Photo Gallery - May 2001

We spent New Year's Eve at Chris and Janine's Housewarming/New Year's/Engagement party. Luckily Claudia had a very late sleep so we figured we were safe to stay until after midnight. Chris and Janine set up their bedroom with a TV and video, we supplied The Wiggles and figured fun would be had by all. Ha! The pictures show that she was in their room for at least some of the evening although we don't really remember it...

About 11pm, we decided it was time to try and settle her so she changed out of her party dress into her very fabulous nightie.

You can see in the photos below how much use that was... we finally dragged Miss Life and Soul of the Party out the door kicking and screaming (literally) at about 1.30.

Note that the bed has lost its doona and pillows by now!

I love this little blue dress from Esprit Kids. It even has matching undies!!

Claudia loved it too although it was getting a bit short this year.

Hands up who *else* hates packing up after Christmas! Claudia has now made 2 ornaments at creche - well the first year (when she was 4 months old) we suspect the staff made it for her! - but decorating this stocking was all her own work. Here's a confession - she's actually had 3 creche Christmases and I don't remember whether she made anything the year she was 1.

I'm sure if she did it would be in the decorations box though.

Claudi is wearing her "Maisy Maisy Mouse" necklace. She loves Maisy. So do we, but I wish I had never watched "Men Behaving Badly" as Neil Morrissey does the voice for Maisy (and also for Bob the Builder). Every time I hear him say "Maisy are you having a bath?" I get very odd pictures in my head.

This has to be close to my favourite picture of Claudia ever. What a wild child! Hollywood starlets, eat your hearts out.

My boss suggests we save it for her 21st, or to show a boyfriend that she was hot even at 2!

She is of course playing with one of Fraser's socks under the desk.

Looking older every day. Pigtails are fun, having your hair combed is not at all fun. In fact, the only time she hasn't screamed "no no" at the prospect of a haircut was when I explained that if she wouldn't let us wash her hair we would have to cut it all off. Then the refrain was "cut all my hair off" for a few days...

The Harvest Picnic at Hanging Rock is a chance for Victorian growers and food producers to show off their wares - and a chance for Melburnians to get stuck in enormous traffic jams in the back of beyond. We went to meet some friends and had a lovely day, although it was very busy. Highlights were some sensational lamb burgers, good beer, and fudge from a shop in Woodend which is so good I would make the trip there just for fudge. I'm probably lucky they don't do mail-order.

Claudia's highlight was nothing so foody - from memory, she drank a juice and had peanut butter on biscuits - but the baby animal farm was pretty great.

She loves animals - Collingwood Children's Farm is a favourite place. When the animal farm came to creche, she sat in the water and played with the ducks all afternoon (poor ducks). I suppose we were lucky that she wasn't the child the cow pooed on.

Relaxing with the goat (the only other goat she'd met tried to eat her fairy clothes, so we weren't sure how comfortable she would be)

No! Don't eat his! Eat mine!
Mine is good! Mine is better! Really!

(Claudia took to shoving her little cup of grain over the animals' noses to try to persuade them to eat. We thought it was pretty funny. Not sure about the animals though. They must be very well trained.)

At last, another hungry animal. Given that they had been there for (I think) about 4 hours by the time Claudia got there, finding one that wanted to eat was a bit of a challenge.

Both enjoying the feed.

None left? Doesn't matter - it's time to go anyway.

"You spin me right round baby right round... "

Off to the park with some friends
for the afternoon.

And around again.