Baby Sophie!

This weekend, I flew down to Rugby with Hannah and Olivia. 

We went to visit these two...

Who have recently made this...!

Little baby Sophie!

Sophie is a real sweetie, she seems so tiny next to my two (although Olivia suddenly seems huge compared to this time last week!) Hannah was absolutely besotted with her, and spent lots of time giving her kisses and cuddles and doing little dances for her. Olivia was very interested, but didn't really know what she was. 

Hannah's first go at holding a baby! 

Unfortunately it was nearly impossible to get a sensible photo of the three of them where they were all looking at the camera and smiling nicely, but we certainly got some entertaining ones.  

See no evil, see no evil, speak no evil! 

Some arm flapping from the babies in the room

And to finish, a little video of Hannah spending some quality time with Sophie and Lee before we headed home. And if anyone wonders what she's saying at the beginning, she is calling Sophie "Little sausage", her new affectionate term for anything smaller than her! 

Things I've made

I've been a busy bee recently, hence the lack of blog posts since August! 
I have become quite addicted to knitting, and found inspiration in Laura Ashley a couple of months ago, where they were selling cable knit cushions for £55!!! I thought to myself "I could do that for much cheaper!" It turns out that yes, I can do it for much cheaper... but if you were to pay me by the hour it would end up costing you a LOT more than £55. Perhaps I'll get a bit faster with practice!

I made this for my mum to have in her living room, and I think it's a fairly good match! It's very satisfying to have been so productive with my evenings.

I also made this little Mary Jane shoes for 
Olivia. I got this wool from the pound shop to practice on so they are not that great quality, but it's nice to know the patterns work out well! 
Incase anyone is interested, I get my patterns from Ravelry.com . It's a website from which you can get free patterns (and some not-free ones too!) And also knitting advice and information. It's great!

And finally, a chocolate and vanilla buttercream cupcake, made for Isabelle's 2nd birthday party today. I just took this picture before I ate it for my pudding. It was fairly tasty, and very sweet. Perfect for a little girls birthday!

A laugh in the bath

Olivia is starting to find the world around her very interesting, but in particular, Hannah is a great source of entertainment! We had a great time watching them both in the bath this evening. Of course the best of the laughter wasn't caught on film, but you get the idea! 

Summer holidays!

Our summer holidays began 10 days ago, when we set off down the A1 in blazing sunshine on the way to our overnight stop in Hartlepool. To break up the journey, we stopped at Conundrum Farm for a couple of hours.

It's got a lovely restaurant/coffee shop, and a farm trail on which you can feed all the lovely animals on your walk around. Hannah found this utterly terrifying at first, but after a while she got used to the idea, and began to trust that they weren't about to burst through the fences and start munching on us.

The walk is broken up with a few play areas too, which was far more appealing to Hannah. 

And after lunch, there was a huge indoor play barn which had little petting animals like bunnies and guinea pigs, but best of all was the bouncy castle! 

Feeding baa baa black sheep

Colin having just as much fun as the children

Hannah's ice cream shop - "Sprinkles daddy?"

Ice cream shop is her new favourite game

Burning off energy before the next stint of driving

And Olivia's verdict? Fantastic!

And these are all the photos you will see of our summer holiday unfortunately! When getting the girls ready to leave the farm, (which involved three nappy changes between the two of them in 10 minutes), I put my camera down on the reception desk and then walked out without it. I assumed it was in the car/hidden in a bag/in a suitcase somewhere, so it wasn't until days later that I realised it was gone. 

On phoning the farm they originally said that they hadn't seen it, but asked for my number and said they'd give me a call if they found it. Just a few minutes later, the phone rang, and it was the very nice receptionist saying that she had the camera and was keeping it safe for me. 

When she found out we weren't going to be going back up the A1 on the way home, she suggested that she was going to be driving to Edinburgh anyway, so would look and see if our street was on the way to her destination. If not, she said she'd pop it in the post for me. However, a couple of hours later, I got a text from my brother saying that the camera had arrived at home! 

I wish more people were as kind as this girl. She could easily have kept it, sold it, or just put it in the post at the expense of me/the farm, but instead she went out of her way to help a stranger out. So Kim from Conundrum Farm, thank you! I am extremely grateful! 

Long absence

I have not been doing much blogging recently, but there is a reason for this other than plain laziness!
Here is the first product of my new hobby...

I started learning to knit a few months ago after a house-group from church put on a 'knit and natter' session. I knew the basics as I have started to learn knitting twice in my life before, but this is the first time I have stuck to it.  And I have to admit I think I am now addicted! Expect more project pictures to come, hopefully not at the expense of my blogging!

