New beginnings...online at least

I have deserted Wordpress and am pleased as punch about it! Don't get me wrong, Wordpress is a great site & has been perfect for me, but I've discovered that Blogger is...better!

Having blogged about Little Man and things crafty separately for a while I, decided that I might like to blog about other things too and so decided to remove blog parameters. After almost 2 years of loyalty to wordpress.com, I have jumped ship to blogger.com. Why? Because...A) I can post bigger pictures on Blogger than any of the Wordpress themes that I liked B) it's much less complicated in terms of editing/customising/controlling the layout and making it exactly how my OCD self wants it, very intuitive and C) it links in with my Google account. Yes I know...one of those. One less password to remember...feeding the Google machine yada yada...

Anyhoo...first I combined Crafty Pie Blurb with Mini Pie Blurb and then, after realising the Wordpress export feature isn't compatible with the Blogger import feature, I used this little page to instruct me in ways mutinous. It says it will only work with .xml files 1MB or less, but mine was 1.10MB and it still did it. Hurrah! The whole process took approximately 5 minutes and was rather painless; it transferred comments. tags (labels on Blogger) and everything!

I am now completing the arduous task of deleting the posts from Wordpress. Which I can only do 15 at a time. I suppose I should leave Mini Pie Blurb up for a while with a forwarding note? Or is that self indulgent that anyone will notice? Hmm. *ponders*

The only thing that irks [my OCD self] is that the paragraph spacing on existing, transferred posts is off and pictures aren't centre aligned now that they're on Blogger. BUT. I am NOT about to edit every single post to satisfy my inherent compulsive orderliness! Not tonight anyway...

Grandad's latest visit and some firsts to boot!

My Pa (Grandad) came to visit last week. Despite his grumbling back he did a sterling job of stripping down and repainting an old rocking chair that I was given by a lady on Freegle. The chair was thought to be pine underneath the white paint, but turned out to be beech & beech ply (?) so we weren't able to strip it & varnish it as we'd hoped. We settled instead for a warm beige colour paint, which ties in quite well with Isaac's nursery. I think it looks fab - thank you Dad!

We went into town one day and stopped for an impromptu cup of tea and Isaac's dinner at Derby Quad (the same trip that set me onto Ikea high chairs). Isaac had his first jacket potato and baked beans. Which went down very well! He just kept eating...and eating...and eating! I think it had something to do with being outside & seeing lots of new things which distracted him from what his mouth is doing because he always eats well  in public. He's such a show off: "Look at me! I'm eating!"

Isaac also had his first time in shopping trolley seat, the folding one rather than the plastic-leaning-back one. It was very exciting AND he didn't fall over! Wooh!

Unfortunately I was using my phone camera, hence the car behind is in focus, not my Little Man. Gah.

The weather was (and still is!) warm. I baked cookies and we talked & listened to old soul records. Splendid.

All in all it was a lovely week and Dad even stayed on longer to finish the chair. We love you Grandad! Come back soon!

Bye-bye Bumbo, hello high-chair!

Until now Isaac has been table top in his Bumbo. This has been great because he wasn't the fastest sitter-upper and we needed uprightness for feeding solids. Having had a relatively cramped meal with the girls this weekend (Simon, me, Aoife, Roisin and my Dad all round the table) we decided it was time for a high chair for our Little Man. I'd been lusting after the (nearly £200 - ouch!) Brother Max high chair for some time, but (after a recent trip to Derby Quad for some food with my Pa and actually successfully using a high chair for the first time) I decided to get the same one they use there which happens to be the rather modestly priced (£10.99) Ikea Antilop. Why? Because it does what it needs to, it's super easy to clean and Isaac stays upright in it.

We think he likes it :-)

You say diaper, I say happy nappy

And these are, indeed, the happiest of nappies.

For those of you without children, you may be forgiven for thinking that I've completely lost the plot. Which to a certain extent is true; I can't claim senior moments yet so I'm sticking with hormonal unrest! For those of you with children, I'm hoping you might understand, even if it is only a wee bit?

So. When changing nappies is a regular occurrence, nappy art is a talking point for you and yourself your baby. I was particularly pleased, then, to see the return of the serenely blissed out monkeys that adorn the size 3 Bambo Nature nappies that Isaac wears. We had them on our first pack, but then pandas took over. They weren't anywhere near as good as the monkeys and their activities seemed a little odd, even for pandas.

