Goggy

The Monday we were away is a day that will go down in history as When Audrey Met Goggy (doggy).

We had a beautiful morning in Nana Jones's garden - what a lovely place for Audrey to play. She spent so much time out there every day, even when it was raining.

Her favourite thing was watching the bees in the flowers and bushes, and buzzing at them. Closely followed by jumping in puddles and climbing on patio furniture.

She loves her Great Nana so very much. There were lots of cuddles.

My Uncle Peter came round to visit, and all together we headed off to Scorton, Nana Jones's favourite place to have lunch. Once again, so very many childhood memories are wrapped up in that place for me, so to share them with Audrey was incredibly special.

While we were there we visited a shop called The Barn, and that's where she saw her. Goggy. A big, heavy toy dog sat on the ground. She ran over and flung her arms around her, saying "goggy goggy goggy" over and over. She had never said dog or doggy before, only "woof". She sat on the stone floor and cuddled that dog and would not let her go. She wouldn't even let go of her for the woman at the cash register to scan her price tag, when Nana decided to buy goggy as a gift for Audrey. She held her tight for just about the rest of the holiday, muttering "goggy goggy" under her breath the whole time. Goggy still goes with her everywhere. It was absolute love at first sight.

She pats it and strokes it and says "good goggy".

The next day Aunty Holly and Uncle Sam arrived, and we all went out to lunch at the beach front. Audrey got to go on a train ride - her very first!

She wasn't too sure about the ride, bless her. But she bravely waved at everyone whenever we went past.

To finish off this post, I have another learning exercise that we've been enjoying. Ever since I read this excellent post about sorting on wecandoallthings.blogspot.co.uk I've wanted to try some sorting games with Audrey.

We started her with some pasta and marbles (a recent charity shop score - two bags for a quid) mixed in a big container, and two smaller containers to sort them into. I used clear tupperware so she could more easily see what she was doing.

Please ignore the state of my floor!

I put some of the pasta in one dish and marbles in the other, to get her started. I modeled doing it one at a time, and said the names of each thing: "pasta - pasta goes here!" and so on. As a side benefit, she ended up saying pasta and marble by the end of the game - two new words.

We practiced lots of other cool vocab as well: in, drop, put, pick up, sorting.

We had to tell her one or two times that the marbles and pasta were NOT for eating, just for playing. Definitely a high supervision activity. But she got the sorting down within seconds and seemed to really enjoy herself. She much preferred the marbles to the pasta. When she was done she emptied everything out and filled the big tray with her wooden blocks, all neatly arranged. She's so, so, so awesome.

Holiday 1 and 2

The cuteness started in the taxi on the way to the train station, where Audrey got to use a booster seat and proper seat belt for the very first time! Oh my goodness, the adorableness of her little serious, confused face.

Her little toy guinea pig was clutched unbelievably tightly the whole time!

When we got to Nana Jones's house, there was a special present for Audrey - a big box of wooden blocks!

Her favourite thing to do was tidy the block away neatly into their box and put the lid on. She doesn't get this tidy streak from me!

On Sunday, the first full day, we went to Ashton Gardens in St. Annes. It's a wonderful place for children, and I used to go there a lot when I was a little girl.

She really enjoyed the playgrounds, and all the wonderful time we had together as a family.

After the playground times we wandered further into the gardens and saw many "ducks" (pigeons - Audrey insisted they were ducks and every attempt to correct her only met with loud quacking and pointing at them).

The rose garden was especially beautiful.

There was a beautiful little fountain at the centre.

Then we headed around the corner, only to find a darling little pond with some REAL DUCKS! Not even a little bit pigeon! And some of them even had little adorable ducklings. It was the perfect end to a really perfect day.

Of course, the best ducks are still the pigeon-like ducks, as far as Audrey is concerned.

More to come!

Post-Holiday, and a quick learning activity

We're back from our holiday and thrown back into the frantic pace of things here. The Edinburgh Festival is going on and the city is absolutely heaving with people, and there are street artists and performers at every corner. Edinburgh is an amazing place to live, and Festival time is full of the highs and lows of life here. On the down side there are far too many people for our cosy little city to comfortably contain, making trips on public transport a nightmare - especially with a small child. On the up side, what incredible excitement and culture right here on our door step. I'm trying really hard (it doesn't come naturally to me!) to focus on the good things and soak up the carnival atmosphere, despite being absolutely snowed under with work and really needing to just get my head down and plough through it all.

I already miss our holiday time in Blackpool (and having time to do simple things like go to the bathroom uninterrupted) and I'm going to blog the hell out of every single day because I have photos and videos by the bucketload of our time there. So watch out for that, because you're going to be sick of it soon!

But for now here's a quick post with a cool learning activity we've been trying out today. I got the idea here at Fine and Fair's post about sensory bins. I thought it was such a great, fun-looking idea.

As Audrey is a little younger we simplified it right down - I just took a jar of mixed dry pulses and emptied it out into the lid of her mega bloks box (ultimately I'd like to use our big Ikea storage trays for this) and let her have at it with a variety of spoons and scoops, and her little bucket and spade. I was initially a bit worried that she would quickly get bored. I needn't have worried!

Sebastian (our cat) supervised.

She loved it, and spent ages scooping and pouring the grains between the tray and the bucket. She used her fingers sometimes, which was great fine motor work on the pincer grasp, and otherwise so carefully used the little spoons and shovels.

Did it get messy? You bet. But five seconds with a mystical new invention that they're calling a "vacuum cleaner" sorted it right out.

She enjoyed it so much that when she was done and I'd put the pulses away in their jar, she almost instantly brought the now-empty lid to me again saying "more - more!"

This time I filled it with dry pasta to keep it different. She found the pasta easier to shovel and to pick up, and perhaps less interesting because of it.

The one thing I'd do differently is not to eat anything while she's playing. I picked up a chocolate from Ian's desk and was happily munching on it when I noticed little lady staring at me, and next thing I knew she was trying to eat the dry pulses! A bit of explanation though - "these are for playing, not eating" - and she seemed to forget about it.

All in all she played for nearly an hour with these, with a look of real concentration on her face that I hadn't seen before. While we were away people commented on how she tries so hard to use a fork and spoon when she's eating - often if she's not that keen on eating something we give her a fork and help her use it and she yums it up. I'm hoping that with more activities like this her independence with food will come on in leaps and bounds.