Louise and LLoyd’s blog

Guest blogger: Gardening GuruOn my second visit to Saratoga as a new grandmother I was promised winter fun, along with cuddles, burps, and nappy/diaper changing.  Where was all the snow you kept telling me about last year? I seem to recall last year hearing about the mailbox being burried or knocked over by the snow plough - we could still see the grass around it. There was only about 2 inches!Cuddles and smiles and nappies there were plenty, and oh those morning smiles (what bliss being a grandmother!).  The winter fun soon started however. the day after we arrived, when Louise took me and my brother (Great Uncle Steve) for a ‘walk’ in the park.  Well low and behold an ice rink - why didn’t I see this coming!  Stephen and I were cajoled and coersed into ice skates and led onto the frozen section of the park. It was brilliant thanks Lou I loved it. I managed not to fall over, but Stephen spent quite a bit on time on the ice and became quite expert at getting up!  We tried again the next evening by flood light which was even more brilliant.  The candlelit snowshoe haveing been cancelled because of lack of snow.When Auntie Kelly arrived we had to share the cuddles and smiles,and there were plenty to go round, but not the nappies! We were then treated to more winter fun - cross country skiing.  Stephen and I found more ways to fall over than we thought possible.  But it was fun and the weather was beautiful - blue skies, frozen lake, pine trees and even reindeer.On our last night Lou went out to ’sort the recycling’ and came in to draw back the curtain on to the back garden and there were the candles in the garden and the snow shoes - so we even got our candlelit snow shoe as promised.What a great time was had by all, thanks to Louise and LLoyd and Ella we all enjoyed some winter fun, morning smiles - the best - sleepy baby - aahh! and lots and lots of cuddles, oh and a few pooey nappies - what bliss being a grandmother!

I’m not sure if daily blogs are becoming a regular feature again but I wanted to show you the smallest American in our family watching her first state of the union address last night.  As you can see she was totally captivatedAlthough to be fair I have seen her captivated by a doorknob for over thirty minutes before, so I’m not sure if that reflects badly on Obama’s politics.  Hmm.  I’m not sure what happened to the picture pasting ability, but looking back it seems apparent it was broken by our guest blogger in October.  I’ll have to get her back to fix it

 I’ve been meaning to get back into this blogging malarkey for a while now, but somehow other things keep getting in the way.  Obviously pretty much all blog posts for the foreseeable future will be about a certain little someone, but how could anyone ever get bored of such a cutie?  As it is my first post since my little cherub was born I feel I need to admit not quite being the supermum I’d like to be to begin with.  I think saying “you will be tired” is a hideous joke from people who have been there.  After having contractions every night for the 3 days before she was born and then having a longer than intended (I was trying positive thinking) labour, I went into motherhood already more tired than ever before.  From there on, tired is just a massive understatement.  Add to that the tiny belly that needs filling every couple of hours and the new parent paranoia that means every ten minutes we were waking up to check she was still OK, it took a while to catch up again.  But now, three months(!) on, I feel I’m pretty much human again.  We’ve been very lucky that we managed very early on to persuade her to do most of her sleeping at night.  And if you can measure parenting abilities by the amount of tiny smiles you’re blessed with, then we seem to be doing pretty well indeed.  Although it’s possible that has something to do with the report that came out last year saying women that ate chocolate while pregnant had happier babies.  I embraced that idea with gusto thanks to all our visitors who provided my dairy milk supply.  Speaking of smiles I finally come to the point of todays blog.  The smiles we have been getting have been getting bigger and more enthusiastic and when I thought it couldn’t get any bigger, even developing into a gorgeous full body smile involving hunched shoulders and knees pulling up to the tummy.  But then Monday evening while I was looking daft on the floor doing a workout DVD we got our first proper unmistakable laugh.  I can’t imagine life contains anything more beautiful!

When I change Ella’s nappydiaper and I don’t want her to wake up, I put the shower on to warm up the room. With her clothes off, in a warm room, her IQ doubles. Normally she tries to trace the pattern in the changing mat. Last night, I picked her up and she held her weight on her legs. Then she took some steps. I was impressed. Perhaps this is the stepping reflex that she was supposed to have for a short time after birth, in which case she’s a late developer.