I've put them into categories (feel free to phone the funny farm anytime...).

Category 1: Monkeys at Work.

Clockwise from bottom left - Learning to Juggle Monkey, Weather Monkey, Hangin' on a Rope Monkey and I'm not sure about this last fellow. He seems to have a telekinetic command over an arrangement of...atoms perhaps? We shall call him God Particle Monkey.

Category 2: Monkeys au natural.

Clockwise from bottom left - Swingin' Through the Trees Monkey, Enlightened Buddhist Monkey, Sitting Down Surfer Monkey and Hooray it's Bananas Monkey.

And finally, my personal favourite:

Monkeys in love <3

A busy weekend!

Isaac and I did quite a lot this weekend! A few firsts too.

On Saturday Simon, Isaac, Rinny and I went for Isaac's first excursion to the Peaks. The Peak District is close to where we live and it's really quite  a beautiful park of the UK. And quiet. I love that countryside silence; only broken by the bleating of sheep and a polite "hello" from other walkers.

We decided to go for a mooch around Stanton Moor in the White Peak, so called because of the light colour of the underlying limestone rock, common around the central and southern parts of the Peak District. I think. Anyhoo, we have a book called Kiddiwalks in the Peak District which we had yet to use. Turns out it's pretty good (especially if you can remember from school how to read a grid reference [thanks to Google for refreshing my rusty brain!] to find the starting point). It allowed 2 1/2 hours for the route we chose, but took us only 1, I suppose because we weren't walking at child speed and didn't really stop to look around/explore much.

I forgot my camera :-(

Even the point & shoot.

All I had was my phone. :-(

So this is all I took before I got peed off and turned my phone off out of frustration.

It was a lovely walk and the book points out lots of cool stuff, like the Nine Ladies Stone Circle with the Fiddler Stone, the Trig Point (from which you can see for miles!), the Cork Stone & an old overgrown quarry that sheep used for resting ledges.  Living in a city, it's marvellous to see such lush greenery and escape (what you don't realise is) contant background noise.

Isaac completely fell asleep in the carrier! I couldn't believe it! Bless him.

We're pretty excited about the rest of the walks in the book and so will be going up into the Peaks again with more planning done next time; it was a bit last minute, but still really nice to spend some time together. What next - camping perhaps?

On Saturday evening through 'til Monday evening Isaac and I went to see his Nanna & Grandpa (my Mum & Step-Dad) at their house in Leamington Spa. He always sleeps well there and likes the change of scenery. Nanna recently invested in a hot tub and so (after adjusting the temperature accordingly) Isaac took his first dip!

He. Loved. It.

Splashing his little arms all over the place, playing bongo on the filter cover, floating on his back (with some support from Mummy of course). He face planted the water a few times, but got over the initial shock quite quickly. I couldn't take pictures of him in there because it was just me and him at the time, but here's the cheeky scamp afterwards...

 ...and after dropping the towel on the floor for the 6th time, just to watch it fall...

I can't believe we're having such good weather at the moment and that we've made the most of a weekend when we don't have other commitments! I'm so pleased and am really looking forward to more; Grandad's come to stay with us for a bit so we'll see what else we get up to :-D

Introducing...

...Isaac's tongue!

Today, Isaac has been [mostly] introducing his tongue to the world and using his mouth to make a clicking sound; hilarious! Today is the first day he's really done this & he CAN'T GET ENOUGH! He finds it very amusing, as do I if I'm honest.

Over the past few weeks he has started to really like to passing things to you, as long as you give them back. Well, I don't think he has any expectations, but he's always pleased to get the item in question back. What a generous wee chappie young Master Turner is!

We also went to TinyTalk for the first time. It's excellent! The woman that runs it is possibly the most enthusiastic woman in the world, which is a good thing when teaching babies to sign. We learned the signs for hot, cold, rain, heavy rain, water and look/see. I also picked up the signs for all gone, water and happy from Steph (NCT chum). We're going back & even bought a CD of songs. There are only 3 more classes this term so will have to make the most of them. I'm glad we've finally gone - it'll do us good and Isaac seemed to enjoy it!

On a sunny June afternoon...