Another week, another city

Simon has been working away in Manchester for the week which left me and Della twiddling our thumbs. Instead of staying in York and getting bored of the sight of each other I thought it would be more entertaining to go to Durham where Della could play with her Gran and Granda and her cousin.

While we were there Della was a little poorly. It's so difficult to know what is wrong when she can't tell you but our normal happy and chatting Della decided she didn't like her routine and spent form the early afternoon until after her normal bedtime crying. Therefore telling us there was something wrong. She normally dislikes snuggling in and prefers her own space to fall asleep and entertain herself, however all she wanted to do was snuggle.

We did get up too some exciting things while up north though. Including a trip to the metrocentre and Della's first experience of Ikea:

She enjoyed puree carrot, not meatballs and chips

 Throughout her trip to Ikea her Granda entertained Della was a hand puppet, it was only right that he bought so she could enjoy it at home.

As Della didn't have her Jumperooo in Durham she was missing jumping around - luckily this was anticipated and the good old door bouncer was brought out.

Finally, after an exciting week - Della fell asleep on the settee with Granda

First taste

The time came yesterday for Della to try her first real food. We decided to go with baby rice for a couple of days to ease the transition and then on Saturday she will have her first vegetables.

It went surprisingly well and she had two big spoonfuls. We were prepared for her to just spit it out but she would have continued eating more if we had let her.

She was quite entertained by the food on her face. Think she might turn out to be a messy eater, must remember the bibs!

Things Della did in Durham

So last week Della spent a few days in Durham. She found the change from hard yorkshire water to soft northern water a little difficult - it's amazing she could taste the difference, although I always notice a difference when I was my hair.

She did lots of things including:

If you're happy and you know it clap your hands with Gran Anne

Cried with Mam

Decide she wants to be scientist (like her Grandad and Uncle Ben)

Had tummy time with Granda

 Watch France beat Wales in the rugby world cup (she was not happy about this - red is her favourite colour)

Enjoyed playing with her cousin, Ethan

Laughing so hard it hurts...

So it has been ages since we managed to upload anything. This is mainly because Me (Mam) and Della have had a few days in Durham with Della's northern grandparents, which was very lovely but busy. More on this to follow - in the meantime this is Della cracking up at being swooshed towards her Mam.



Normally after a couple of minutes laughing she gets bored and finds the thing we were doing to make her laugh really quite boring. However this time she would just not stop laughing. It was incredibly cute.

Jump, jump, jumperoo

We decided to treat Della to a new 'big' toy a few weeks ago. Her jumperoo matches her jungle gym so there are already a few familiar faces for her. She loves it and I can only imagine the feeling we got when we first put her in it is the feeling you get on Christmas morning when you get a present your child really really wants.

Here she is having her first bounce...

New things and silly mistakes

Della has been enjoying her tummy time much more recently. She likes to lie on her Jungle Gym and look at all the birds, bees and zebra's (I'm not sure how many jungles have zebra's). This is her yesterday: 

Della wasn't impressed that her dad managed to put her bedtime sleepsuit on back to front the other day! Who wants buttons on the front and pictures of kittens on the back?

Buttons on the front?

And a kitten on the back??

At last I have been taught how to...

make my video files smaller! You may have noticed that I only post photos. This is because my video files are too big to upload easily to YouTube but Simon has just taught me how to make the files smaller so look forward to videos ahoy.

Some days a funny dance makes Della laugh, other days it might be a noise or an odd face. This video shows her having a laugh as I cough - needless to say I had a croaky throat after a few days of entertaining her this way! I also think she sounds a little like a cat here:

Don't let summer leave

Normally I love nothing more than than the leaves turning orange, cosy wooly jumpers and seeing my breath in the cold. I can't imagine anything more exciting than waking with snow on the ground. Our trips to Norway and Slovakia in the winter have left many memories for me. However this year I don't want the sunshine to end. Not only because slow walks in the sunshine will have to come to an end but mainly because autumn arriving means the leaves will fall from the trees. Looking at the tree's is one of Della's favourite things. Every time was pass a tree it is as if she has never seen one before - her legs start kicking, her mouth opens and she is mesmerized.

We are now heading out for a walk to look for evergreen tree's to make sure Della can still get her fix during the chilly days of winter. Bring out her snow suit!

A lovely weekend - part two - Manchester

After the bootsale we arrived home, still in glorious sunshine. It was a big afternoon. Back in 2009 we bought four tickets to go and see Peter Kay on his Tour That Doesn't Tour in Manchester. Little did we know that by the time the gig actually arrived we would be with child.

Although Simon has been away from Della when he went to help his Dad in Aberdeen for a few days and I have been out for a night out with Anna we had not yet been for a night out together without Della. So after a quick change and a run down of what my parents had to do at what time we were off to Manchester with Uncle Nick and Sarah.

When we got to Manchester we split from Nick and Sarah and headed out to have a nice meal just the two of us and it was delightful!

It seems that when Della is not around there is no reason to take any photos so this is our one shot from our night out:

Mmm... Iron Bru

Following food we headed off to the Arena and met back u with Nick and Sarah. It turns out you can't take liquids into the MEN so Simon managed to drink a bottle of Fanta in record time and Nick burst crisps into his pockets - because thats not suspicious if you get searched! Peter Kay was as funny as you would expect and without giving away the punch line (you will all see his DVD I'm sure!) his encore was one of the funniest things we have ever seen in live comedy.

While we were out Della had a lovely time looking at tree's with her grandparents and managed to be very well behaved giving out the smiles and taking her food with ease.

Nick said he would come with us only if we didn't talk about poop or sick for the whole evening. We did better than this and managed to have conversations for the whole night without really even mentioning Della. Although i had a few sneaky texts to make sure she was ok.

Bring on more babysitting and more nights out for me and Simon!!

A lovely weekend - part one - bootsale fun

So it's Monday afternoon and we have all had quite a lovely weekend in the sunshine. It started with a fun trip to the bootsale on Saturday morning. My parents drove down from durham and met us there. It was a scorcher of a day so Della dragged her summer clothes out of their box and popped on a sun hat to protect her head.

Della filled her belly with milk while we enjoyed bacon sandwiches (a double egg for dad of course) then she was up for a cuddle, walk around and a rummage through old pictures and furniture.

After a long morning of bargain hunting (and buying a strimmer, clothes and bathroom mirror to name a few purchases) she had a little nap on dad in her new favourite means of transport.