Fiona eats hummus and learns a new dance move

This week the weather has been very Aberdonian. Some would describe it as dreich. We haven't been out much. We've been doing things like going though Ben's drawers and throwing out all his t-shirts, and hoovering the house. Fun. 

We have had some fun times too though. Recently, Fiona has been much more excited about eating things with flavour. I usually give her some of what I'm having, and she ate half of my extra tasty salmon burger (made by Grandma) on Sunday. At the farmer's market we also got some homemade hummus, so when Fiona woke up from her afternoon nap yesterday, I thought we'd have that for a snack. This is some pungent hummus! It's got enough garlic and pepper in it to really clean out your sinuses, and she LOVED it. I took a very cute video, but despite Ben's constant reminders that the camera needs to be horizontal, I turned it vertical resulting in a sideways video. Rather than give you neck pain trying to watch it, here are a couple of cute photos. 

Concentrating hard on getting it in her mouth.

YAY! Hummus!

Very successful snack. It's exciting that she's eating more and more 'grown up' foods, but I was a little sad about it this morning when she guilted me into sharing my blueberry muffin. 

Today Fiona also expanded her repertoire of awesome dance moves... in addition to the 'bounce up and down' she now also incorporates the 'head shake' and 'body sway' for variety. The song is the same as before because it's her favourite dancing song. Enjoy...

Our latest adventures

I haven't updated for a while... I was still recovering from my sunburn incident ;-)

Last week we had some lovely weather. I was really happy our yard was all cleaned up so we could enjoy it! One of the things we did last week was hang up a clothes line. I was so excited, until I hung up my clothes, only to find that the line was to low and they trailed on the ground. Then I had a brainwave... washing pole! My Mum had a washing pole... it was a long, smooth stick topped with a hooky thing made specially for the purpose of propping up the washing line. I, however, did not have a smooth stick, or a fancy hooky thing, so I found a long piece of wood in the garage, and banged a nail into it near the top. It works great, and also comes with the added excitement of the danger of serious splinters in your hands when you use it! 

Here's a picture of my washing line, and pole, with diapers hanging out to dry.

To celebrate the first day with temperatures above 80, Ben and I ate dinner outside on Thursday. By the time Fiona was alseep and dinner was made, it was pretty late, so we even got to use our 'summer' lights*. Here's Ben...

I love eating dinner outside, and I especially love drinking wine outside. It makes me so happy that the sun finally came back! This time of year is extra lovely because there is only one mosquito. I'd say there were no mosquitoes, but one bit me, so I'll have to assume there's just one so far. 

This weekend was also the first day of the Farmer's Market. I love the Farmer's Market, so I was pretty excited. I hadn't completely thought it through though... given that we've only had a handful of days without snow this year so far, there was not really anything to farm yet, so pickings were kind of slim! 

We ended up buying some crazy hot salsa (Ben), crazy hot pickles (Ben), and crazy sharp cheddar cheese (to share). There were also many options for hot food, so despite the fact that it was only 10.30am, we had lunch. Ben had shrimp taco and fries, and Fiona and I shared a fish taco and stole a few of Ben's fries. 

Ben really enjoyed his lunch!

On Sunday we had dinner with Ben's family. His Aunt Gloria and Uncle Neil are visiting this week, and his sister Laurie was here for the weekend. Here's Fiona and I with Laurie. This photo is evidence of why I generally take the pictures. Out of nine pictures, this one was the best. Yep, I know I'm missing part of my head. I'm not sure if it's my face or Ben's skills that's the problem, but at one point Ben did ask me to 'do a different smile' and then winced at the resulting photograph. 

Fiona enjoyed the visit, and even pitched in with the dishes...

This week, Fiona has a new tooth! Which explains why she has been sleeping so badly. Hopefully that will improve now that tooth number 7 has emerged. She also has a new diaper! (ok, the diaper is partly for me too). I got 2 on super sale online, and I really, honestly needed two more diapers! I mean... Fiona needed two more diapers!

