Merry Christmas everyone!

Full house

The countdown to Christmas has started. We have a full house as M, Little Planet and myself are hosting Christmas for both sides of the family this year. We have visitors staying over all next week and into the week after so it's all very busy chez Planethalder household. Normal posting will resume soon (hopefully before 2009).

Happy birthday Mr Planethalder!

I love you so much (and am very happy you are not working late tonight) XXX

Empty nest

Our little cherub turned 6 months today. To mark this milestone, we moved her cot into the nursery. I was so terribly sad at her leaving. It's my first taste of the dreaded "empty nest" feeling. My sister-in-law pointed out that it's only a matter of time when she will leave home :-(

And yet it's so liberating having our room back to ourselves again at night :-)

M had to work from home this weekend and so we stayed local - walking in the park, visiting friends, cooking, baking bread, gardening and generally chilling out with Little Planet.

Happy birthday, baby!

Duvet days

• On Saturday, with my mother-in-law looking after the baby for the weekend, M and I headed into town for lunch at Japanese restaurant Abeno, near the British Museum. We started with hiyayakko (chilled tofu topped with bonito flakes and grated ginger) and miso soup. I then ate om soba (fried noodles served wrapped in an omelette) with prawns, pork and squid. M ordered a spicy naniwa (pork and kimchi) okonomiyaki. He drank green tea and I drank calpico soda, which was very nice and tasted a little like lychee juice
  
  
• The place was stuffy with academics. I used to be one myself (lecturing during my PhD) and sitting in Abeno listening to the conversations around me made me remember why I had left academia a few years ago
  
  
• We chose a new flat screen HD TV, for our living room, in the Sony Centre on Tottenham Court Road
  
  
• We viewed Jia Jia Wang's colourful toytown paintings at the Alexandre Pollazzon gallery near Goodge Street
  
  
• Then cabbed it to Spruth Magers gallery off Bond Street to see Thomas Demand's latest solo exhibition Presidency featuring photographs of life-size, near-perfect paper models of the most powerful room in the world - the Oval Office (photo above)
  
  
• Earlier this Summer, we bought from Postcard Teas a brass tea caddy to commemorate Little Planet's birth. Handmade in Kyoto, the metal will age as she ages and be a lovely keepsake to be passed down through the generations. On Saturday, we returned to the store to have its accompanying brass tea scoop engraved by a member of the family who had made the caddy. Little Planet's name has its Japanese equivalent and has a beautiful meaning, so her name in Japanese was carved into the metal
  
  
• We also bought some ginger and clove loose tea
  
  
• We browsed the new Dries Van Noten collection in Liberty and also shopped at Muji, Borders, Foyles and Space NK
  
  
• I revisited the Dayanita Singh show at the Frith Street gallery. It was M's first visit to the show and he too enjoyed the haunting and luminous photos of India illuminated. He bought me an early Christmas gift of a boxed set of the photographer's travel journal work across India, Indian Diaries: Sent A Letter
  
  
• Both the Nordic Bakery and Fernandez & Wells were packed so we high-tailed it in the rain to Mrs Marengo's on Lexington Street for strong coffees, sticky toffee pudding and a fruit and nut slice
  
  
• The day ended and the night began with a friend's birthday party in St Albans
  
  
• I spent most of Sunday vegging out in bed, snuggled deeply inside my duvet, while Little Planet played with my husband and her grandmother or napped. I had spent a sleepless Friday night, tossing and turning in bed for no reason and ended up sleeping on the couch downstairs (my mother-in-law was in the guest bedroom) for fear of waking M and Little Planet up. And then the Saturday night, of course, had been a late one at the party. I only surfaced to eat croissants for breakfast and bacon butties for lunch
  
  
• I was feeling a little anti-social, I admit, longing only to read the papers, surf the net and doze all day; to not have to speak with people. We all have days like that, don't we. But in the evening we had dinner guests - one of whom is a vegetarian - and I certainly enjoyed eating M's roasted aubergine with pumpkin and feta cheese, white bean and barley salad with a beetroot and yoghurt dressing - both recipes from Silvena Rowe, followed by his puff pastry apple tart
  
  
• The weekend marked a successful week of weaning Little Planet onto solids. Successful in the sense that she ate all the food we gave her (a tablespoon at a time of baby rice for breakfast and sweet potato for lunch). But she doesn't seem bothered whether we offer it or not; she has been nonplussed by the tastes and textures so far, opening her mouth excitedly only for water, which she loves. I think I will offer her broccoli this week - not sure how she will take this...
  
  
• Little Planet has been rolling from her front to her back for a few weeks now, but on Sunday she rolled from her back to her front for the first time
  
  
• She'll be 6 months old at the end of this week. Here she is wrapped up in her new snowsuit for a buggy ride in the cold weather...