Thirty years of cake

Last weekend Colin and I both turned 30! We had a lovely celebration with many family and friends, and even the torrential rain that poured ALL DAY didn't spoil it. (I don't suppose you can plan a barbecue in Scotland without preparing for the possibility of rain!) 

However, this post isn't really about the party. It's about one of my favourite substances. CAKE! 

On the Thursday before the birthdays I headed up to Jaqi and Dunk's house armed with all my decorating equipment, and set about making a duplicate of Colin's Nikon D200 camera. 

Unfortunately the Royal Mail failed us all big-style recently, and I ended up without several decorating tools that I had ordered in plenty of time to make the cake a bit more fancy, but I think I got by ok without them in the end.

The finished result

One for comparison! 

And another...

Jaqi very kindly did the baking of the cakes so that Colin didn't get suspicious, and so I ended up with the choice between a delicious chocolate cake and a Madeira cake to model with. In the end I covered the chocolate cake with the orange fondant (Colin's favourite colour of course!) and used the lovely moist Madeira to carve the camera out of. I cheated slightly and used a shop bought swiss roll for the camera lens, as I wasn't sure whether carved cake would hold the shape of a cylinder well enough! 

To make the lens, I used a round piece of fondant with silver swirls painted on, then covered it in cling film to make it shiny. One of the things I had ordered was confectioners glaze, which I'm told makes fondant shiny as if it's made of glass/shiny plastic, and I'd hoped to use this on the lens, and the display area on top and on the back. But because of her majesty's postal service, I guess we'll never know whether it would have worked out. (Not that I'm annoyed with them or anything...)

Back view

It was a shame that the majority of the detail on a camera is at the back, so I don't think many people at the party actually got a close look at it, so here's a snap for the blog readers. The picture is printed on edible icing, which was sent to me from a lovely little online shop called Photocake Occasion. I was delighted with it as I think it made the camera go from cake, to semi-realistic! 


I had planned to make the Nikon strap out of fondant too, and have it artistically draped around the front of the base cake... but after starting work at 11am, by 5pm I was exhausted and had also run out of fondant, so I wasn't really up for trekking to Sainsbury's to buy more! So Jaqi suggested using another photo and putting it into a fondant frame at the front of the camera to add a bit more detail. And I am pleased with the result! It's a cake I'd like to try again at some point to see if I could get the detail even more realistic, but I'll have to wait another year for Colin's birthday to come round again. Also, I never thought I'd say this, but I am fed up with eating cake, as we appear to have more cake than regular food in the fridge at the moment! 

Obesity during pregnancy 2

A few months ago, I wrote a post about taking part in the Tommy's research project going on in the hospital hoping to observe the negative effects of obesity on pregnant women and their babies. (I'm in the control group as am the average size!) 


Anyway, part of the study requirements was to bring your baby back when they were 3 months old to get them weighed and measured. I thought this would just be the typical stripping them off and popping them on the scales for a minute, but the research nurse asked me to strip her off and pop her into this machine called a "PEA POD"! 
Here's a photo of the machine itself that I found on the internet....

NOT Olivia

It shows the sliding tray that you lie the baby onto before it is slid into the machine and sealed in. 


Once inside, it blows warm air over the baby for a few minutes and accurately measures their body composition (somehow! Who knows how, that's something I can't find on the internet!) 


The research nurse warned me that babies usually scream and cry once inside the machine, and they quite often have to hit the panic button which abandons the test, as mum's don't like to see their baby in distress through the window. Here is a photo of Olivia and her PEA POD experience...

She LOVED it. I think I may have to recreate the environment for her in the house somehow, perhaps using an old box and a hairdryer or something.

Armstrong Spring

Armstrongponts has been a bit neglected recently! Now that Olivia spends more of her time awake during the day, there has been a noticeable increase in how tired I am. My evenings are mostly spent in a zombie-like state, flopped infront of a dvd. I have decided to try and make better use of my time though, so the last couple of weeks I have been teaching myself to knit! I'm not going to blog my results yet though, as I don't know if I'll be consistently good at it! 

Instead, I'll recap over some events of the last month.

April 8th brought around Hannah's 2nd birthday! I can't believe she is two already. We had a little party on the saturday with her friends, then a family do on Easter Sunday.

Cake!

The birthday girl loving her balloons

Egg rolling on Easter Sunday

Thankfully they were so hard boiled, we got to retrieve them and throw them again, several times!

