Ruby comes to play

This afternoon Maddie had her first proper 'play date' at our place, an I'm fairly confident it was a success :)  You can judge from the pics below.  

Despite a little bickering and problems sharing, they had a great time, and I heard them declaring to each other 'I love you' 'and I love you too, cause your my best friend!'    How sweet!   Quite hilarious too, to overhear things like (from Maddie to Ruby)  'Do you know... MY dad LOVES chocolate icecream!'.    Well.. what can I say!.. she's right! 

We picnic' ed, made cookies, dressed up, did drawing and gluing, played with dollies.. you name it!   Did I mention I'm tired!?  

Lunch time!

We're off to the museum!

On Tuesday Maddie's class had a school excursion to the Natural History Museum.  I was standing outside after picking Maddie up from school one day when I heard the teacher asking another mum if she wanted to come along on the excursion.  The mum said she was unfortunately busy.. so I waited until the right moment and then piped up with 'I can come!' :)    What a luxury of being a stay at home mum and being able to do these things!!   (A luxury I will enjoy less and less.. as I now have a new job, starting the 6th of October!)

So.. on Tuesday we headed to the museum with the class of.. thankfully, only 12 kids.  They were all very excited to travel on the top of the bus... and even more excited to explore all of the Earth section of the museum.  We talked about Volcano's, rocks, earthquakes, sand and so on.  I think a lot of them knew more about volcano's than me! (they all knew what the magma chamber is!!! what the!?) 

We all gathered in the museum's picnic area at lunch time, where it took them half an age, and a lot of encouragement to finally finish their lunches!  Teachers must have so much patience!  

A few photos below...

On our way

Too cute!.. They walk along holding onto a rope!  and so compliantly!   There were lots of school groups at the museum of much older kids, who all commented 'ooohhh look at them, they're so cute!'

Up the escalator into the HUGE earth

 

Maddie, Isobel and Miss Kat

Lunch time .. with Nathalia (cheeky!)

Bodiam Castle

 

A few photos of our day trip last weekend to Bodiam Castle... none of them very good quality I'm afraid! Matt's are much better, if only I could figure out how to get them off his camera and onto my blog! Can't say I have tried too hard though.... sigh..... one day!

We hired a car and drove to Bodiam, in Kent, which took about two hours. It was a lovely day, the sun was out and the castle was magnificent! 

Michelle and Simon enjoy some English Pub food in the sun

See... sun umbrella's!  There IS sun in London!

Stick gathering...

 

Chillin on the grass

Sun, shopping and shakespeare...

Not too much been going on this week, but I thought i'd put up a few pics to keep the grandparents happy. Maddie had her first week with karate and swimming at school. She was pretty excited that - as I promised, the swimming teacher didnt 'make her go under' the water. I'm really hoping that watching the other kids do this every week will encourage her not to be so scared. She loved her first karate lesson, and came back proudly showing off her new moves and her teeny tiny karate suit. So cute!!

Every Friday she finishes at 12, so this week we met up with Lucas (from her nursery school) at the park. The weather was amazingly and rarely beautiful, and it was so nice sitting in the sun and watching them have a ball. Saturday's weather was fairly good too (two days in a row!!! what?!) and Maddie went with Rita to play with her friend Lara at the park. Matt and I did a bit of shopping, and then headed into the city to meet up with Kylie and Michelle. After a delish Thai dinner, we battled the crowds of the Thames Festival, on our way to the Globe Theatre, where we saw a really funny performance of the Merry Wives of Windsor. Standing up for two and a half hours was a struggle at first, but well worth the 5 pound ticket! Afterwards we spent agggesss and kilometres of walking, trying to hunt out the perfect dessert... and eventually found ourselves in Leicester Square, where we pigged out on some amazing Haagen Dazs icecream. Yum!

Somehow I neglected to set an alarm for the morning and as Maddie was staying at Rita's we didnt have our 'just in case' child alarm clock present either! Needless to say, we slept in .... until quarter to TEN!!! (our train for church leaves at ten to ten from Victoria station!)... So we lept out of bed and I have NEVER gotten ready so quick! But we still missed even the second train! and ended up getting to the meeting with half an hour left to go! oops!

Photos are attached below... Have a good week!

Maddie likes to play her Cuban bongo at the meeting.. and even better, she makes Laura play the marraccas! :)

New Karate suit

Eating something wicked from starbucks!

At the park

Bulk Maddie sayings...

Matt here, we're giving one of our old phones to Konrad and on it was a list of sayings that we wrote down as Maddie said them.  Some of them are pretty old, but still made us laugh :)

· 5 monies (holding 5 coins)... I wonder what I can buy with 5 monies

· I can see something black and white; it's the people!

· If I just tickle him, he'll fly...Big Gull!

· It's ok feather, I'll keep you warm

· I can't just stay here for longer and longer (train station cafe)

· Is Dan your husband?  I don't have a husband (hands out)

· Dadda come downstairs, I've got raspberries

· I'm a good sharing girl, but not when I'm a squeaky girl

· Look!  It's BatBoy!

· These are my rings, but when I wear my rings I rescue people

· This is so great! (eating garlic bread in stroller)

· It's a Dinosaurus Rex!

