Every morning we brush our 4 teeth

walking

Yesterday, around 18:00, the time when we both usually arrive home, the evening was particularly pleasant. Emily decided that she and Bluet would come and meet me on the way home - we met on our block (a nice surprise for me). Then Bluet walked halfway around the block (almost) by herself in her new green shoes.

Experimentation

Over the last few days Bluet has started to experiment with the world. First, she tried to figure out who the baby in the mirror is - first by pressing her forehead up against Teulb's** head, basically giving the mirror a Glasgow Kiss**, then trying to look behind the mirror for the other baby.

**wow Bluet looks funny with so little hair

Next, while in the park yesterday, she found a second pair of shoes in the bottom of the pram, and spent a good couple of minutes holding first the new shoe, and then the shoe with her foot in it, comparing and contrasting.

Finally, she got her walking thing with wheels (see 10 month vid) stuck, and with a lot of effort and shuffling around the different sides of the vehicle, almost got it turned around so she could start walking with it again.

Unfortunately I have photos of none of these events, so instead please enjoy these 2 photos from South Carolina, which are currently my favourite pics of Bluet ever.

*headbutt

Afternoon nap

After a tiring day in the park Bluet is enjoying her afternoon nap. I just checked on her and she looks quite cosy. Often she sleeps in ridiculous positions, but not today. Also you can see her dirty fingernails from playing in the dirt earlier, and the playing than led to dirty fingernails

 

As I walked down to the beach

whilst in the deep south, Bluet visited the seaside for the first time. What strange creature can have left these tracks in the sand?

Why, it was Bluet and her unorthodox crawling method. One leg crawls, the other drags along behind.

Still, she had a great time being given the freedom to crawl so far.

Then, her first experience of the ocean. She was curious, and it was a not unhappy experience. Her trousers, however, were a different story.

Later, back at the house, Bluet solved the mysteries of the plastic cup.

Unofficial take your daughter to work day

Today, Bluet came down to visit me at work for the first time. This was very exciting for me, if not for her. So the nanny dropped her off at 4:30 and Bluet came up to the lab. She was slightly overwhelmed by all the new sights* but made friends with some colleagues. Here she is hanging with Afro. Then we went with Matthieu, Claire and Manon to a private play park which Bluet loved as she had the freedom of a wide open space to push this plastic thing. She even went user some play equipment which was too low for me to follow. When she can actually walk I suspect she will be uncontrollable.

*i can remember going with my Dad to his lab when I was a kid. As I remember it we would sometimes go to the Zoology Department in Cambridge. We would enter through the museum, past a skellington of a prancing horse, and then my Dad and I would pass through dimly lit and empty labs making sure the freezers had not failed over the weekend because I guess they were more unreliable back then. I wonder if this really was what we were doing? Who can say? What ever it was it used to be very exciting.

Shoe Fiasco: notes from the weekend

Yesterday was St Patrick's day, the day when all Americans pretend to be Irish by wearing green and milling around New York, not drinking, just like real Irish people. Anyway, it was co-incidentally nice out, so we found ourselves in Central Park, where Bluet tried her best to jump in the boating lake, but was thwarted (see video). She also found herself some green sun glasses which were of some fascination for a while. But she became distracted long enough that we did not have to take them home.

Check out the blue sky, Bluet and people in green

Later we met up with Steve and Caroline.

Today, we headed out to buy Bluet some shoes and get some lunch. When I was little, I remembered the shoe buying process as quite laborious, as a fastidious shoe shop clerk would measure your feet with some crazy mechanical contraption, then find some well made but boring and uncomfortable leather shoes ideally designed for growing feet. This was not the case even in the Step Rite (equivalent of Start Rite), where unhelpful shop staff took forever to measure Bluet's feet, and the shoes that fitted her were only available in synthetic pink materials. This process took so long that even though Bluet enjoyed playing with the kids in the shoe shop for a while (it was very busy) she eventually got too hungry and/or we did, so we that we left without purchasing anything. Although I was thinking of making Bluet go barefoot to avoid undergoing this horrific process ever again, I realised that as we now know her shoe size (4 1/2, extra wide) we can order her shoes off Amazon from the comfort of our own home, and never ever go into a children's shoe shop again.

As long as her feet don't grow. So all in all a thoroughly successful shopping trip, aside from the failure to buy shoes, and the missing salad in Emily's lunch.

More Pics from the Deep South (Part I)

As promised, here are some more pictures from our trip down south.

Later, I'll post pics of Bluet's first encounter with the sea side. And possibly the cutest photograph ever taken.

 Bluet and her cousin interact. Amazingly one day they will be in the same year at school.

