Homo Erectus- without holding on!

Blogs are like buses- you wait over a month for one, and then two come along in quick succession.

The main news here is that Katie has joined the ranks of the unaided Homo Erectus- she is of course a lot cuter than this hairy guy in the picture.

She is also saying lots of words, for example:

• Stairs
• Chair
• Tim
• Mummy
• Daddy
• Baby
• La La (from the Teletubbies)
• Pooh bear
• Banana
• More
• Brabas (meaning breakfast)
• Degaw (meaning drink)
• Bum
• Wee wee
• No
  

Time for an update?

So I have managed to post nothing at all for more than a month.

News that may be of interest is as follows:

Tim's slightly odd leg motion when climbing the stairs (amongst other activities) is due to extreme double jointedness of the ankles, knees and hips. The same is true of his fingers and wrists. There is no real problem with this but he has to learn to control his joints in more directions than the rest of us- which takes time.

I had a golf lesson- which Elaine got for me for my birthday. Stan had one at the same time for the same reason. I am pleased to report that I enjoyed it- and I was not too embarrassingly poor at it for a first attempt.

We bought a new iron- a steam generator no less. The old iron kept on tripping the electrics in the house. The new one is very powerful and ironing is now my favorite hobby.

I have found a place that roasts coffee to order- and am in the process of trying out all of the different coffees to find my favorite.
Elaine is going to a Spa tomorrow with her friends- meaning that I have a day alone with the children. We have planned all sorts of exciting things to do- whatever the weather.

Elaine has met this guy- Khaled Hosseini, the author of 'The Kite Runner' and 'A Thousand Splendid Suns.' She recommends them both highly. The first one is about a child who smuggles kites across international boundaries I think- the second is about a planet with lots of Suns- even more than Tatooine. She regards him as the best author in the world ever.


The other reason for not blogging is that I was given season 2 of Prison Break for my birthday by Roy and Sian- this is taking up lots of our time.

Cleveland Ohio

So I went to Ohio on Sunday- which involved a flight to Chicago, and then a connection to Cleveland airport.

The first leg of the flight was uneventful.......... when I was waiting for boarding for the second leg I was called to the desk. I thought that I was going to be offered an upgrade or something, but instead they took my boarding pass off me- apparently they had a problem with weight on the plane- I am clearly carrying a few pounds!

I was allowed back on when some other calculations had been done that proved that it would still fly.

There was 2' of snow in Cleveland and the hotel pool- shown above, was not particularly inviting!
The work that I was there to do was fine- I looked at the things that I needed to and got the information that I was after.

I hired a 3.6 litre Pontiac Grand-Prix automatic. Powerful, but slow to respond and huge.

There was noting of particular note to report until my last night- when I was left to my own devices. I went out to find a bit of dinner, and ended up very lost. I was not worried about it since I had a map (or so I thought- it turned out to be useless) and I was just having a look about the area anyway.

My hotel was in a leafy and rural area, but as it got dark, I found myself lost in a much more urban and rough looking area. Even that was not too much of a problem, until some guy roared past me as I was deciding where to go- but he didn't leave enough space and so scraped my wing-mirror down his door. He then stopped and got out of the car- as I did. The Pontiac was unscathed, but the other guys car was slightly damaged. He told me that he could not believe that I had hit his car- and so I agreed with him- he had been too close to me! Anyway, when I told him that my car rental details told me that I must call the police and the rental car rescue crew out in order to make a claim possible, he became a bit more irritable (he was not keen on the police coming out.) There were all sorts of people who knew him stopping to ask him if things were OK and the situation was getting less comfortable by the second.

Anyway, to cut the story a bit shorter, he decided that if I gave him all of my money, then I could leave! I gave him my $65 and he advised me to head in the other direction as I was 'I da hood' where I was (He was disappointed that I had not got much on me.) I did this and got back to the hotel safely! What a great alternative to having a nice meal.

The flight home was fine and my only regret is that I did not get a receipt off the guy that I met in 'da hood' so that I could claim it on expenses.

So that's the highlights of the trip!

Gluttony

We are sitting here making ourselves feel sick eating too many Elizabeth Shaw mint crisp chocolates and drinking far too much wine. Disgraceful really, especially as we went out for a meal last night and ate and drank far too much. We have discovered the most amazingly good restaurant in a village about 20 mins from here. You have to be prepared to remortgage your house to eat there, but it is fandango-tastic. Ben said (in all seriousness) "This is the place we have been searching for all these years". You had to be there I guess, but it was very very funny. Meanwhile, the poor children are eating very badly, poor KP has refused all food except a bowl of peas today, and T has been chain-eating Percy Pigs all day.
Over to Ben
Elaine has eaten far more of the chocolates than me, and has made up a new word- a mix of a word from Bohemian Rhapsody and a real word!!
The meal was actually my treat- everyone should have a husband like me!!

A whole year has passed

Thanks to all who sent kind wishes/gifts for KP's birthday. As is usual when you host parties, we realised we didn't really take many pictures. We all had a lovely time on Saturday, it was great to get everyone together.


KP is delighted with her new doll, and all other dolls are thrown angrily to the floor if they dare to attempt to get a cuddle. T has spent the weekend taking care of Jessie's doll, which was left behind here, and Jessie left very careful instructions over the telephone that T had to take care of it.

We picked up a mega bargain at the market yesterday - I'm sure Ben will dine off the tale for while yet. He did try to tell me that mega bargains in large boxes from markets often have missing bits. Anyway, we haggled hard, bought it, got it out of the car at home, and a large yellow sticker fell off which said 'Argos returns, missing parts'. It is a 'Mamas and Papas childs pram set and luckily there were four wheels and indeed all the parts, the only thing missing was the dreadful changing station which we are actually relieved about. So it was actually a mega bargain in the end. Apparently if I say that one more time I will be in big trouble. The whole episode brought back memories of kites from China...

Today we spent KP's birthday with grandma and grandad at the gym, then the restaurant at the Garden Centre, and then riding bikes to the park. Oh yes, and still eating huge amounts of left-over cake...

Poo

Home Alone

I have clearly got something wrong here.... Elaine is out with some friends, enjoying Pizza- I am at home- no beer, no wine and no snacks, and unable to get out to the shop as I am babysitting.

On the bright side, I have been off work all week and have been to the following things which I often heard about, but could never go to:

• Toddler gym


• Pre- school (I was a daddy helper)


• Primate music class

During the week we have also played football, been to a museum (not to be repeated for a few years as Tim was not particularly interested,) been to the 'Living Rainforest,' been to the garden centre and spent a long time playing with CD's- a current favourite pastime of Tim's. We have also made a replica coffee maker from the Brabantia bin box, and a sword (Tim had to go dressed as a Prince to his music class)

At the rainforest, we saw some interesting plants- this is an Arabica coffee plant- useful in the production of espresso!

This is an Avocado plant- the fruit of which are eaten in large quantities by recent retirees

We also saw a bird eating spider.

And an imperial scorpion.

These are actually edible- as are all scorpions, you just need to cut off the sting- and the venom sack (that ball at the end of the tail) and then munch away- a good source of protein. I would rather have a steak I think.