We went to one of our favourite breakfasteries, and were quite pleased to see that in their regular entertainment rotations the chess has resurfaced. Last time we found half a set and had to make some confusing substitutions.  No room for confusion this time and barely room for our breakfast.  I came to the conclusion that if a chess move is further than a metre in length you can be excused for not seeing it coming! 

 Where my own little pumpkin of lovliness will have to learn to accept less than perfection from a very early age, I can understand that other parents may not want such life lessons imposed too early.  So while knitting a little gift for a friend from our childbirth class who has just had her little baby boy, I tried to avoid the problems I encountered last time and tried a knit-two-at-once technique to try and get a pair resembling something like the same size.It turned out to be not too tricky and very successful at matching the sizes.  Now I just need to find the technique that stops my knitted sheep looking like dogs!

Hi y’all, Kelly and Ben here,

We have been here just over a week and been allowed to make a guest entry on the Reed’s blog!  We have eaten loads of food and drunk some massive (in size) cocktails which have been awesome (eng.jolly fantastic).  We are sitting on the porch at the moment drinkin tequilla, beer and eating pumpkin cheesecake.  We have climbed a mountain,

been to New York and seen Matt Damon,

got drunk in Harlem and ate some hotdogs.  We went to Vermont today in a massve truck which is a V8 which has made Ben’s holiday (it’s very big and not very easy to get into if you are preggers or wearing skinny jeans (Lou was not wearing skinny jeans BTW that was me)).  I have also bought 3 handbags, three pairs of shoes (not including flip flops), ben bought 2 pairs of shoes, two coats, some hoodies,  and some sloppy joe mix (not to wear) we have also gained about a stone in weight (each).

We have tried some of the world best southern fried chicken, pancakes (made by lou) and also saw the worlds largest, most mesmerising fanny (eng.bum. US slang. arse).  It was kind of like a human (well it was) with two panniers stuck to the side of her legs with a big hollow where her bum should be but just sort of hanging around her knees at the side, there was also a ledge, or beaver (as in the animal) tail at the top of the crack.  It was most queer and we were all sat staring for a while trying to work out the biology of it? 

I also had my birthday here yesterday which was cracking fun a real hoot!  We got up late and had breakfast (made by lou) went out for lunch and had a bloody mary in Scallions (where a woman asked me where abouts in Ireland I was from) then went for a bath in weak fizzy gravy and had a massage by a lady called Carol who said she hates the English accent on Men ( I know what she means!).  We went out for dinner which was lovely and then had some drinks back at the ranch.

I am missing out on some drinks so will have to go now but it has been splendid chatting to you all.

Lots of love

Kelly and Ben (England) 

What happens when you let a pregnant woman decide on a fun day trip?  You end up at the Cooperstown Pumpkin Festival watching the pumpkin regatta!  Certainly a blog-worthy first for us.  After an early start and a very pretty drive through colourful hillsides, we arrived to see preparations well underway

We left them to it and went into town for a coffee and pumpkin muffin, and got back in time for the start of the regatta.  The exciting part was the initial floatation, apparently it’s a bit tricky to test drive an 800lb gourd, so they had to wait for the official transfer vehicle and keep their fingers crossed.

To the crowds delight there were two capsisions before they even got out of the boat launch.  There certainly seems to be quite a technique to keeping the pumpkin upright, even before attempting to paddle, and the  seasoned pro’s among the paddlers positively oozed confidence

It was certainly a mornings entertainment I wont forget in a hurry!

As a quick pregnancy update, I seem to be doing very well as we approach the eight month mark.  I’m still swimming 70 lengths three times a week, although the cycle there and back is getting to be quite a challenge, and I think I will soon have to retire the bike for a while.  I’m certainly slowing down a lot, although I did manage a three mile hike up a mountain yesterday.  I took it slow and the biggest hurdle was ignoring Lloyds constant checks that I was OK and was I sure I should be doing it.  Isn’t he a sweetie!

We finally decided what to do when we got sick of the cats.  We found a NASA programme looking for new recruits for top secret space missions.  We thought they might have a better chance of passing all the entry requirements if they took their own uniforms, and it worked.  We now have 2 months of cat residue free house, before baby residue takes its place on steroids!

Bye Penny and Kung Fu, I hope your stay with us didn’t leave you too mentally scarred.