Now Daniel is three, he is spending an increasing chunk of his play time in roleplaying: doctor, postman, etc. Today things took a slightly more unusual turn when he decided to roleplay a Jehovah's Witness. The conversation went something like this

D: Mummy, you be in your house
Me: OK
D: [knocks]
Me: [pretending to open door]. Hello?
D: Yes, hello. Would you like to come to our church? 'Cos we don't have many people there.
Me: I'm not sure. What do you do at your church?
D: Well, we sing and things.
Me: Do you have to pay any money?
D: No, it's free.
Me: Okay, I'll come. Is it near here?
D. No, it's a long way away. You will have to come with me in my car.

Matthew having taken several afternoons off in the last few months to play golf, today took a day off so that I could get a bit of a break (outside weekends which always feel like they should consist of going out & doing lots of stuff)

One of the things I did was to experiment with applique by decorating two of Daniel's old tops to make pretty new ones for Abby, and I'm rather pleased with how they came out. They're a bit wobbly in places, but not enough to spoil them.
[cross-posted to facebook]
( butterflies and flowers )

If anyone's interested, photos of me crossing the finish line last Sunday are up at MarathonFoto

On a visit to my local library today, I discovered they are offering the free loan of an energy monitor for a two-week period as part of an initiative from the energy saving trust. This gives you a moment-by-moment update of how much electricity you're using, so you can track down wastage e.g. from things left on standby. They only had one at my local library and it was out; but it's part of a nationwide initiative so if you're looking to get a handle on your energy usage it might be worth finding out if your local library is offering the same thing.

Haven't posted in a while so thought it was time for a brief update

Daniel starts preschool tomorrow (3 afternoons a week). Cue my first "wow they grow up so fast" moment. I'm fairly confident he'll enjoy himself and settle in without problems, and I think he will benefit from being in a different environment with people other than family. Since I'll still have Abigail at home I don't think it'll free up that much time for me, but we shall see.

Talking of Abigail, she's growing up fast too. Her vocabulary at the moment consists of the spoken words mama, dada (Daddy or Daniel), teeth, this, and cha (chocolate) together with signs for food, sleep, hat, no, and open. She's also toddling about at quite a pace.

I'm running in the adidas Womens 5k in Hyde Park next Sunday. I ran the course last week in 28 minutes 15 seconds, and will be aiming for something similar, or a shade under on the day itself. I'm halfway to my sponsorship target of £250 - thanks to medievalbunny, almooredudley, and smhwpf who've already sponsored me. If anyone else would like to, you can do so at http://www.justgiving.com/LizStanton/. I've already signed up to try for a 10K next May - if that goes well, maybe a half-marathon later in 2010, and the London Marathon in 2011 (or 2012 if that proves too ambitious)

Have been using the bank holiday weekend to have a bit of a clear out - sold my first thing on ebay (a 21 inch television) this week. We have a lot of baby stuff (cot, moses basket, steriliser etc.) which we no longer need, and which I'd prefer to pass on to someone I know rather than sell/freecycle it, but most of the people I know locally already have children. If anyone reading this is thinking about having children in the next couple of years & might be interested then let me know (obviously I would keep this in completed confidence and wouldn't bring it up in conversation either). I'm happy to keep stuff in our loft for a while if there's a reasonable prospect of it being useful, but there's no point in things gathering dust up there for years.

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

Words courtesy of ashfae
( patience, non-perfectionism, motherhood, wisdom, mystic pig )

Just had Daniel's introductory afternoon at preschool today. I stayed with him the whole time today, though he'll be attending on his own (3 afternoons a week) when the new term starts in September. It's uncanny how Joyce Grenfell things remain, although I suppose it shows that children don't change: genuine sample dialogue from this afternoon

"Now remember this week we're learning about the number seven. Yes Rakesh?"
"There are a hundred countries in the world."
"That's very interesting, Rakesh, but we're talking about the number seven right now, but thank-you for sharing that with us"

I haven't opened a Dreamwidth account but I have set up using OpenID (ixwin.livejournal.com) which seems to be working fine in terms of giving me access to friendslocked posts both on my Dreamwidth reading page and on cross-posted-to-lj posts.

I intend to carry on reading both my lj and Dreamwidth friendspages for the foreseeable future, with lj perhaps the slightly more frequently viewed one, but both several times a week. Ideally I'd remove crossposted content from my default view on lj, but I don't want to do that if it's going to mean missing out on comment streams.

I may move to Dreamwidth in the future if any of the following occur
a) lj deteriorates further in terms of user experience
b) people I want to read my journal stop reading their lj friends page regularly
c) the balance of my friendslist gets skewed so far in favour of Dreamwidth that lj becomes incidental (in which case I'll crosspost here from Dreamwidth as long as there are people who want that)

Edited to add: I'm updating my dreamwidth reading circle every few days to include everyone who's added me, so giving me access (via my OpenID) is the best way of making sure I read you on Dreamwidth.

The spring/summer lineup at the Bloomsbury Theatre does sound suspiciously like someone picked a selection of things from my friends interest lists. I mean: Lucy Porter, Clive James, a comedy night in aid of a peace charity, Show of Hands, Tony Benn, another comedy night in aid of a mental health charity...

Don't know if we'll be going to any of them, but thought it was worth giving a heads-up to others.

Lovely unprompted flight of fancy from Daniel this evening which got me giggling. He had a piece of bread and butter in front of him

Daniel: Mummy cut bread [into] two pieces
(Mummy does so)
Daniel: Bread talking each other. This piece say "Bye-bye other piece. I am going into Daniel's mouth with butter on"