a house and a "map".