Egg Hunt in the garden

Olivia has changed so much over the last month too. She is taking a real interest in the world, and occasionally manages to grab onto things and shove them into her mouth. She is a lovely little baby, but very cuddly too, she doesn't like to be put down for long so spends a lot of her time wrapped up against my chest. This is nice as it means I get lots of cuddles, and a very content little baby who rarely cries... but also means I'm constantly roasting and have a mild headache from the knots in my back. I think I'd rather that than listen to crying though!

Mmmm feet!

A fan of tummy time (for a bit)

Oh, Hello monkey!

 The other new event in our lives, is that we have swapped bedrooms with Hannah! We realised that it was very impractical to be in our current bedroom, as with Hannah's room being backed onto the garden and utility room, it means that while she naps/goes to bed in the evening, we are unable to do washings, hang up washings, or go into the garden without waking her up. Also, the room is a through-route for the cats to get in and out of the house, and I'm sure this was disturbing her sleep somewhat. 


So, over the weekend, her bedroom went from looking like this....

.........To this! 

It's not finished yet, we still need to move the jungle curtains away from the back door, but you get the idea! 

Baking, birdwatching and babies

We spent the last week in Hartlepool (well Hannah, Olivia and I did, we left Colin in Edinburgh with only the tv and the cats for company.) It was an incredibly relaxing week for me, it was so nice to get some help during the day with Hannah and Olivia, and of course the lie-ins that come with staying at Granny's house are very welcome! 

Olivia is smiling away a lot now and is starting to try and vocalise a bit, I caught her one morning staring at the curtains and smiling and cooing away, followed by a huge roar. Something about those curtains was obviously very thought provoking... 

Hannah is full of personality as ever, and she LOVES staying at Granny's house. She baked her first chocolate chip cookies with much enthusiasm, and spent a lot of time practising walking up and down the stairs. Her speech is improving almost daily, infact she rarely stops talking from the moment she wakes in the morning. 

Here's a few photos of our last week!

Feeding the geese

Birdwatching

Cheeky Olivia!

Cutie!

Sisters doing it for themselves

"Cudem"

"Eye...."

Smiles for Grandad

Smiles for Uncle Alex!

And here's a little video of a game that Hannah learnt to play with Granny. It had been going for some time before I started filming, which says something about Granny's patience. Well done Granny!

Growing up fast!

My girls are rapidly changing before my eyes! Part of me wishes they would reach the next stages faster as I'm excited to see what they are going to be like when they are talking/running/using their imaginations... But part of me wants them to remain little for ages, as they are so adorable sometimes. (Dirty nappies, crying and tantrums aside!) 


Here are some wee videos of them from recent days...


Olivia has been giving us fleeting smiles in between very stern stares, it really suits her! I can't wait until we're seeing them more frequently.

Hannah is growing fast too, she looks really different as the months go by. I'm sure it's because of her hair getting longer and longer! Here is a video of her playing with the tea set Granny Robertson gave her for Christmas. She loves pretending to pour tea, but I think it'll be a long time before I send her to the kitchen to make me a cup of the real stuff...

Reunion 2012

Last weekend was the annual Robertson Family Reunion. The location this year was Dumfries, in the Cairndale Hotel. And this is the first year for a long time that every member of the family has made it along!!! I think that with the new baby additions, we totalled 29 people. That's a lot of Robertson to have in one place! 

For me, the reunion was a little quieter than usual - Olivia is still up feeding quite a lot in the night, and I am definitely starting to feel the effects of sleep deprivation a little bit! 

After a lovely dinner and catching up with everyone on Friday night, Saturday involved a circular walk around Dumfries for the majority of the clan. I tried to get an hours nap while Hannah had her sleep in the afternoon, but of course that's the point that Olivia decided to wake up and groan constantly for the entire hour. No nap was achieved.

We did have a lovely swim and a steam/sauna in the afternoon, and then the evenings entertainments began with a a bubbly reception and a lovely 4 course dinner. 

I didn't manage to take my camera out once over the whole weekend (who knows what goes on in my brain at the moment!) but I did remember I had it right at the end of the weekend after we'd finished our Sunday lunch. So here is a few snaps of the clan before we dispersed through the country for another year.

The whole group

The "Singles"!

The "Marrieds"

Trying to organise the brothers for a photo - a little bit like trying to herd cats

The original Robertsons.

A lovely time was had by all - I personally hope to be a bit less tired by this time next year so will hopefully enjoy it more! Lets hope Olivia is sleeping through by then.