Catch-up and Christmas

Way behind again!

Since I last blogged F's days have gone to:

playing with recording herself on DSi

listening to Girls Aloud

making LittleBigPlanet levels, now with added water - she made a nice one with a bit where you swim past a representation of her and J and a speech bubble says 'dada' and you hear an 'awwww' sound effect when you go on it

sledging with her friend E and family

a long walk in the snow that gave F terrible sores from her wellies as well as not achieving most of what we had hoped to do as the swimming pool was closed and my cashcard had broken almost in two!

other snowy walks, snowballing, etc.

making robots from various Christmas kits - one she did most of herself, with a bit of supervision

looking briefly at Venn diagrams following a conversation about the possible motivations of LittleBigPlanet players making levels about how rubbish the XBox is

being poetic - she said the snow-covered trees in the wind looked like 'skeleton ballerinas doing a dance of energy'

watching Planet Earth

drawing with new attention to detail, part copying things carefully, part adding her own stuff - her drawing generally looks like a younger child's for various reasons but I constantly resist pushing her to do anything tidier or more conventionally representational - it's definitely expression first and foremost at this stage for her, which I feel is 'right' somehow - so interesting to see her changing a bit with it

Christmas and New Year

Was a bit low-key due to illness, to which we each succumbed in turn, F having it first and being very duvet-attached and grumpy over the main days of Christmas, poor thing. It was also rather a strange one in that I had to only take 3 days completely off, as having had a very bad November and early December for work, I felt I had to take everything available when it came. Which I did and am glad I did, as we're skint for January as it is. J worked right up to the day as well, so it wasn't like recent more leisurely Christmases - all felt a bit sudden. Nevertheless we did lots of watching films, playing Wii, DS games, etc. so it was fine.

Did 2 Christmas dinners, one with J's mum, one with my mum and uncle - J did the nut roast each time, which was very good this year, and I did roast pots, carrots and snips. And all without an oven glove because I cooked ours a few weeks back.

Had fun with mum and uncle on Wii Fit Plus - my main present from J and F. I also got some books - C.J.Sansom, really enjoying the first one - and DVDs (Star Trek DS9 and The Ascent of Man!).

F got Miette, the talking, moving Barbie and The Three Musketeers Cat, which is programmed to watch the DVD that it stars in and react to it! Very entertaining, especially with a large Bloody Mary. It has slightly different selection of reactions each time - I nearly choked when it reacted to its own appearance on screen with 'C'est moi!'.

Wasn't that thrilled with Doctor Who, but might enjoy it more on repeat viewings I guess. Am bored of The Master and would only have wanted him back if he was really going to change and join forces or something else more radical. And I didn't even cry! Maybe I was more ill than I thought I was. Looking forward to spring though...

Went out for meals with J's dad day after boxing day and with local friends C, K et al on New Year's Eve lunchtime at Pizza Express, which was lovely.

Did tons of work, but it was quite interesting work, some of it at least, and my new software is very enjoyable to use, keep finding new tweaks that really work - brilliant.

Too many late nights though and a few all-nighters - knackering in the long run, but hopefully won't have to do any for a while now.

Because of the work, I didn't get to spend as much time watching stuff with J as I would have liked but since there's plenty of winter nights ahead and we have various DVDs and recorded/downloaded things, am hoping to do more of that soon, starting this weekend.