Janette At Home

It's been slow coming but summer has finally arrived.  I know because the first cricket test of the season started yesterday.  We've had a few days of fabulous weather as well.  We celebrated by going to the cricket for a couple of hours this afternoon. 

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We had the first really warm day of spring/summer today.  Petra took the chance to get her gear off and run around naked first at our house and then at Nanny's house.  She's recently turned into a mini naturist and getting her to keep her clothes on for any length of time is almost impossible - luckily she's chosen the warmest time of year for it.

Before she quit wearing clothes for the day, I managed to take a couple of photos of her in her sunhat and glasses looking like a lady on her way to the races.

Petra 054

So my birthday cake making efforts met with mixed success.  The cake itself (banana cake) was really good - nice and light and just right.  Unfortunately, the cream cheese icing was too too sickly.  We just scraped it off and ate the cake naked.  Maybe a chocolate icing would have been nicer.  I'll have to do some research before I make the cake again

To Petra.  She's two today.  And  now I have to make cake.....

For the past couple of months, Travis and I have watched "The Seven Ages of Rock", a BBC music documentary in seven parts (oddly enough), every Monday night.  It finished up this week with a look at Britain's indie scene and the Brit Pop explosion of the late 90's.  While I'm not sure that a scene that boasts Oasis and Blur as its best moments merits a whole episode, I came over all nostalgic at the footage of The Smiths (the godfathers of indie cool) performing This Charming Man on Top of the Pops some time in the early 80's.  The quiffs, the droopy unbuttoned shirt, the waving gladioli (Morrisey's protest about having to lipsynch - he held flowers instead of a microphone), Morrisey's voice, Marr's guitar, the seedy sexy lyrics, and the general air of dissipation, - fabulous stuff.

As a teenager, I loved The Smiths for their campy over-the-top angst.  Morrisey might be the gloomy king of adolescent loneliness and awkwardness, but he's also knowing and witty and wordy, which is just my thing.
 
I'd post a video but I can't get at Youtube.  Vox is having trouble with its connections it would seem.

I thought that babies changed a lot in their first year, but I think now that the difference from 1 to 2 is even more dramatic.  A 1-year-old is still a baby, while a 2-year-old is a little girl.  Petra's baby fat has given way to a much more upright and sleek child build.  She's beginning to look the way she will for the next few years, until the ravages of puberty hit.

Here she is then - November 2008. 

Petra 2008

Petra 2009

A Petra update because I haven't posted one for a while.

She'll be two on Sunday.  Already.  This time last year, she was a fat baby who'd just taken her first teetering steps.  Now she runs, jumps, balances on one foot, climbs stairs without holding on, climbs up onto everything she can, and yesterday rode her bike down the hill at Nanny's (much to Nanny's consternation).  Petra's very poised physically and very confident about her abilities - she's only to happy to give things a go.  She might just have some of her father's daredevilry in her.

She's also a big talker.  We have long conversations about things like the helicopters that fly over and the house truck that occasionally parks outside our house (she's having a toddler vehicle enthusiasm at the moment).  She tosses out her words and phrases - truck, copter, noise, look, etc, etc - and I translate them into whole sentences for her.  We then repeat and repeat until we've thoroughly canvassed the subject.  She has a few whole sentences at her disposal as well.  The things she's figured out how to say give a nice insight into the egocentric workings of the toddler mind - "I will do it."  "I don't want it." "I will get it." "Pick up, pick up," said with upraised arms and urgent hand gestures.  "Come here" and "in here," used as she leads us round the house.

Petra 011

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This morning, I noticed that someone from Riyadh had looked at my latest blog post.  This is what the blog looks like for them.

ArabicBlog

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That I am in fact still here.  I don't have an ergonomic computer setup at the moment so I'm not doing much typing, lots of surfing, but no typing.

In my virtual absence, life has been going along quietly here.  It's spring and the rhododendrons are blooming.  Petra and I walk round our garden most mornings looking at the flowers.  I haven't had a garden for 10 years and had forgotten the deep satisfaction to be had from pottering amongst the plants even in a garden as tiny and down at heel as ours.  70-odd years worth of over-ambitious gardeners have crammed it to bursting with too many, too big, too close together trees and shrubs.  Our gardening efforts so far have been very Costa Rican - we've taken to the bushes with saws, loppers, and secateurs, and have removed three trees so far.  And I plot further destruction in my walks with Petra - she smells flowers while I pick shrubs for the chop.  All the camellias and a couple of sad-looking rhododendrons are on my condemned list, and I plan to prune the hell out of the remaining rhododendrons next autumn.

White Rhododendron

Camellia

Lilac (I think)

Rhododendron