Date night!

We had our first 'date night' last week. I made a special tea for Jon and I, gave Erin some little party pies in the shape of animals, rice and veg and some apricots and custard for dessert and put her through the bath while I had a shower. Then I put my party dress on and put Erin to bed. After the kids were in bed, we had a romantic dinner just the two of us! We will be doing this regularly from now on and it was just lovely.

Erin:
is doing brilliantly. She did a somersault today. No prompting, nothing. She just did it! Then she walked over to a gardening book that I have and picked it up. She looked at the cover (which had a picture of chillies growing on a bush) and said "Chillies Mummy, look, chillies for Erin, mmmmm yum!" I promptly rang Jon and said "I may have carried her in my womb but she's your child!" I don't know how she even knew what they were! She is nuts about the food at the moment. Yesterday while I was cooking lunch I got a running commentary of "Poor Erin! Erin needs food, oh poor Erin. Some pasta please Mummy? Some Muffins please Mummy? Some peas please Mummy? Some cheese please Mummy? Oh poor Erin, Erin needs food!...." Her language is getting even clearer. She is now very fond of telling me that "It's not quite bed time Mummy, no, not quite bed time". Usually on her way to bed LOL The tantrums have abaited somewhat as she is getting better (although she is still a snot monster!) which is a relief all 'round! She still has the firey temper though, and always will in my opinion.

Billy:
is just precious at the moment. The grins and belly laughs are just awesome! He has moved to his big boy cot because he kept hitting his head on the end of his bassinette. I probably could have (should have!) moved him sooner but that would mean admitting he is getting big *sniff*. His grasp is very confident now and he grabs toys in the bath to chew on. I am going to get a bath seat for him because he is just too heavy for me to hold up in the bath now the great lump! He has a devoted follower in Grizzabella the wonder hound. I have some great photos of her with him which I will share soon. Whenever he is out there she is laying near him or hovering around him. He thinks she is just brilliant (as does Erin, how many other dogs let you draw on them with chalk??!) and she is just besotted. Billy has been spending a fair bit of time outside with the warmer weather and is trying out some of his shorts and short sleeved rompers. He chats VERY LOUDLY a lot of the time to anyone or anything nearby.

The house:
has had an exciting addition! We have end tables to our couch! They match the bookshelves. We bought them from Chickenfeed. They are 4 cubes, 2 with shelves and 2 with cupboard doors. They stack one on top of the other and we have 2 each end, 1 cupboard and 1 shelf. The surround sound speakers are now at ear level and there is somewhere safe(er) to keep the remotes.

The garden:
is going great guns. I gave all the camelias a light haircut to get them back from the driveway and/or encourage bushier growth and more flowers for next season. Erin loved this because she would sit under where I was pruining while the leaves and flowers fell down around her. I have also started rescuing a peach/nectarine tree. It is a wonder the poor thing is even standing! If you ever had one of these, you'd know that they need a bit of TLC, pruining, feeding, pest and disease control. Well, this one has had NONE of that. It had garden rubbish piled up around the base to about half a foot up the trunk and was amongst long grass. I pulled all this back to find about a billion and one slaters infesting the wood in the trunk, I figure the birds will make a bit of a dent in that population now it is all exposed. Then on closer inspection I noticed quite a few pests on the actual tree. I put doublesided tape around the trunk and left it a couple of days to see if I could get and idea of what was going up and down the trunk. The simpler question would have been what ISN'T going up and down the trunk! Slaters, ants, aphids, mites, you name it. Because it is still early spring I didn't want to just kill them all because a small population of these types of things creates a food supply for the preditors. Preditory insects usually emerge later in the season when their prey is plentyful. So I have just sprayed a weak detergent solution to kill off the population a bit to get it to a maniagable level. I will do this a few more times and see if the population slows down a bit. It looks like we will still get a crop. There are small fruits all over the poor tree! It is just a matter of looking after it so it doesn't drop the fruit before it is ripe.

Craft:
I have finished a mock cable beenie for Katie and Jeremy's baby and need to start some matching booties. I have cast on the first few stitches of a jacket for ME! yay!

Jess