16 September 2010

Emily woke me at 5.30am saying that she wanted to go on the potty. Her nappy was still completely dry when we got up at eight, after lying in bed for a while listening to a torrential downpour. There was a tannoy announcement nearby warning of rising river levels.

The rain finally stopped after breakfast, and Emily and I donned wellies and went for a quick splash in the neighbourhood. Though her feet barely got damp, after a while she refused to jump in any more puddles, which I thought odd after she relished getting sodden from the knees down when we were back home. We returned home and changed for our lunch date with Nick. Emily ate really well, even popping back black olives and strips of smoked salmon.

From there, I took her up to Toy Kingdom. When she realised where we were going she was very excited. We spent more than three hours there, which was quite enough shopping for plastic food, playing with Sylvanian family models and making Lego creations (though I confess I quite liked that bit and lost track of Emily now and again as I worked on my own constructions).

Emily has a couple of sweet little sayings at the moment: 'when I grow up I'm going to be a lady' (ie. woman) and ' once upon a time when I was born, I played with that toy/ate that food/crawled on the floor etc', meaning 'when I was a baby'.

At dinnertime I gave Emily her new hinged training chopsticks to try out and she did quite well once I helped her put the correct fingers in the loops. I ask myself yet again how so many millions (nay, billions) of people find this an efficient way of eating!