It's made of mostly bamboo with some cotton blended in. Apparently Bamboo is pretty eco friendly because it grows faster than cotton and requires less resources to grow. It's SUPER soft, and extremely cute! Fiona loves it ;-)

So that's what we've been up to in the last week. It is sunny today, so after Fiona wakes up from her nap, I think we'll go for a walk. Who knows, maybe we'll meet George Clooney at the park and I'll have something more interesting to write about next time!

*Summer lights = Christmas lights. Except turned on during Summer. Sneaky, huh?

Brodie... my first, and furriest baby

Brodie has always been a dog that loved to be comfortable. Even as a puppy he rejected the floor and preferred to nap on the couch. If there was a pillow on the couch, that was the perfect nap as far as he was concerned. 

Well today he managed to take it a step further and reach nap nirvana. He has a big fat pillow on the floor, with another pillow on top of it (just like the princess and the pea). He was taking a long time to get comfortable, but finally settled down, and when we looked over, we found this:

Yep, he's trying to become a Brodie-pillow sandwich. One chunky slice of Brodie between two hunks of pillow. And by the look on his face you can tell he's pretty pleased with this new arrangement.

And since I'm feeling nostalgic about my first baby-turned-furry adult dog... here's a bonus baby Brodie playing fetch video. Awww puppies. 

Spring = Yard Work

Since October last year we've had a giant pile of leaves sitting in our back yard... they were raked, but never quite made it into bags. Since then, more leaves fell, as did tons of nobbly offerings from our neighbour's tree, which we are so lucky to have half of hanging over our yard. During the winter we cleared out our basement, and some of the old shelves and junk took up residence outside. Combined with six months of accumulated dog poo, all we needed was a car on cinderblocks to complete the picture. It looked bad.

Last week the sun came out, and I was wishing that Fiona could feel the warm grass between her little toes, but sadly you could barely see the grass under the... well... you know. So this weekend Ben and I decided to tackle the mess. 

Fiona was hungry, so Ben fed her lunch while I raked the leaves. This is her 'no thanks, I'm done' face.

Here I am... working so hard! See how much better the first half looks! During my excavation I found all kinds of things like old lost bones and rarely seen white dog poo. Exciting!

Here's Ben picking up the leaves. You can see where the pile used to be.

I even managed to decipher the heiroglyphics included with the play set that Ben's coworker donated to us and I built a little swing and slide for Fiona. And here's the finished product in our newly tidy back yard!

It looks much better. The only downside is that despite it only being April, my freakishly pale Scottish skin managed to soak up enough sun for a toasty sunburn. Time to break our the factor 45!

Fiona's adventure with a train

My Uncle Michael and Aunty Julia, and my cousins James, Chris, and Catherine are visiting us for a while. Well, they were, but then they needed to take a break from visiting us and went to Vegas for a few days. They'll be back on Thursday.

When they arrived, they had a mysterious pink suitcase with them, and when they opened it we found it was full of Brio! Brio is a Swedish wooden train set with jigsaw ends so you can build all kinds of tracks. We loved to play with Brio when we were little, then passed what we had on to James, Chris and Catherine. They added some seriously cool parts - like a drawbridge and battery operated train - and then a few years later decided that since they were finished playing with it, that they'd pass it on to Fiona. 

Fiona loves the train! Aside from enjoying the tasty wood flavour, she likes to watch it go round the track, and sometimes will crawl around after it, trying to catch it. When we first built it, she'd giggle like crazy whenever the train would go by. 

Here is a video of Fiona and the train. Monty was intrigued, but a little nervous... 

Another game she likes to play is to pick up the pieces one by one and put them on the table. And then throw them onto the floor. And then pick them up and put them on the table, and then throw them on the floor... and pick them up and put them on the table... you get the idea... I think this is going to be a lot of fun!