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"

Before children:
Clocks going back = an extra leisurely hour of Sunday morning

After children:
Clocks going back = two little ones wide awake and raring to go at 6:15 a.m.

(I'm only complaining a little bit really)

If a recipe calls for "450g of fresh peas, shelled" would you interpret that as the weight before or after shelling?

---

Edit: I went with the pre-shelled weight in the end, and it seemed okay - it could have coped with more peas, but probably not as many as there would have been if I'd used 450g post-shelling.

For the curious, the recipe was for a pasta dish involving spaghetti, cream, pecorino cheese and fresh peas. It was labelled as 'paglia e fieno' although googling this suggests the dish going under this name more commonly includes ham and mushrooms as well, which I can see working very well, upping the interest and 'savouriness' of the dish.

I will be leaving the house today with a rucksack containing

• 3 disposable nappies
• 2 bottles of wine
• a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare
• some Greek marinated olives
• a half-completed passport application

The disparateness of this selection pleases me.

As those of you who read vectorious's journal will know, I am now a proud mum of two. Both are now sleeping peacefully*, giving me time to write this. I'm feeling surprisingly together at the moment, but we'll see if it catches up with me tonight or tomorrow...

We've decided to name here Abigail. Daniel was the final arbiter of this - we were pretty much down to a choice between Abigail and Charlotte, and then I had the following conversation with him.

Daniel: Baby Abbie?
Me: Baby Abbie? Not baby Lottie?
Daniel: Lottie? No!
Me: Abbie?
Daniel: heh heh heh

So she'll now be Abigail Charlotte Stanton.


*well, she was - now sucking equally peacefully though...

No sign of number two's arrival yet (she was due on Tuesday). Have an appointment at the hospital on Wednesday afternoon to discuss options re: induction, but hopefully it won't come to that.

My mum will be coming to look after Daniel when things do kick off and she asked me to put together a guide to his daily routine so she can keep things as close to normal as possible, particularly if I end up needing to go into hospital. It's the longest thing I've written in a while and I thought I'd post it here for any of you who might be interested in reading about the minutiae of a toddlers life and/or wonder what I actually get up to all day.

Needless to say, if you're not particularly interested in small children this will probably make for very dull reading and you should feel free to skip it. I also want to add that this isn't all I do - for a start there's the general housework of cleaning/shopping/laundry etc. which I'm not expecting my mum to do, as well as generally cooking something a bit more complicated than the pasta with bought sauce suggested here. Also there are various activities I go to like playgroup, swimming etc. or visiting friends and family, which vary day-to-day.

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Eee - I am now an auntie! :)

My sister-in-law, Emma (who a few of you met at our wedding along with her now-husband Chris) gave birth to her first this evening. He is called Benjamin & mum and baby are both doing well, and expect to be going home tomorrow. Not sure when we'll get to see them all but hopefully not too long - we will be seeing vectorious's parents on Sunday and I expect they'll have photos at least.

Haven't quite got used to the sound of 'Auntie Liz' yet, or the fact that Daniel now has a cousin, but yay for more lovely small things in the world!