Bluet encounters stairs for the first time. She managed to climb all the way to the top by herself

A small step for Bluet

Today we returned from our brief sojourn in Charleston, South Carolina, the heart of the American South, where they fought for States Rights* in the War of Northern Aggression**. More Photos of that to follow - stay tuned, there are some good ones. Anyway, today we flew back, and returned to a sun-kissed New York City. Emily had some work to do, and Bluet wouldn't sleep, so she and I headed to Central Park. A few days had made Bluet's heart grow fonder, and she happily kicked her legs as we entered the park and headed over to the swings. Once she saw the swings, she squealed excitedly, and as she swung, she clapped her hands.

With more time to kill, we moved on to 1) crawling around in the dirt and 2) holding my hands and walking around. Here is the former activity.

As the sun and shadows of the park were so pretty, I decided to try and take some pictures. Bluet obligingly crawled.....

And over the last couple of days she has started to be able to stand up by herself, and stay steadily erect for several seconds at a time. As I sat back and watched, she found an appropriate balancing stick (pictured), and stood. I was fast enough to capture this with my camera, as you can see. 

And then as I watched...she walked! Just 3 or 4 steps, and it may have been "not falling over" rather than walking per se, but still, it was very exciting. I was very proud and gave her a big hug, once she had sat back down on the ground. She was unphased by this momentous event.

So I guess she is a toddler now; she certainly toddles.

Then it was back to crawling and walking with assistance. We walked back to the swings where the pram was parked, and Bluet made friends with a big shaggy black dog, who gave Bluet a kiss. Kind of. The owner of the dog had a young son called Bradford. I can only assume that anyone who names their kid "Bradford" has never been to Bradford.

Then we went home.

* Slavery ** The American Civil War

Art?

Bluet took her first photo. It is either an innovative abstract expression, or her finger. Either way, it's yours for $1,000,000

Sunshine

Bluet enjoys the first sun she's seen this year. Later, the beach

We're on holiday

(for 3 days)

Here's bluet en route to Charleston, South Carolina. It's famous for dancing, I think

Balloon #1

Last Sunday, before Emily flew off for a Job interview in Wyoming, we went out for Brunch, and Bluet acquired her first balloon, waiting for her tied to the high chair. At first it puzzled her, but once we got home she was dragging it around the house. Sadly the helium has almost all gone, but this historic balloon is captured for all time in pictorial form.

After brunch, we went to the play park.

From the Ozarks

A picture of Bluets from Bluet's Nana

Books and Trains (the good things in life)

Today Bluet and I went to Barnes and Noble (the American equivalent of Waterstone's). It is a veritable mecca for the parents and kids of the upper east side - especially on an unpromissing, foggy and cold day like today. Anyway, Mr Barnes and Mr Noble have decided that their 86th Street branch should be welcoming to kids, even if (a lot) of children's books get damaged by small hands but are not purchased. Whilst Bluet did no damage, I did buy myself a coffee, so I guess it works. Anyway, all of Manhattan was there - On the way in, we rode in the lift with a woman pushing an empty pram. My suspicions that she was therefore going into the shop to kidnap a child proved unfounded when she immediately found her child; however, why she had an empty pram remains a mystery. Then there was a middle aged man asking for help looking for 'one of those books with flaps' - whether for himself, or a youngster of his acquaintance, we shall sadly never know.

Like father (and mother), Bluet likes to read

Bluet finds an appropriate book. Unfortunately it is rubbish

Surprisingly, this shop is a particularly fun place to go as Bluet loves it - there is plenty of carpet for Bluet to explore whilst crawling*, small steps to climb up on and climb down from, book shelves to pull herself up on, places to sit down and remove her socks, books to pull off shelves, books to read and of course plenty of parents and children; the fun of going to Barnes and Noble is that all the other people fascinate Bluet - and many even smile at her and say hello - particularly, it seems the other dads looking after their kids on a Saturday - not so much the up tight new york mother and child having a temper tantrum because he wasn't allowed to keep all the trains (more later),  or the woman reading a celebrity gossip mag, until interrupted by the child in her charge, and forced to read a rubbish book about barbie doing ballet (and the child wasn't even hers - perhaps a niece?).

*Someone had also kindly spilled popcorn over the carpet, which, of course, Bluet wanted to eat. Even though I told her she wasn't allowed to eat popcorn from the shop floor.

Most excitingly today she played with the trains, as you can see here:

For a while she actually just played with the track, as the bratty boy mentioned above was keeping all the trains to himself and wouldn't share. Once he had been taken kicking and screaming from the shop (literally), Bluet got her hands on a locomotive - (Percy the green engine, for any Thomas the Tank Engine aficionados out there). She liked him very much:

Not the greatest pic ever

But you can see Bluet's two emergent teeth.