I wonder if I'll ever find time again to write a proper blog post - you know, with paragraphs? In the meantime, here's some dot points of things Her Royal Cuteness is up to: - She likes to walk on the different coloured pavement on the edges of pathways.
- She tells us when cars are coming and very bossily tells us to, "get off the road!" and drags Harvey Bean with her.
- She likes to try and dress herself - can easily put her sandals on now and often gets them on the right feet. If we offer to help her with her tops, she snatches them away from us and says, "Mine!" (actually, she says "mince" but we have no idea why).
- Speaking of sandals, there's only one pair she'll wear at the moment even though she has another two pairs, brand new and never worn.
- She will only eat vanilla (nilla) yoghurt - although we trick her and give her banana yoghurt and because it's white she doesn't seem to know the difference.
- She closes doors when they've been left open and sighs as if to say, "A girl's work is never done".
- She's constantly trying to feed the dogs and she's very specific about each of them getting an equal amount and will say to them, "Sammy, eat!" "Bobo, come and eat!" - you get the picture. She says to Bean, "Good boy, Beanie" when he's done something like take a biscuit from her and eaten it. She also calls Beanie, "My dog" and insists on holding his lead when we walk with them. "I take my dog," she says, strutting off down the road with Harvey Bean at foot.
- Everything is "Little, little bit" especially in relation to food and if she's offered a piece of food that is too large to her way of thinking she'll asks us to "Cut it, please," but if she picks up a knife by mistake to hand it to us, she immediately will say, "Not for little girls".
- The other night we went out for dinner and at the end of the meal we asked her if she'd enjoyed her dinner and she threw her hands up in the air and enthusiastically exclaimed, "Fantastic!"
- She dances all day long at day care and they often comment on how much she loves music, dancing and singing and of course, BOOKS! She now makes up little songs and sings them to herself.
- Her language is pretty amazing, even though we don't understand everything she says all of the time. She sings the alphabet song fluently and now counts to about 14 and she recognises some words when written down. She recognises her own name in writing most of the time. She knows most of her colours and tells us her favourite colour at the moment is green.
- She has an awesome memory - for instance, she saw a picture of Wave Rock today and I asked her where it was and she said, "Hyden". For regular readers of this blog you will know that it's at least 4 weeks since we went to Hyden and saw Wave Rock (or Hanging Rock as C calls it) and we haven't referred to it since we got back.
- She loves to water the plants and has her own, kid-sized, watering can.
- We went to a home open today and she walked into the kitchen and said, "Nice drawers" (and for the record, they weren't).
- She knows how to ring Nanny and Poppy with two speed dial buttons on our phone - she presses the "phone book" button and then Nanny and Pop's speed dial number. She has called them a couple of times without instruction or assistance.
- She knows how to put a DVD into the player and hit play.
- She's suddenly 95cms tall.
- She regularly says, "Sorry" to us for all manner of things - from pushing past to dropping things.
- She pretends to burp by saying, "Burp" and covering her mouth and giggling.
- She tells us when she's done a "pop-off" and finds it hysterically funny.
- She prefers the company of older kids.
- She will sit quietly and be read to for 3 hours easily- it's nothing for her to ask to have read to her 20 or more books.
- She loves 101 Dalmatians in book form and on DVD and now has a small collection of Dalmatian statues and refers to them as her "Dalmatians". If she sees a picture of a Dalmatian, she will refer to it as such and not just call it a dog.
- If she has a tanty and ends up crying, she will eventually pull herself together, but doesn't want to be hugged or cuddled. When she's over it, she usually turns to us and says, "I'm better now".
And now for a little, little story with paragraphs and all.
We were at our local Coles the other night and she was standing in the trolley (because her legs are too long to fit her comfortably into the seat bit of the trolley. A woman who works there who knows us came running over to our trolley and pointed out that Charlotte was standing on our sausages and she said to Charlotte, "How will Mummies make dinner tonight if you're standing on the sausages?" and she pulled them out from under C.
C was MORTIFIED. I don't think she realised she was standing on them and we certainly didn't. She tucked her head into her shoulder and refused to look up at the woman - at which point the woman started to feel awful that she'd upset her and tried to make amends by telling her how beautiful she was, etc. C wouldn't have a bar of it and refused to look up from her feet.
As we wheeled away I noticed Charlotte's eyes were very red and then she looked at me and the poor little poppet started to overflow with tears and she kept repeating, "I sorry, I sorry, I sorry". It was truly heartbreaking.
We had to walk into a quiet corner to tell her that we knew it was an accident and that she didn't mean to tread on the sausages and they'd cook up just fine. It took some convincing and a few cuddles but she eventually pulled herself together.







Last week you became quite sick at day care and the carers rang us to come and get you late in the day. They said that you'd gone down hill quickly and that you had a temperature of 39 and you shivering. When we arrived they also mentioned that you hadn't lost your spirit even though you must have been feeling terrible. They explained two incidences to us; the first occurred when one of the carers was trying to take your temperature again and you didn't want to co-operate so you wriggled out of her arms and quickly said, "I feel better now" in an effort to deter her from pursuing you. The second happened after you'd drunk your second glass of water in quck succession and you burped. The carer asked you if you had burped and you said, "No! It was Anna!" (who, by the way, was nowhere near you).
You've also taken to answering the phone if we don't get to it quickly enough and you've learnt how to phone Nanny and Pop and you've taken to referring to them as Nannypop - collectively. We've finally signed up with a real estate agent and our house will be officially on the market by the end of the week. As a result we've stepped up our house hunting and on the weekend when we pulled up outside of a house you announced, "I look at the house" and then when we entered a very dark and large walk-in robe in this house you said, "I don't like it".
Tonight in the bath you said you had a sore knee so I asked if you'd fallen over or if someone had hurt your knee and you said, "Mumma hurt my knee". The look on your face when Mumma walked in to hear you fibbing was priceless and you hid your head between your knees and then with a little grin on your face you looked up at Mumma and said, "No, not Mumma. Better now."


There are steps with a chain to walk to the top of the rock where you can see the catchment dam and wall built of cement to capture the water run off (the water run off from Wave Rock used to supply the town of Hyden with water).





We then drove out to 


And then finally, in our infinite wisdom we decided that instead of turning around and heading back home through Hyden, we’d push on to
Although there were some magnificent wildflowers on display.







