Weekend bullets

Friday

• In Paris for a client meeting all day. More client meetings due in Hamburg and Rome over the next month, fingers crossed. I like travelling on business. M is in Madrid for work this week, so I will miss him. He'll be in Amsterdam and some other cities over the next month also so we have to plan all our work trips carefully so one of us is always at home for Little Planet.
  

Saturday

• Points Of View: Capturing The 19th Century In Photographs exhibition at the British Library. Rarely seen photographs and a very detailed history. Even Little Planet enjoyed some of the photos, particularly the ones depicting baboon locomotion (she made monkey sounds to show her appreciation).
• Coffee and cake at the Wellcome Institute and a run around for Little Planet.
• Big tantrums on the Tube journey back home (Little Planet, not us, though I felt like tantruming back in response). The "terrible twos" are starting, seven months too early! I now keep chanting, "It's a phase, it's a phase".
  
• Cheese on toast back home while outside it began to pour with rain.
• Afternoon nap for us all.
• The rest of the afternoon spent baking pizza bases, bread and blueberry muffins, doing laundry, hoovering the house, reading the papers and playing.
• Charlie And Lola bedtime story for Little Planet - she's just getting into these books and us two adults find them enjoyable too.
• Homemade pizzas for dinner after Little Planet went to bed.
• Movie after dinner was the Coen brothers' hilarious Burn After Reading.

Sunday

• The motto for Sunday was "Don't shop with a full wallet and no sense!" After complaining to M that Little Planet has too many toys and that she would be getting more at Christmas from friends and family, I walked into the Early Learning Centre in Brent Cross with my mum and came out with 5 bags full of toys for Little Planet's Christmas.
• However, over the past three or four months I've packed away alot of her toys (she gets given alot) and I rotate toys every few weeks rather than having them all out. This way she discovers her old toys afresh. I've also passed on many toys to others. And M and I haven't personally bought her toys for months.
• Also, the toys I bought at the ELC were much needed ones completely appropriate to her age: she's drawing now so I bought her some craft and arts things, she's playing more imaginatively with toy animals so I bought her some small animal figurines, she's manipulating objects with greater dexterity so I bought her a toy piano, she's playing throw and catch and chase (even by herself) with a ball so I bought her a bouncy ball...
• Now that she is exclusively walking now (and running) I can dress her up in more dresses. I don't like flouncy, frilly pink things, so I pretty much shop online or at Green Baby, Bonpoint and Baby Gap for her things. On Sunday, I bought her a number of denim, cord and cotton tunic dresses, including the one below.
• The rest of the day was spent at home with Little Planet - my mum visited as did Little Planet's Granddad on M's side.
• Homemade pizzas again for dinner.