· (Going through stinky Cairo) Can you smell something? ... Smells like horse!

· Do you know where Santa goes? He goes down the chimney!  Maybe he's a little bit magic.

· I went to the shop but I only found a piglet! Then I found a shower!

· I wish I could get a real wand that made real magic.

· I love pheasants! (After telling her we were in Venice)

· I love German (meaning Germany) Dada: It's called Germany Maddie: I call it German

· I want to know... How do snails die?

Today we did some cooking....

Nice new apron

Ta da!

First week..

Being creative at the Tate Britain

Well the first three days of school were a definite success.. She has been happy and excited to go every morning and happy and excited to tell me all about it when I pick her up.. Phew! what a relief!

She's told me all about her new friends, and all about what they have been doing, and I know I have to appreciate this now, because it won't last forever. I remember when that question from your mum..'what did you do at school today' becomes really annoying... but for now she's totally happy to tell me all about it and I'm loving it. They have ordered their karate suits (thursday afternoons) and this week they will start PE, swimming and karate lessons. The class has an Autumn term project, which is all about the various ages of time on earth prior to humans, ie... first life (fish and frogs etc), the ice age, dinosaurs and so on, and they have three excursions planned for the term based around this, to the natural history museum and the London Aquarium. Full on for a four your old, I know!! But she seems to be lapping up all the information and has already been informing us in great detail about the earth and the stars and the planets.. "we live on the earth!", and the 'big ball of fire that came and killed all the dinosaurs'.... hilarious! Hopefully the enthusiasm will continue.

As for the weekend, Friday night kylie came over for dinner and being the special guest, she read Maddie the bedtime stories...I was going to upload photos of that, but somehow the photos of that have disappeared off my camera! strange. (kylie was that you!!?)

Saturday we visited the Tate Britain. They had two big art trolleys for kids, full of all sorts of arty materials.. fabric, glue, paper, pipecleaners, straws, pencils and so on. You just grabbed a tray, filled it with goodies and then sat on the floor to create your masterpeice! Maddie had a ball making a big collage, and a pipecleaner man (pics above).


A few things Maddie has said over the past week:

• "Dadda, why weren't you talking? I didn't hear you so many times!"
• "I wish I was mama (to Nic), so that I could control you" (hmmmm what does this mean!!??) :)
• "Dadda why do we have to laugh when its funny?"
• "What does light feel like?"
• "I need to wonder where we are"

I'm off for another job interview tommorrow, but apart from that, not too much planned for the week,
Have a great week everyone!
Nic

Like a hairdresser...

 

Maddie: Look dadda, I've cut my hair just like a hairdresser...

Dadda (playing drums with headphones, lifts one side off to hear a little bit): Awesome baby, looking good.

Mama: WHAT THE??!!!

Little vid as promised

Here's the little vid of Maddie walking to school that I promised in my last post :)

 

First day of school!

Say "big school!" :)



Do I want to let her go?

"I'm ready"

"Bye!"

Maddie happily got ready for her new school this morning. It was a bustle of activity outside the school, loads of parents with sad and worried looks on their faces... however most kids were happy to march independently up the stairs to their classroom...
I'll have to report on how the day went later, as I anxiously await 3.15.....

I will upload a little video that Matt took this morning as we were walking to school.

Little Maddie Vid

 

 

A little vid of Maddie reading to herself in her room :)

Chessington... A world of adventures!

Today marked Maddie's second last day of freedom... only two days left before she gains the title of 'school girl'! And so... we decided to go on a day trip, and what better way to have some fun than to spend it with a friend at Chessington World of Adventures & Zoo! Maddie was bursting with excitement at this prospect, and couldn't stop talking in high pitched tones all the way to Wimbledon station, where we met up with Amy Caroline (a friend from the little gym) and her mum Paola. The excitement got even louder on the way to the park in the car, it was almost impossible to hear ourselves think! :)

We're on our way

These guys have annual passes to the park, and have been heaps of times before. It was good to go with someone who knew their way around, as the park was huge... there was so much to see! We started off with the Sealife centre, where the girls excitedly ran from each sealife display to the next.

Cute girls

 

Look at all the fishies

We eventually covered heaps of the park (bubble adventure ride, animals, sealions, reptiles, and various other kids rides), but really didn't even scratch the surface.. it was so huge, and unfortunately insanely busy and crowded, as it seemed everyone else had the same idea on one of the last days of school holidays. We ended up waiting for over an hour for our lunch (not even half decent food either!) and queued up for over 45 minutes for our very last ride, which was a fairly tame rollercoaster, but a rollercoaster all the same. Maddie really wasn't keen, but when she was finally on it she kept looking at me and nodding her head and saying "I love it Mama!" with a huge grin on her face. Didn't get a photo of that unfortunately, as I was too busy enjoying the ride myself.

Oh how sweet!

Paola and Amy

Maddie and her flying pig

Monkey-ing around!

All in all it was a good day, but I would definitely go on a weekday, and NOT in the school holidays next time!! Paola and Amy are really lovely and we are looking forward to doing more things with them in the future.

Next post should be the school uniform pics!