La la la

This was part of a series of photos I took right before Ivy had her last feed of the day. I didn't realise it at the time, but she was copying Euan's facial expressions- got about 15 photos of her doing the same as him before she started singing and he started laughing.

Went swimming with Edith and Becky this afternoon, Gary (Edith's dad) and Euan sat at pool side and later changed their daughters side by side on a table. It was very funny. I probably led Becky astray by tempting her to dunk Edith. Ivy did very well in her arm bands, altough she does look so silly in them, particullarly crawling out of the pool to go see Euan- she looked like a strange primordial creature crawling from the swamps. I was basically not holding her at all- she was even walking about in the shallows by herself. She did try drinking the pool though.

She's mastered drinking out of a cup with a straw- encouraged her to practise by giving her diluted fruit juice in one today. She's basically finished a cup's worth throughout the day. I tried to give her a plate of 3 rice cakes she could reach hoping she'd just pop back to them as she wanted, like she was doing with her cup- I clearly overestimated her self control (or underestimated her love of rice cakes) she ended up with 1 in each hand and 1 in her mouth.

I montessorified her room upstairs and sorted out her toy storage cupboard. Found some interesting metal coffee canisters lurking in the back of a cupboard that I think are perfect for her to practise her pincer grip with (who needs to spend £20 on one of these), put it in a basket of 'shiny stuff' and let her play. She took the lid off, put it back on, hit things with it and then tried to put it onto the stainless steel bowl i'd also given her. She also used her little plastic stool for walking about with- she looks so funny when she walks.

I've been playing with an overlocker my Aunt lent me. It's amazing how quickly you can sew things together with it. I ran up a set of three beanbags in 13 minutes from start to end because Euan was trying to juggle for Ivy. Ivy wore a pair of baggy crotch leggings I made for her too- trying to find clothes to fit over cloth nappies is a bit of a pain.

Drew up a packing list for Italy today- plan is to get more of the packing done tomorrow.